Once we arrived at Granada we had to find our hostel. We caught a bus which took us to the main street near our hostel, but then we had to walk up the alleys ourselves. It was all uphill and hundreds of stairs. Poor Celene had her luggage on wheels, so that was a nightmare for her. It was a tiring walk in the heat (again over 30 degrees there too). Once we found our hostel we were pleasantly surprised. It was beautiful. It had a nice sheltered outdoor area and a pool!! We unpacked and then went for a much deserved swim. Because we were staying quite high up, view from the hostel was amazing - the Alhambra (famous palace) was quite close too, you could see it from our hostel. Later on in the evening the hosts invited us up to the rooftop for a drink and to watch the sunset. That was amazing. Our hostel was located in the Albaicin.
The next day we decided to just hang out at the hostel. We got some drinks and just chilled out in the shade all day and went swimming again. That evening we went out to a Spanish restaurant for the infamous tapas (which are called pintxos here) and sangria. Yummy!
The next day we went to see the famous Alhambra palace. It was beautiful and meet my expectations that I had seem from the photos. This palace is so popular that you have to book tickets (or que outside all day in the hot sun). We bought tickets for a certain time, but didn't realise we had to enter a certain part of the palace (the Palacios Nazaries) at that time. We were late because we had just been wandering around the other areas, and the lady did not let us in. She showed us where to buy new tickets. We didn't want to have to do this, so pulled the English card - we had not been told we had to do that when we picked up our tickets, and our information booklet they gave us, was in Spanish, so we missed those important instructions. The man who served us sympathized with us, so just issued us new tickets, free of charge. Luckily! The views out from the Alhambra over Granada are amazing. We had a photo from the top tower, with our New Zealand flag with the view in the background.
That evening the hostel hosts took us all on a walking tour around Granada, we walked further up the hill and watched the sun set, then we walked around and back to our hostel. We passed this area where squatters lived. It was quite sad to see the conditions that they lived in. Then we passed a bar where we all had a beer and some olives as a snack. Then back to the hostel where they had cooked lasagne for us for dinner. We had that with red wine. Gracias!
The next day we caught the bus to Madrid.
No comments:
Post a Comment