September 1, Granada

We visited the Alhambra today. It is an ancient Moorish palace and ruins that the Christians then took over and added some of their own buildings to. There is a section that the ticket can get people into at any time, but there are specific times on the tickets that allow people into the Islamic palace because it is so popular. Our time for palace entrance was 9 am, but because we the machine wouldn’t give us our tickets the day before, we had to get there about 8 am when it opened to make sure to get our tickets in time.

There wasn’t much of a line that early so it wasn’t a problem getting the tickets we bought a couple months ago and head in. It was a twenty minute walk to the restricted area to the restricted area, so we headed slowly in that direction enjoying the sights along the way such as old ruins and the old bath houses.

In different areas there were great views of the white buildings and the city of Granada and of other parts of the Alhambra. All of the 9 o clock tickets were let in to the first room leading that was part of the palace and cameras were flashing everywhere. It wasn’t that large of a room, but the decorations and details were very detailed and intricate. They couldn’t do any pictures of people so they had to find different ways of doing art along with the beautiful Arabic writing on the walls in some areas writing out poems.

There was a lot of blue paint and tiling in very pretty designs all over the walls along with similar designs carved into the walls completely covering the high walls up to the differently decorated ceilings. There were also many many aches, open areas for sunlight, and fantastic views of nature and the city below. I can definitely see why it is so popular and why so many people visit all the time.

We had an individual audio tour guide with someone reading what Washington Irving had written about the rooms and their purposes when he was there. It was all very informative and interesting and I really enjoyed the entire place. There were many different types of rooms decorated in different ways and quite a few courtyards with small pools or gardens in them.

Mom and I split up from Dad to go at our own pace while Dad listened to all of the information stations, took a ton of pictures, and probably offered to take the pictures of everyone taking a picture so they could have a picture of everyone in the group including the person with the camera. The extra time at the end let us enjoy the extensive gardens and views outside the restricted area.

When Dad finally emerged we headed over to Charles V’s palace. I expected a lot more. It was a circle with two floors and a large open courtyard in the middle. It seemed very plain to me. That could also be because we couldn’t get into the rooms because we didn’t want to pay the extra and take the extra time to go in the separate museums there.

From there we headed to the summer palace. It had a lot more of the same Islamic architectures and decorations with expansive gardens with many different plants, trees, flower, fountains and different ways of walking around in it in order to get there. The entire walk there looked out over a great view of the rest of the Alhambra and while it was smaller was still very pretty.

Lunch led us to Olivers, a tapas bar back in the main restaurant area and a little shopping along the narrow pedestrian streets that had the little shops filled on either side completely filled and flowing out into the street leaving the walls completely filled with no brick or stone to be seen. Mom and I walked by the large church in Granada, which was much larger and had more renaissance decorations and feel to it and had very detailed and large façades on the outside with statues of mother Mary and other famous religious figures along with stained glass windows.

The three of us finally made it up to Plaza Nueva after that, less impressive than I was expecting, and then stopped for an order of churros and chocolate since that is a traditional snack here that we have seen and wanted to try but haven’t had the chance to yet

We bussed back to the hotel, now knowing how to do it with the kinds of cards the use there, and took our siesta. After Mom and I walked some through the Moorish quarter up to the view we had been to before, then met Dad at a Moroccan restaurant for dinner.

That was the end of our say so we went back to the hotel, packed most of our stuff up, talked to Daniel on skype, and then went to bed.