24,573 steps today, according to my Fitbit. Some I'm giving my plates of meat a rest now on patio of our place in Calle Tina. It's a great name for a street, I wonder if there streets called Calle Mandy and a Calle Sharon as well?
The guidebooks to Grandada warn of how difficult it is to get a general ticket (access all areas) to the Alhambra. They say that you have to book months in advance of get up at stupid-o-clock to purchase a ticket on the day. But Tim and Julie didn't have to do that. We woke late, and had a leisurely breakfast. We even had time to try our one of those stove top espresso makers that look like a kettle with a waist. It came out fine, and tasted even better with the condensed milk that our hostess provided for is. After breakfast we walked down to the Plaza Nueva and then up the hill to the Alhambra. At about eleven, we joined a queue and got a general ticket for fourteen Euros each for this afternoon. Back of the net (as Alan Partridge would say) !
Feeling extremely chuffed with ourselves we walked back down the hill and explored Albaicin for a couple of hours. The highlight was the excellent Zafara centre that explains the history Albaicin, which was once a Moorish city with a population of forty thousand people. It is now a Unesco World Heritage site to protect its unique character.
Returning back up the hill to the Alhambra we toured the whole complex for five hours, it is very big with many sites (and sights) to see. All the superlatives you have heard or read about it are true, it is an amazingly beautiful place; the location, the buildings, the gardens, the decoration - the the package. I don't have the poetic or descriptive skills to explain it, so have a look on Google or Instagram.
The Generalife is not a life assurance company, it is a large formal garden with the sweetest smelling roses! It is made up of rectangular ponds, par terres of box hedges and walls of cypress. It was the Sultan's private gardens away from the main part of the Alhambra which had a population of about a thousand.
Carlos V, the grandson of Ferdinand and Isobella who took Garanda from the last Sultan, built a palace in the Alhambra. It looks incongruous amongst the other buildings, and Carlos didn't live there for long. In the centre is a circular courtyard that was used for bull fights. The colonnade around it was left unfinished, and a roof wasn't put onto some of it until the 1960's.
We had timed tickets to the Nazrid Palace, the most decorated part of the complex where the Sultan resided and held his court. The rooms are decorated with plaster panels of Arab calligraphy, and beautiful ceilings with downward projections that look like stylised stalagmites. From many of the rooms there are stunning views of Granada and the fertile plains below. The entire complex is a work of art!
Down the hill we tramped yet again and walked into Granada centro for some pasta and salad; man (and woman) can not live by tapas alone. Then hiking back up into Albaicin we navigated ou way to the mirador (viewpoint) of San Nicholas to watch the sun setting on the Alhambra. You can now see how our footsteps added up today and why I have sore feet!
Dear reader, one day you must visit Granada and see the sun set on the Alhambra, it really is amazing.
Julie studying the guidebook at 8 Calle Tina
The Nazrid palaces from the Generalife gardens
The Lion Courtyard in the Nazrid palace
The Alhambra from San Nicholas mirador, with snow capped Sierra Nevadas
