Endings, and beginnings

OK, so it's the last day of my holiday. I've spent it doing pretty much what I did yesterday, only more so. And what's that, you ask? Nothing, nada, zip. Other than wandering round, stopping in the occasional cafe or bar and taking photos that is.

I posted about my reflections on the holiday yesterday so I won't do that again. Suffice to say, I've had a great time and I would definitely come back to Spain. Next time I think I'll try somewhere out of the cities, maybe base myself in one or two places and do a bit more chilling and a bit less sightseeing.

But it's been really good fun. I've survived my first solo adventure and, as I said yesterday, I'm feeling mighty pleased with myself. Now just the journey home to go - oh, and another evening in Granada. Although I think it will be a genuinely early night for me this evening - I need to get back in the swing of getting up early, starting tomorrow to catch the 9 am bus from Granada to Malaga.

And I know I did reflections yesterday, but I couldn't resist this picture for today's post - what do you think? Should I rush back and buy one for work??

Busy doing nothing

So busy, in fact, that I had to come back to the hotel for a siesta to recover!

Granada is a strange city - everything is very close together and it seems to try to hide all its important buildings. There's nowhere really in the city itself that you can get a feeling of what there is here. Perhaps I've just become too used to the wide open streets of Madrid and Seville, but in Granada you struggle to be a snap happy tourist (apart from the Alhambra of course, which anyone looking through my Flickr page will know I didn't hold myself back at photograph-wise!). Or at least a snap-happy tourist with photos that someone else might conceivably want to look at.

Apart from Albaicin that is - the higgledy piggledy old town of Granada. Clinging to the hillside opposite the Alhambra, the Albaicin is a maze of whitewashed houses thrown together as if they'd been dropped from a great height and wherever they fell was where they were left. The streets really are a maze. My Lonely Planet guidebook very sensibly says, the best route to take through the Albaicin is whichever one you take. As I tried to explain to an American family today - but I don't think they were convinced, at least Mom wasn't. Dad strode off reassured that his own personal brand of built in satellite navigation would work wonders - and promptly lead them off the wrong way. I would have stopped them, but I knew that following their noses would give them some wonderful discoveries, even if it wasn't actually what they'd been looking for.

You'd think, being opposite the mighty Alhambra, the area would be dominated by it. And while there are some fantastic glimpses you catch between buildings (and of course the spectacular vista from the St Nicholas mirador), for most of the time the buildings are too close together and you're too distracted by the alleyways and houses to even notice. It certainly holds its own and is a fantastic place to wander round - although very hot - and blinding because of the whitewash, even with sunglasses on.

So now, siesta over, I'm off out to try one of Granada's other specialities - the tea room. Not as in crisp white tableclothes, scones and butter - no these are Turkish tearooms, or teterias.

It's all in the name of the accurate travelogue you understand, I don't enjoy these treats, trials!

PS If you want to read a fabulous story based in Granada, try Victoria Hislop's The Return. It's one of the things that prompted me to book this holiday!

Tales from the Alhambra

And a prize to the first person to spot the literary allusion! (The prize, of course, being the continued joy of reading Crafty Manoeuvres and that warm fuzzy feeling of success)

And as for the Alhambra, all I can say is Wow, I mean, wow! What an amazing place. Sadly most of the world seems to know that so it is incredibly busy, but I must admit Lonely Planet came up trumps with the recommendation of booking either the earliest or the latest tour of the day for a quieter visit. Since I was travelling on the train this morning (of which more later), it was the last slot of the day I went for and I wasn't disappointed. By dawdling, I actually managed to get some photographs without people in them, and I certainly go to enjoy the Palace in something coming close to tranquility. If you're lucky enough to visit any time, I really would recommend booking ahead and following LP's advice of first or last slot of the day.

The downside of an afternoon ticket was that I was wandering round the gardens for a couple of hours in the scorching sun, but it was still worth it for the beauty of the Palacios Nazaries without too many other people.

And in any case, it's much cooler here in Granada than in Seville - a chilly 37 degrees! All I can say is, it's a good job I've been here long enough to start acclimatising for today's ordeal.

To be honest, otherwise I'm not really sure about Granada - it's possibly the most touristy place so far. And with Cordoba in the mix, that's saying something. It could be that all I've seen are the tourist traps so far - let's see what tomorrow brings. Put it this way, you certainly know you're on the right route for the Alhambra from the quality (not!) of the shops en route.

My other tip for anyone visiting is - don't be proud, take the bus up to the Alhambra - particularly if you're here in the summer. It's quite a trek in the heat!!

So other than Alhambra and checking into my hotel - very central and on what looks like one of the main Paseos for the locals, Ice cream central! - the rest of my day was spent travelling. 3 hours from Seville on a Media Distance train, with only limited airconditioning. Not a pleasant experience! And as for the countryside, it was pretty much dry dusty olive groves the whole way until we got close to Granada, and then the Sierra Nevada hove into view and it was all worth it.

Now, if I can just work out how to get to Malaga airport on Wednesday...