Before Granada, we stopped in Seville, Cordoba and Jaen.
Granada was after Seville the city we were most impressed by. It welcomed us with good weather, a convenient hotel and an unforgettable Jamon Iberico (which now I understand is nowhere near the Jamon Serrano and it’s ten times nicer) and two glasses of Rioja. The bar where we stopped at was actually one of the oldest in Granada with a very familiar staff. The pictures above speak for themselves.
That night we ended up in a very small bar in a hidden street where we got small beers for 1.50€ and tapas accompanying them for free. There we met the owner, a Belgian guy in his thirties who came to Granada on holiday seven year ago and he never left. He was now looking for a new experience maybe India, maybe Thailand.
We reached the Alhambra several times. When you read book in advance for your tickets they really mean it. Booked our flights and accommodation months in advance but left this to the last minute ending up in booking a night visit of the Generalife (one of the buildings of the Alhambra complex) only. The night visit was nice mainly because it forces you to use/focus on other senses than the sight, you walk in a garden of roses and oranges, under the stars, all very nice. On the other hand the visit is quite short, there’s not much to visit and little to see because of the dark, so maybe a bit too pricy for what it offers in the end. The same morning on the queue to the ticket office we met an Italian couple, who offered to sell us their tickets to the morning visit to the palaces because their travel agent had made a mistake booking them for the following day, after their return home. Yuhuu!
Please note that there’s something to see all around the Alhambra free of charge, you pay to enter the palaces mainly, but you can still walk around them and enjoy the fresh air and the landscape.
Also worth visiting in Granada is the Supramonte borough, where the gipsies live and the most famous flamenco bars are. This is where you can appreciate the city bests landscape. We visited the Museo of the gipsy women, free of charge, in a cave house where a guy told us a lot about their history, traditions etc. I felt like I knew loats about it after watching “My fat gipsy wedding” on Channel 4.
Granada sound so far like the kind of perfect city should we wish to relocate one day. It’s half an hour from the mountains, very convenient for Matteo to ski, and not very far to the beach for me…
But also very cold in winters and very hot in summers and little jobs. Maybe one day…
We left Granada and headed towards Malaga.
