Friday 30 July 2010

We finally did Alhambra






We have been visiting A's M&D on the Costa Del Sol for a number of years now. We usually stayed quite local in terms of the places we visited whilst we were there. So we've done Gibraltar, Marbella, Jerez, Ronda and many, many white hilltop villages ( the roads to which usually make me very sick ). A couple of years ago, we made the effort to go to Cordoba so that's another tick on my must see Andalucia.
A's M&D are in the process of emmigrating to Australia. This summer might be our last trip to Andalucia. So my other must see ?

First is Granada and the Alhambra. (Did you know Granada means pomegranate in Arabic ? I didn't ).

We flew to Madrid and picked up our hire car. They definitely have a better class of cars at Madrid compared to Malaga but I am not sure why we decided to start from Madrid when Malaga is closer to Granada.

We arrived in Granada and it was a scorching 41C. I nearly melted walking up to the Alhambra that first evening. We wanted to pick up our tickets but it turns out the ticket machines were closed. Luckily we spotted the Alhambra bus so we took this on the way down. The next morning was an early start. We have booked the 8.30 entrance to the palace. We took the sensible way up was on the bus, queued for the ticket machine, queue to go in and after a short walk, got to the castle. We were one of the first in so the palace was still very quiet. If you are going to visit Alhambra, I recommend you book your tickets and try to go early to avoid the crowd.

Have you been ? What do you think ? Was it what you thought it might be ? I like it, but it wasn't as great as I thought but then, I have seen the "originals" in Morocco. I have also been to smaller Alcazars in Spain which are similar. My favourite Moorish building is still the Mezquita in Cordoba...now that is truly something ( and different! )

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lovely photos, Ifa, and glad you had a memorable time!

Anonymous said...

Lovely photos, Ifa, and glad you had a memorable time!