Day 61: Granada the City

The next day I awoke not having quite enough time to go have breakfast. I made straight away for the bus station but did meander a little bit to see a little more of Córdoba before leaving it (hopefully not forever).

The view from my hostel's balcony:


I made it to the bus station and found that apparently paypal hadn't correctly processed my payment for the ticket; luckily there were still spaces on the bus and I got one. I had about 15 minutes to kill so I stopped by a breakfast bar in the bus station and got those old staples we now know and love, pan con tomate and café con leche.

Departing on the bus, we headed southeast to the magical land of Granada. The countryside of Andalusia (Andalucía) is absolutely amazing: beautiful greenery, at times wooded, and consists mostly of the occasional mountain or cliff surrounded by an ocean of olive tree plantations:


And then the towns are for some reason all painted completely white:

And on the roughly 2 1/2 hour trip, I passed at least 4 castles: on cliffs overlooking the plains or perched upon narrow mountain passes; this very area was the last foothold of Arabs in Western Europe and they defended it as well as they could for years, and the Christians fortified their gains as they progressed, leaving Southern Spain a thoroughly castle-filled land.

Finally arriving in Granada I made my way to the Albaicín, also spelled Albayzin (which, probably intentionall, has a more Moorish look to it), the Granadin all-white neighborhood filled with small, winding cobblestone streets. Actually correct that - most of the streets and walkways in the entire city are cobblestone, arranged in almost mosaic patterns. This isn't a great picture but if gives you an idea of the average street:


Here's the Albaicín:



And as I climbed to the top of it, I was greeted with these magnificent views of the city:


I headed back down and found my hostel, The White Nest, where I gladly deposited my backpack and rested up for a little while, having planned to meet fellow interns Dylan and Cassandra at some point. I texted them and we finally met, and we all went up the Sacromonte, a nearby hill the houses the Gypsy population of Granada. At the top we saw some of the Gypsy caves (yes, you read that correctly: Gypsy caves) and I felt disturbingly like I was in the Shire.

We looked around, decided not to go into the Gypsy museum area, and headed back down through the Albaicín, when the sunset happened to amazingly illuminate the Granadin plains below:

The building up on the cliff is the Alhambra, which I will explain in the next posting.


Because they hadn't gotten their tickets yet, Dylan headed off to go wait in line at the Alhambra (which I will explain in the next post) and Cassandra and I killed some time by going to buy ingredients for Gimlets, and then we stopped by another Arabic place, this time a pastry-and-lemonade spot that was really good. Cassandra headed off to go meet Dylan in line at the Alhambra and I went back to the hostel where I joined up with a Tapas tour. About 10 or so people from the hostel got together and, free of charge, a tour guide showed us to some of the better tapas places in the city. I ended up sitting with three girls: One from Ireland, one from the UK, and one from Zimbabwe, and we talked a lot about Ireland/UK/US/Zimbabwe similarities and differences.

The tapas were: first, a sort of beef and gravy with toasty-cracker things, second, little sandwiches (i forget if they were chicken or pork) and then at the next bar we got an entire tray of various things including a veggie-tortilla.

After this I left and met up with Dylan and Cassandra who had finished with their nocturnal stint at the Alhambra, we met up in their hostel/hotel room and went to the hotel balcony to share a few drinks, before we all turned in so that we could go to the Alhambra fairly early the next day.