Granada

Hello, again!

I'm gonna go out of order on my blogs here. I know, I know - that's crazy! But I really want to blog about my trip to Granada (yesterday), but I haven't blogged about last week yet. So I'm just go out of order, blog about Granada, and blog about last week after. Hope that's okay with you :)

So yesterday I went to Granada. Granada is east of Sevilla, about 3 hours on a train. It's a pretty big tourist spot because of the Alhambra, which is a giant palace that was built in the 1200's by the Nasirids, who were Muslim rulers of the Kingdom of Granada (back when Spain wasn't "Spain", but was just a collection of kingdoms). This kingdom was the last Muslim hold in Spain, until 1492 when the infamous Ferdinand and Isabel kicked the Muslims out. The Kingdom of Granada was the only Muslim stronghold in Spain for almost 200 years, so it's much more "Arabinized" than other areas of the peninsula.

I went to Granada with Kaley on Sunday. We took a train that left at 7AM (yikes!) and took about 3 years to get to Granada. We had a pleasant train ride, the car we were in was practically empty, I guess because of how early it was. We met some nice Spanish guys on the train who were impressed with our Spanish skills (yay!) and otherwise had an uneventful ride over.

Train station is pretty empty at 6:30A

Me on the train!

When we got to Granada, we went to a restaurant near the Alhambra to get some breakfast. It was a really quaint restaurant with a lot of character. We ended up going back to this place for lunch too because we liked it so much.

Our quaint breakfast place

VERY typical Spanish breakfast: piece of toast with olive oil on top, then a tomato puree-type thing, then topped with  York (a type of ham, similar to our cold cuts). SOO GOOD. Had orange juice and green tea too :)

After breakfast, we made our way into the Alhambra. The Alhambra includes the Nasirid Palaces (palaces of the Muslim rulers), watch towers, and lots of gardens. It reminded me a lot of the Alcázar in Sevilla that I've been to before (see previous blogs), just way cooler, and with a lot more Muslim influence.

Map of the Alhambra

We didn't get to see any type of change in season from summer to fall in Sevilla, but it was fall in Granada! I loved seeing the changing leaves. So pretty! I don't get to see that anymore since I live in Florida :)

Inside the palaces, the walls were decorated with these carvings that were absolutely amazing. There were shapes and words (in what looked like Arabic) carved into the surface of the walls. In some rooms, there were carvings all over the walls from floor to ceiling, and then the ceilings were carved too. Highly impressive. I was pretty amazed by it. I tried to capture it in these pictures.

Trying to capture all of the details on the walls.

Close-up carvings on walls.

I also really liked the shape and details of the doorways. You'll notice I take a lot of pictures of doorways and entrance ways.

Really cool ceiling in one room. Those white and blue things form the ceiling, and were almost like stalactites in how they hung down from the ceiling.

More details of the carvings.

Courtyard - pretty much impossible to take pictures of it without getting other tourists in the shot.

We went into this really cool room that had an amazing ceiling and details on the walls. I tried to capture it in the following shots:

The ceiling. It's hard to capture, but that's a 3D surface.

Walls and part of the ceiling (this photo was taken against the wall, at my height, pointing upwards at the ceiling)

Trying to show more detail.

The leaves looked like hearts to me, I liked them :)

Fallen leaves!

We found ourselves next on a watchtower, where we saw beautiful views of the city of Granada and the surrounding mountains (Sierra Nevada).

Me and the city

Snow on the mountains! Ugh, it was such a pretty view!

After wandering through the Alhambra for a few hours, we went back to that restaurant for lunch.

Outside of the restaurant

Tinto de verano to drink

Paella

Bacalao (cod fish) in tomato sauce with veggies

Closer look - so yummy!

Melon for dessert

The restaurant

The restaurant

The restaurant

The restaurant

After lunch we walked through the city for a while on the way to the train station. I didn't find Granada to be especially pretty, but that might have been partially because it was a Sunday so the city was essentially dead. Either way, it was fun to walk around in. It was also nice because sometimes we'd turn a corner and suddenly see a very pretty view of the mountains in between the buildings of the street we were on. It was cool! You don't get views like that in Sevilla.

I disagree, man.

The ride home was a little more interesting. We bought our return ticket on the way here, because we were told that we'd save 6 euros if we bought the ida y vuelta (going and coming back) trips together. So we bought them together, because, why not? Well - evidently we were supposed to do something before getting on the return train to save seats. We didn't know - I've been on trains two times before and I never had to reserve seats. So Kaley and I got on and sat down wherever. The car started to fill up, and a lady asked us to change seats because she had reserved it. We thought those seats were maybe just special reserved seats. So we moved to other seats. And then we were asked to move again because they were reserved too. Turns out that everyone had reserved seats. We ended up getting asked to change seats 4 times throughout the trip, as people got on at different stops on the way to Sevilla and we happened to be in their seats. The car was casi (almost) full, but thankfully we were able to get seats each time we changed (although we didn't get to sit near each other anymore). We made it home safely, though, so it was all okay.

I really enjoyed my time in Granada. The views were one of my favorite parts, I loved seeing the mountains and the gorgeous colors! I also loved the thought that I was walking through buildings that Arab rulers walked through. Or that I was in hallways that Ferdinand and Isabel used to occupy (since they lived here for a while after the conquest). The history there (and in Europe, in general) is sometimes amazing to me since I'm not used to such deep history in the US. Granada was definitely an amazing experience.