Alhambra & Sierra Nevadas (Granada 3)

         We’re back in Madrid now, ready to catch out plane back to the U.S. tomorrow. I’ll do a brief recap of the past two days:

         Two days ago we went up for an early morning tour of Alhambra (for Spain: based on the time the sun rises and sets, Spain should be in a time zone that’s an hour earlier, so 8:30am is really more like 7:30am). I’ll just direct you to Wikipedia for the details on Alhambra because there’s too much interesting history to recount here. We were able to walk up the hill to Alhambra in about 20 minutes and waited a short while to be part of the first wave of visitors allowed into the first palace at 8:30am. Over the next 3.5 hours, we wandered through an incredible complex of ornately decorated palaces and beautiful gardens, some of which you can see below.

         We were tired from the morning, so walked back into Granada and had churros and chocolate at Café Futbol, an old institution there. After a long nap and a delicious home-cooked Filipino meal at their apartment, we went over to the house of our friend’s sister, on the edge of town and overlooking the Sierra Nevada mountains. We hung out there to watch the World Cup final and to have another home-cooked dinner (which we didn’t start eating until 10:40pm).

         The next day, we had a long, leisurely morning, and then went off for a drive and a picnic in the Sierra Nevada mountains, winding through some small towns and eventually stopping to eat just past Capileira.

         This morning, we took a 4.5 hour train ride back up to Madrid. After lunch and a siesta, we went back to the Prado, this time managing to get in for the last bit of the day. Below are some pictures from the past few days.

         This concludes our blog posts for the foreseeable future. 

more graffiti as we began our walk up to Alhambra

The first gate we entered: note that the Christians put a Virgin Mary in that little alcove above the door.

View of the military part of Alhambra with Albayzin in the background

The palaces were full of ornate designs

water was central to the whole complex

some of the incredible details on all the walls

all of the materials were highly decorated

Apparently some 6,000 people go through Alhambra each day. We were lucky to go early (and on a Sunday) so it actually wasn't so bad.

Another famous courtyard from one of the palaces

all the views looked out over the rest of Granada

an interior garden

After the palaces, we walked through a huge complex of gardens

Some of these were actually vegetable gardens, too

We followed the gardens over to the summer palace

When the Christians conquered Granada they left most of Alhambra but tore down one building to make way for this giant palace

Inside was this huge atrium

Another view of Albayzin, this time from one of the military towers

an overview of the military installation

Midway through our drive into the Sierra Nevada mountains the next day. Lots of small, winding roads.

Our seemingly secluded picnic spot was actually right next to a herd of goats 

watching the goats

we drove through several tiny towns on the way

all the buildings were white with flat roofs and these distinctive chimneys

You can see two small towns (on the right and in the center) and then snow-capped peaks (on the left)

They took us to this cool lookout where big boulders jutted out over the edge of a big drop-off