We woke up well rested and ventured downstairs to the small kitchen for breakfast.\u00a0 There Julio (the owner of the hotel) was putting together breakfast for the guests, along with some help from a young lady.\u00a0 There looked to be about four other rooms in the place, so it was smaller than I had expected.\u00a0 They made us fresh orange juice (yum!), nespresso coffee (just like at home) and then served us some toasted breads, fruits, and butter and jam. They gave us a small loaf of sweet bread that was spiced with anise, and then later some plain toast with some very simple salsa to spread over it.\u00a0 Simple, easy, delicious.<\/p>\n
The next step was to go check out the town.\u00a0 Granada is a fairly large town, and we were staying in the historical Arabian district.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t really notice the difference the previous evening when we came in, but walking around in the morning most buildings were very old, painted white with dark roofs.\u00a0 We really enjoyed walking around the town and poking around the corners.\u00a0 The streets were all cobblestone, and once in a while we\u2019d meet someone walking the other way.\u00a0 There was a family riding by on Segway scooters that caught us by surprise.\u00a0 Just about everywhere we visited had some people trying to sell tours on a Segway.\u00a0 Weird.\u00a0 Eventually we found a church that overlooked the Alhambra palace.\u00a0 The view was pretty spectacular, and since we were planning on visiting the Alhambra in the afternoon, it was a good way to see the whole thing from a distance.\u00a0 There were a few people walking around and even a Japanese family of four taking pictures and enjoying the view.\u00a0 We asked the dad to take our picture – and he did a great job.\u00a0 You could tell he was very serious about photography.\u00a0 In return I took the family\u2019s picture, but I think I hashed up the first shot.\u00a0 I was worried about getting everyone\u2019s feet in the shot and I completely missed the Alhambra.\u00a0 The second shot turned out much better.<\/p>\n
We continued sightseeing in the Arabian district, and found ourselves walking down a street that was right out of a movie.\u00a0 It was like exactly what you would see in a Hollywood movie if it called for a small town in Europe.\u00a0 We walked down the stone streets, with little stands selling produce on the side of the road and locals walking around greeting each other and gossiping.\u00a0 No tourists around really (except for us) and I wondered if they\u2019d all return to doing something else after we passed.\u00a0 Other than that area, the streets remained empty, and it seemed like the tourists might be sleeping in a little.\u00a0 That was fine by us.<\/p>\n
We stopped at our hotel for a quick toilet break, but caused a bit of havoc because they were cleaning our room at the time.\u00a0 They maybe thought we wanted to spend time in our room, not just use the toilet, but in the end we got it all figured out and hopefully didn\u2019t hurt any feelings.\u00a0 Sometimes small places like where we were staying can be a little more delicate about their services.\u00a0 I did notice that our cleaning lady was quite attractive, and later Kuniko agreed that Spanish people in general that we had met tended to be for the most part pretty good looking.\u00a0 Our sample size was pretty small, though, so we figured we\u2019d keep our eyes open.<\/p>\n
So we were back on the street, walking towards the Alhambra.\u00a0 The Alhambra sits on a giant hill overlooking the Arabic district, and to get there you can either take a drive up the hill or hike up (like we were doing).\u00a0 The hike is up a back way, which means there weren\u2019t many other people on the trail, and also that it was mostly shaded from the sun.\u00a0 It was a fairly steep climb, but probably what we needed after all the calories we took in during our stay in Turkey.<\/p>\n
I had pre-purchased entry tickets into the Alhambra palace, but they weren\u2019t valid until after 1:30 pm.\u00a0 They try to limit visitors into the buildings to try to reduce the overcrowding, and for that we were thankful.\u00a0 At first we couldn\u2019t find the place to pick up our tickets, but after asking a few questions we figured it out. There were signs set up for people coming from the road, but no indicators for people hiking up the back of the mountain.\u00a0 Part of the experience of the Alhambra is to walk through the gardens that surround it.\u00a0 The gardens are beautiful, lush and extensive.\u00a0 All of the greenery gave us lots of shade to hide under as the temperature crept upward, and gardens, fountains, ponds, and waterfalls were everywhere.\u00a0 We spent a long time wandering through and enjoying the views.\u00a0 At one point we walked up some stairs to the upper level, and when I turned the corner and looked up the stairs I discovered that the short skirt wearing lady above us wasn\u2019t wearing any underwear.\u00a0 Welcome to Spain!<\/p>\n
To kill the last thirty minutes before our entry time came up we left the gardens and walked over to a small caf\u00c3\u00a9.\u00a0 There we had a couple of glasses of wine outside and watched the tours come and go.\u00a0 I managed to order everything in Spanish without too much embarrassment, and the wines were excellent.\u00a0 Even just wine by the glass it was better than what we usually drink at home – and cheaper, too.<\/p>\n
Finally we entered the palace after waiting in a short line.\u00a0 Someone ahead of us passed out from the heat, so it wasn\u2019t just us feeling the effects of the weather.\u00a0 The interior of the Alhambra was absolutely beautiful.\u00a0 The influence of both western and eastern combined to make for a very unusual decorating scheme.\u00a0 I especially liked the tilework, and the fountains throughout the grounds were also beautifully designed.\u00a0 Most rooms had some kind of archway leading to a unique ceiling, some unbelievably intricate.\u00a0 One ceiling was star-shaped, letting light shine in different ways during the passing of the day.<\/p>\n
We spent about an hour inside the palace going room to room and enjoying the architecture and beauty of it.\u00a0 Finally we finished up, and headed back down the hill to our hotel to rest up a bit.\u00a0 On the way back we stopped at a store to pick up some cold beer to drink, but the staff had just put their local beers in the fridge so they weren\u2019t cold.\u00a0 Instead we bought the beer that was cold – Coronas.\u00a0 So it was that Kuniko and I drink cold Mexican beer on a terrace outside our hotel room in Spain.\u00a0 Later we had a chance to try the local beer (called Alhambra beer) and it turned out to be quite good – much better than I had expected.\u00a0 In our hotel room there was a card that said that they always had cold Cava in the fridge in the kitchen, and to help ourselves if we\u2019d like.\u00a0 I ran downstairs to get a bottle, but the cleaning lady told me in Spanish that they didn\u2019t have any – just more beer.\u00a0 I did my best to chat with her in Spanish, but I\u2019m sure there was a lot of Japanese coming out of my mouth.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t seem to care, and hooked us up with a couple of bottles of beer.<\/p>\n
We took a nap to sleep off the afternoon beer, and then decided that we needed to get some food in our system.\u00a0 We ended up walking to a local town square that had tables set up outside of two small bars.\u00a0 We ate outside and enjoyed a tomato salad, potato and pepper tapas, braised rabbit on the bone, and some glasses of red wine.\u00a0 The place was still quiet since it was much too early for dinner, so we decided to head back to the church viewpoint that we had seen in the morning.\u00a0 Our plan was to take in the night view of the Alhambra.\u00a0 Unfortunately, everyone else had the same plan, and the place was starting to get crowded. \u00a0Not only tourists, but musicians and street vendors also were hanging out around the area.\u00a0 Below the plaza there was a small restaurant with a nice view of the Alhambra, so we walked down there and got a table and a bottle of Cava.\u00a0 There we ate some delicious olives and Monchego cheese and waited until it got dark.\u00a0 It took a long time to get dark, though, and between talking, watching all the tourists lined up above us, and working on that bottle of Cava, I ended up drinking a little too much.\u00a0 If you read this entry carefully you can see that we drank pretty much the whole day combined with lots of walking and hill climbing.\u00a0 Luckily Kuniko steered us in the right direction to get home afterwards.\u00a0 I got some nice pictures of the Alhambra lit up, though, so mission accomplished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We woke up well rested and ventured downstairs to the small kitchen for breakfast.\u00a0 There Julio (the owner of the hotel) was putting together breakfast for the guests, along with some help from a young lady.\u00a0 There looked to be about four other rooms in the place, so it was smaller than I had expected.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-HP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}