We are slackers. We haven’t written a blog since New Year’s. Sorry.

We didn’t do very much the weekend before last. A short – 8 mile – death march to the beach and back, watching American football and generally being lazy. Last weekend we made up for it. We had a three-day weekend because my company was closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day so we decided to take a road trip to Granada.

Saturday morning we rented a car, a wonderful little Audi A1, with a manual transmission. I love driving a stick shift when I get the opportunity. It is a five-hour drive from Valencia to Granada, almost all of it on four-lane highways. The landscape is very hardscrabble with lots of mesas. It is ruggedly beautiful and reminded me of the southwest of the US. Granada in in a valley that is surrounded by hills and mountains, including that still had snow on it.

We booked the Aurea Catedral hotel right in the city center. Not surprisingly it was literally across the street from the very massive and very beautiful cathedral. Unlike Brussels where the parking lot was SCARY, this one was cool because it had an elevator for the car. We had this tiny A1, and still we took virtually the entire width of the elevator and the parking spot

.

    The city is filled with little streets and alleys and many many stairs.

Granada is famous for the Alhambra Palace and we arranged for a tour of it on Sunday, so upon arriving on Saturday afternoon, we had the rest of the day to wander the city. Being us, we decided the only reasonable thing to do was find a large hill and climb up it. There are several popular miradores (in English we would say overlooks or lookout points), so we picked one called Mirador de San Cristóbal and started climbing. It was only 1.1km (.68miles), but it took about 20 minutes to get there. There is a church or monastery at the top, although it may be abandoned. It is also built right into the old city wall, which makes sense, because it is one of the highest points in the city. Sue took a bunch of photos and after a little while we headed back to the hotel. We ate that night a place called La Cuchara de Carmela. We were a little concerned when we arrived and there was only one other table seated, but by the time we left, most of the tables were full. I guess 9 p.m. is too early to eat there. The food was OK, but nothing special.

             Some photos from the mirador

Sunday morning, we walked to a barrio called Sacromonte. It is on the eastern side of the city and sits mostly in a ravine. It is the home of the city’s gypsy population and flamenco dancing. It was very beautiful and bordered on a national park. We headed back into town and sat down in a little café near the river, in the shadow of the Alhambra and had a drink.

We had a 3 p.m. tour of the Alhambra, so we headed uphill, very uphill to meet our guide, Gosia, who was fabulous and we highly recommend her. She loves to learn and is very knowledgeable about history and architecture. Plus, annoyingly, she speaks five languages. The palace was started in 1238 by Emir Muhammad I Ibn al-Ahmar, when Granada was ruled by the Moors. It includes three separate palaces that are linked together along with the remains of quarters for the workmen and soldiers. In 1492, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand conquered the city and unified all of Spain. They also funded Christopher Columbus’ expeditions to India (which he never got to, but died convinced he did) and kicked the Jews out of Spain from one of the rooms we visited. (I thought it would be funny to take a picture of one of us being shoved out of the palace, but we rethought that little idea.) The Muslims were allowed to stay, but were heavily taxed. One of the many interesting things our guide pointed out was that the Moors preferred bubbling fountains, which are quiet and unassuming, while the Spanish preferred large noisy cascading fountains. Attached to the palace are a series of gardens and the sultan’s private retreat, which were very pretty and, despite it being January, had many flowers still in bloom.

After the tour, we headed back into town (it always seemed so far up, but not that far down) and stopped a nice cocktail bar called Tres Onzas (3 ounces). It was a very cool hip little bar and we saw a card from Jerry Thomas, the  speakeasy that we visited in Roma. After a couple of drinks we went back to the hotel to cool our heels until dinner time – 9 p.m. Sunday night we had Moroccan food at a place called Riad Elvira, the food was good, not great, but it was fun to Moroccan food again. I was reminded that the only vegetables they seem to eat in Morocco are carrots, onions and zucchini. Sigh)

Monday we went to visit the cathedral (long walk across the street) and then played a very short game of dead person bingo by visiting the tombs of Queen Isabella, King Ferdinand, Queen Juana (Juana the Mad) and King Philip I (Philip the Handsome), which are housed in a smaller church next door called the Royal Chapel. The cathedral is amazing. We were not allowed to take photos in the Royal Chapel, but you could walk down a few steps an look into the crypt see the coffins.

Sue found another garden to visit that said it had great views.  I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly because I should have known that good views meant climbing up a hill. We trudged back up the hill past the Alhambra and then kept going up (boy do my calves hurt!), and found a garden called Carmen de los Mártires. It was lovely and peaceful, and we wandered around for an hour or so, just soaking up the sunshine and enjoying the views.

We headed next to a place called Café Futbol, which claims to be the oldest coffee shop in Granada. It was 101 years old, but I have no way to validate whether it is oldest or not. We grabbed a cup of coffee and rested our weary legs (or at least my weary legs) and then headed off for more wandering.

On the way back, a very confused-looking Korean couple asked us for directions to a square. The husband spoke a tiny bit of English and the wife none at all. We sent them off and a few blocks later caught up with them again. They were still lost. We decided just to take them to their destination, which turned out not to be where they wanted to go. After several attempts, I figured out that they were trying to get to the Carrefour grocery store, which was where we were headed. Accents are tough! We walked them there and they asked us to wait so we could get pictures together. They also bought us kiwis and tomatoes as a gift and it finally occurred to us to use Google translate. Duh! Anyway, it never hurts to extend a courtesy. We know what it’s like not to be able to even read the signs in a foreign city. 안녕하세요 유정민님. 나는 당신이 이것을 읽고 있기를 바랍니다

For dinner that night we went around the corner from our hotel to a place called Los Manueles, that Gosia recommended. Once again, dinner was at 9 p.m. but this time the place was packed. The food here was much better than our previous two dinners and we had a really pleasant evening.

Tuesday morning, we got up three hours before the crack of dawn – OK, we got up at about 8:30, had a quick breakfast in the hotel, rode the car elevator up and drove back to Valencia in time to start work right around 3 p.m.

And just a few more photos of a really wonderful city.