March 16
Good morning, everyone. Lynn here. It’s Friday morning and Peter is still asleep, so I thought I’d catch up on the blog.
Wednesday (3/14)
For the first time on this adventure, we finally had a dry day. It was cloudy but it didn’t rain so we were thrilled. We were still in Granada and had seen all there really is to see the day before, so we took it as a rest day. Peter’s ankles were killing him from all the uphill walking he had done the 2 previous days and I was just tired, so we decided to stay close to home. I ventured out in the afternoon to find a place to print our vouchers for Thursday’s trip to the Alhambra. Long story short…. I found an internet cafe advertised online that was open during siesta (2-5pm) and it was just on the other side of the Cathedral, about a 20-minute walk. So, off I went. Forty-five minutes later I discovered that the internet cafe closed down and the address was now a meat market. In the meantime, in order to find the address, I needed to turn on the GPS on my phone which put me over my 100mg of data for the month. On the international plan we each get 100mg/month; not a whole lot but we’ve been careful about when we use data on our phones. In the meantime, our host had answered the message I sent out earlier telling me about a place just a few minutes from the house that would print. Of course, that wouldn’t be open again until 5pm so I went back home.
The evening was spent quietly going first to the print place than out to dinner. As usual we played some Rummikub and headed to bed as we had an early morning on Thursday.
Thursday (3/15)
Peter woke up with a slight case of laryngitis and some congestion. He said he didn’t feel bad, but he sounded terrible. After packing up the car and programming the GPS we set off for the Alhambra which is the main reason anyone goes to Granada. Our “no rain” day streak ended at one as it was raining pretty hard when we left. It was only a 15–20-minute drive and the GPS said we’d arrive around 7:30 so we figured we were good to go. We pulled into the parking lot at 8:20, one hour and 10 minutes after we left the flat. This experience made trying to find our flat in Madrid a piece of cake. The GPS routed us through the town instead of on the highway and we ran into several obstacles along the way (garbage truck that wasn’t moving; stalled car; police rerouting traffic) that prevented us from taking the roads the GPS wanted us to take. Of course, we had no way of explaining to the GPS why we weren’t turning where she wanted us to turn so, she kept driving us in circles. We finally turned off the car GPS and tried using our phone instead. That got us out of the continuous loop but, what we didn’t realize at first was that it was set for “walking” instead of “driving.” Peter finally noticed and changed the setting but by this time we had lost more time driving on the small streets, in the dark and in the rain. It wasn’t the crazy narrow streets that bothered me, but I was getting pretty frantic as time was passing and we had no idea how to get to the Palace. The phone GPS finally got us on the highway but by this time it was after 8am which was the time our tour was supposed to start. Once on the highway it only took about 10 minutes to get to the parking lot and up to our meeting point. Of course, the tour was long gone. If the GPS had routed us on the highway, we would have gotten there with about 20-25 minutes to spare.
Once at the meeting point Peter called the tour company and talked with a woman who told us to go to the Wine Gate. She was going to call our tour guide (Anna) and tell her to pick us up there. After about 40 minutes of waiting and 2 phone calls to the agency, the woman told us that she wasn’t able to reach Anna and gave us some suggestions about the free places we could visit. We saw the Palace of Charles V and the small chapel. About 10am when we were talking about leaving, the tour agency called back. They had reached Anna and she was going to meet us at the Wine Gate, which is where the tour takes a short bathroom break.
So, the story has a happy ending, sort of. We missed the first half of the tour, which unfortunately included the Plaza de Nazaríes, which is the Royal Complex and the highlight of the tour. Being the most popular, that part of the tour is timed so that the groups are staggered. Our time was 8:30, which is why Anna didn’t answer her phone when the agency tried to contact her. Here is a google page with pictures of that part of the palace. Nazaries
It was very disappointing but at least we got to salvage something of the tour. We saw the Alcazaba or Citadel, which is the oldest part of the complex. There are ruins of the homes and baths where the 2000 non-royal inhabitants of the Alhambra lived.
There were great views of the city but because of the clouds and rain they weren’t as impressive as they would have been if it had been a nicer day.
Then we visited the Generalife which is the garden area. It’s also the location of the oldest palace which the Sultan used as his summer palace. Anna told us that it was several degrees cooler (44C instead of 47C) so the Sultan used it on the hottest days. Our thought was why walk all that way in 116F heat to sit someplace that’s still 111F, but we guess it made sense to the Sultan.
The tour ended at noon so headed back to our car for the drive to Malaga. It is an understatement to say that the morning was quite stressful. It took several hours for the knot in my stomach to go away and when it did, I just felt drained. Peter had also been very frustrated that there wasn’t anything more he could do to help me during our quest for the Palace. But we decided to put it behind us and hope for better things at the beach.
It was a piece of cake to find the highway again and we were off to Malaga. We decided to take the coast road, which is only about 15 minutes longer than the non-coast road, thinking that it would be a prettier drive. It probably would have been, but the rain was pretty bad most of the trip and even when it wasn’t raining it was very cloudy and foggy. We didn’t realize there were so many mountains in this part of Spain; we went in and out of them most of the way down.
After less than 2 hours we arrived in sunshine. After meeting our host at our cute 1BR flat we headed right out to explore. Given that the sun was shining, and we had no idea what would happen today, we wanted to get our sightseeing done in the nice weather. It was chilly but sunny, so we walked down the beach promenade to the city center. Sandra (our host) told us it was a 25–30-minute walk but it actually took closer to an hour as we walk pretty slowly.
We took the audio tour of the Cathedral and the adjacent palace, the latter of which is really just a small art museum. The Cathedral was beautiful but as we’ve said before, they’re all starting to look alike. Like the Granada Cathedral, this one was also done in Baroque style, which I like a little better than Gothic. I’m starting to reach my saturation point of churches, palaces and museums so this should be it until we reach Seville next week.
After that we settled into the square for a light dinner then took a cab home. By that time, we had walked over 20,000 steps (10 miles) during the day, so we treated ourselves to a fast drive home.
It’s actually now 4pm (on Friday) and it’s taken me all day to write this much. Not literally, of course, but shortly after I started Peter woke up, so we had breakfast and then went out to stroll the beach. We stopped for some light refreshments in one of the beach cafes then walked to the main street where we could get a bus to take us to the city center. It was so nice out (cool but sunny) that we didn’t want to waste a “dry” day. Along our route we walked through a large, beautiful park that had a lake and some interesting animals. In addition to the swans (both white and black) we saw a couple of emus and a kangaroo. Not sure what the deal is with the Australian animals, but it was interesting.
Once back in the city center we strolled along the streets until it was time for lunch. I’ve had a taste for good pasta but haven’t had much luck finding anything until today. In the same square we had dinner last night we found an Italian restaurant and the pasta was delicious. What we liked the most was the modest portion size, enough to feel full without gorging ourselves. But afterward to needed to walk again so we strolled through a large park on the north side of the city center. It was very nice but after a short while the clouds started rolling in. We really thought we’d have not just a sunny day but a dry one as well. No such luck. It started raining fairly hard and since I’d left the umbrellas home, we got pretty wet. Just what we needed with Peter being sick. So, we headed back to the cab line for the 10-minute ride home. Of course, by the time we got here the sun was out again, but we decided to rest for the remainder of the afternoon. I actually napped a little while Peter read.
Tonight, we’re going to have dinner at one of the beach side cafes across the street and tomorrow we head out again. We’re going to stop in Gibraltar on our way to Rota, Spain. We planned to spend a couple of nights at the Navy Base but there are no rooms available, so we’ll stay in town instead.
Guess that’s all for now. We’ll keep you posted. Love from us.