Granada, Spain

3^rd - 4^th May

I never really wrote anything for Granada before we'd moved on so far that I feel a little silly writing this 2 weeks later. So I'll be brief and just summarise that Granada is on my now rather lengthy list of most liveable cities. The city is nestled against the Sierra Nevada mountains with much of the town built up along the foothills. Perched at the top of a hillside is the Alhambra – a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is the biggest draw for tourists.

We were warned at our campsite to book tickets in advance as the queues could be very long and it was even unlikely that you'd get in on the same day. Not to mention that we'd turned up on a bank holiday weekend, so the crowds were especially thick. Unfortunately we found all of this out around 9:30am on the morning we were planning to go and the man at reception gave a little chuckle when we asked about going that day.

Books in hand to keep us preoccupied in the lengthy queues, we arrived around 10:30am and wandered around trying to figure out where to buy tickets. A huge queue snaked from the main ticket building and looked like at least a 2 hour wait, but then I noticed another obscure sign pointing the opposite direction for reservations. We followed a maze of barricades to the back of a building that wasn't visible from the street and stumbled upon a row of 4 ticket machines with 2-3 people queueing. Surely this wasn't right, but we hopped in line and walked up to the machines, purchased 2 tickets and out they popped, complete with a reservation to see the most beautiful part of the palace at 18:00. The rest of the grounds were open to browse throughout the day. Feeling quite proud of ourselves, we walked past the hundreds of people still waiting in the other queues, vowing to share our secret to any fellow Kiwis or Americans in the crowd.

The sun beat down on us but the Alhambra grounds are so vast that it literally took us until 4pm to explore them. Gardens, a massive mud bricked fortress and the views overlooking Granada are definitely worth fighting through the crowds, and the Islamic/Spanish architecture in the main palace certainly sums up why the site is now so heavily protected. I'll let our photos tell you the rest of the story, but Granada is definitely worth a long weekend break if you haven't visited this intriguing town.

Granada Photo Album