Our three days in Granada have been exactly what we hoped for. Our main reason for coming here was to visit the Alhambra, which is the main draw for most travelers. We left Bilbao around 8:30 in the morning and arrived in Granada about 5:30, so it was a full day of traversing the country from north to south. We actually drove through some snow just north of Madrid - who'd have thought????
The Alhambra is truly an amazing sight and should be right up there for anyone visiting Spain. It's a palace and fortress constructed during the 14th century by the Moorish rulers who ruled this part of Spain at that time. It takes several hours to see the whole place as you have to buy tickets for a timed admission to the palace and then you can walk around the rest of the grounds at your leisure for the rest of your visit. Since it was a Saturday, there were a fair number of people visiting it, but I guess that's to be expected as the weather gets warmer. As you walk through the palace, you really get a idea of what life must have been like there during that time. The audio guide throughout the tour is narrated by an actor playing the famous American author, Washington Irving, who lived at the Alahambra in 1829.
The next day we decided to walk to the old part of Granada and the neighborhoods of the Albaicin and Sacromonte. Even though we had our rental car, it was a beautiful day for a walk and it ended up only taking us about a half our to get there. So much to see! the views of the Alhambra from the Albaicin neighborhood are really amazing and walking through the hilly Sacromonte neighborhood is amazing. The houses are actually called cave dwellings there because they are built right into the hillside! Probably very practical for cooling purposes during their hot summers.
Well, tomorrow we leave for Sevilla, which is about a 3 hour drive west........stay tuned!
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