Travel Adventures by Mrs. Goofington: Granada

If you close your eyes and imagine Spain with its cobble stone streets, wrought iron balconies and impressive churches, you are probably picturing Granada. It is the quintessential Spain portrayed in movies and art. It is how you imagine all of Spain must look. The city is beautiful and steeped in culture. Its roads are a labyrinth of narrow streets and stone stair cases that look like something from a M.C. Escher print (It turns out M.C. Escher was quite fascinated by the Alhambra in Granada so I would not be surprised if some of the seemingly impossible staircases here helped to inspire his works).

One of many seemingly endless staircases

We arrived here by car. It was Sean's first time driving outside of the United States and he was very nervous. Getting out of Madrid was easy though as they city has an underground highway that circumvents most of the busy surface street traffic. Once on the freeway it was a 4 hour drive through a sprawling suburban area that surrounds Madrid leading into a barren dry landscape that looks like Central California on I-5. The highways are well marked with dozens of signs telling you how many lanes there are, what the road ahead looks like (straight, curved, exit on the left), high winds or possibility of snow. Along the highway are via servicos, service roads that allow you to exit to get gas, food and stay the night in an inn without venturing into any neighboring towns. It is a little bit like driving in Connecticut where they don't want tourists leaving the main road. We stopped for lunch at one of these roadside cafes right in the heart of Don Quixote land. Cervantes was from Madrid and outside of the city are low sloping hills with old windmills. Many of the small service areas take advantage of this fact and are named to reflect the connection.

As we got closer to Granada the landscape shifted into more rolling hills, more tunnels carved into large seemingly impassable rocks and acres upon acres of olive trees in neatly arranged lines as far as the eye could see. The freeways here are very sparsely driven. I imagine the availability of high speed trains and cheap puddle jumper flights makes traveling by car largely unnecessary and so the entire drive was leisurely until we reached the outskirts of Granada and we first came into traffic. Getting into the city was challenging as many of the main roads are closed during the day to all traffic but Taxi cabs and buses. So we had to take weird back streets that look pedestrian. We made a few wrong turns and had to go back to the beginning but eventually made it to the car park.

Out the window on the way to Granada

Many olive trees and not much else

Our apartment is a beautiful well furnished apartment on the top floor with a large enclosed balcony literally steps from one of the Alhambra's many entrances. Much like our apartment in Madrid, we are blessed to have a shop directly next to our apartment that carries freshly baked bread, pastries, coffee, juice, and ice cream. The shop keep is a friendly woman who is always excited to see us and has praised Sean many times on his Spanish. Granada is a hilly city. To get to the main center of the old town with most of the restaurants and shops we have to walk down a long steep street which means to get home we have to go back up. Getting up to the Alhambra itself is an even steeper climb. The whole city sits about 2400 feet in elevation with the Alhambra perched higher on a large hill. Despite the high elevation the weather is hot in the summer. It has been in the 90s our entire trip here with the day time heat creeping up to 99 (supposedly) but it never felt that hot. The evenings cool down fast as soon as the sun sets around 10pm. Oddly the sun here does not rise until almost 7am because of the timezones (Spain is further west than say Britain but is in the timezone one hour ahead).

The street we stayed on. Calle Gomerez. Our apartment is the second building on the right, white with all the windows, we had the top floor apartment.

The cool thing about the Alhambra is most of the grounds are open to the public. You can walk around within the walls, there is a small forest and a few free museums all without a ticket. Of course the three best areas of the Alhambra require a ticket (The main palaces, the gardens, and the Alcazaba). But we were able to pick up our tickets early so come Monday morning we will be at the gate waiting to go in. The actual palace itself, they assign each person a specific time and even a month in advance when I ordered the tickets the only time available for the main palace was 1pm.

View of the Alhambra from another hill in town

River that divides the two parts of old town. The Alhambra side is on the left.

Granada is snaked by a shallow river that cuts through the center of the city between the Alhambra and the other part of old town. We climbed a large hill on the other side of the river to get a great view of the Alhambra and the city. On a Sunday much of the city is closed but the walk up the hill was dotted with white canvas tents where artists sold their wares, paintings and hand made jewelry. At the viewpoint at the top, exhausted dogs slept under tiny trees and a flamenco band played for the crowd of tourists (most of whom likely took public transit to reach the top and did not brave the maze of stairs). Throughout the old town are large bronze plaques at key points highlighting different structures and architecture making it easy to design your own walking tour. It is almost surreal walking around a city where on one corner is the ruins of an ancient draw bridge left over from the Moors in 1050 and up a flight of steps is a church built by the Christians in the 1400s. Souvenir shops sell Spanish style fans and tickets to Flamenco dancing alongside hookahs and middle eastern wares.

Better picture of the river.

Sean in Flamenco pose

Tapas in Granada are free with the purchase of a drink. So a 2 euro beer comes with some kind of snack that varies widely between establishments. Our first night in Granada we went to a small well worn and crowded local favorite, Los Diamontes. (It has a more polished and larger version in the tourist part of town but with Ikea furniture it lacks some charm so we ventured out of our way to go to the original). There was standing room only at the bar and we ordered 2 beers and some raciones. Grilled shrimp and deep fried eggplant. The grilled shrimp was succulent and juicy. Our beers came with a complimentary tapa of deep fried anchovies.

Our meal at Los Diamontes

Yum!

Compare this to the second bar we went to another night where our 2 beers came with a bagel shaped piece of bread with a slice of pork and some kind of mystery cheese and tomato sauce. It was reminiscent of a hot pocket. By far the best free tapas so far was at Gamboa Taberna, dark corner location with a long mahogany bar and 4 tables. I ordered a sangria and it was almost like a long island ice tea. Red wine, lemon soda, gin, vermouth, brandy, and more lemon soda. This boozy concoction set us back 2.50 and came with a plate of rice with bits of chorizo and a slice of bread. Convinced this was the sort of tapas bar we had been dreaming of we went in for round two with beers and wine. This time we were given a plate with a seafood salad made with shrimp and imitation crab, two deep fried croquettes, crackers and olives. Yum! Now the tapas are suppose to get better with each drink so we went for round three and were presented with buttery sauteed potatoes and onions topped with shaved ham that was shaved right off the haunch in the bar. The potatoes and ham was served with a salty cheese that tasted much like fontina and of course more bread. All together our 6 drinks (and three generous plates of free food) came to 14 euro.

Awesome tapas bar

Our second free tapa at Gamboa

Whatever magic was missing from Madrid, we certainly found it here. The people here have been very friendly. At least three different shop keeps/ restauranteurs have complimented Sean on his Spanish. I am in love with the architecture and the Moorish influences.