Granada!

There were two things I really, really wanted to do on this holiday.  One was to visit Seville - in fact we wanted to stay in Seville but with this being Holy Week, you couldn't get accommodation for love or a reasonable amount of money.  The second was to visit the Alhambra Palace in Granada.  We'd been advised to book on-line before we went, which we tried to do, but they were totally sold out.  Apparently they do limit the number of visitors to the palace and tickets can be quite hard to get.  Again with it being Holy Week, the place was crawling with tourists.  Not to be deterred we decided to go to Granada anyway, and see if we could park near the palace and have a look around the grounds. But nope - the car park ticket said they were completely booked out and we had 10 minutes to leave the car park.  I did get this nice photo of the orange groves by the car park though.

Instead we headed down to the city centre to do some shopping.  Granada really is the city where the paths are paved with marble. It must be quite daunting in the winter if they get a bit of ice though - I almost went flying a couple of times - beautiful as the streets are, it can be a little dodgy trying to walk on them!

Marbled walkway

Pebble border

We found a market off the main shopping area and picked up some souveniers to bring back for friends and relatives.  Just after leaving the market my hand was grabbed by a gypsy who started telling my fortune in Spanish.  I did keep saying to her 'no Euro, no Euro', as Simon had all the holiday money on him and he'd wandered off, but it fell on deaf ears.  She gave me a sprig of Rosemary and told me that I had 2 children (no shit Sherlock, they'd just walked out of the market with me) and that I would have 2 grandchildren, and she kept saying 'Amore' and patting my stomach (she may actually have been Italian - it was kinda hard to tell). Then she gestured for me to give her some money, and I felt bad, and repeated my 'no Euro', so she snatched the Rosemary off me and wandered off in disgust.  Meanwhile, Simon and the girls were over the other side of the plaza killing themselves laughing, the sods.

The Market

 We found a nice open air cafe to eat in another plaza just around the corner from the market, and, surpise, surprise, the only veggie options were pizzas, yet again.  It was very nice though, and good to sit down and rest our feet after out little shopping expedition.

Granada is full of old, ornate church buildings; there seems to be one on every street corner.  They were magnificent.  We wandered up to the old part of the town to Plaza Nueva - which is where the old customs house is situation, and near the start of the Muslim quarter of the city.  Once again the whole plaza is paved with marble, although some of it looked like it had seen better days. 

Plaza Nueva

 

I picked up a book about the Alhambra Palace, and we've decided we will definitely return again to get to see it.  We have some friends who have a small apartment in Bellamaderia, which is within driving distance of Granada, so we just need to wait until flights to Seville are cheap again and we'll be going back.  Top tip though, it's a lot cheaper to fly to Seville than it is to Malaga, and they're only about 2 hours apart.