(written 11/4/06 12:27 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
After another wet night, we decided to make use of the campground's laundry to wash all our clothes. After this and making some tea, we packed our sopping wet tent up into bags rather than their proper places - we would have to find some way to dry it later.
The next target was further East, so we set off along the fastest roads we could find in the right direction. This meant using the A-380 to cross between two motorways, which turned out to be a glorious little road. Lined with fields, it was a nice piece of almost-empty countryside with little other traffic to annoy us. After that we hit the A-92 which was much bigger and took us all the way to
Granada.
Getting into this city turned out to be one of the least enjoyable experiences - very heavy traffic on the way in (if you intend to drive much in cities here, use a scooter. Forget cars) and then I followed a sign the wrong way which ended up in me driving along a bus and taxi only lane for about three kilometres with a police car right on our tail. Turns out they must make allowances for tourists, so we looped around again and found a more useful road.
After all the stress, we parked underground (still wary with the car) on a street lined with shops and set off wandering attempting to find either the tourist office or a cheap enough hotel - no camping after two nights in the rain for us, although it would have meant not having to drive in. There's always a trade-off in cities, and it's often very hard to decide.
Walking for far too long with little food in our stomachs we collapsed at a smoke-filled café where I felt quite sick. I asked the guy where to find the tourist office, and he pointed up back the way we had been. So, we trudged back and noted a tiny sign pointing off to the next square we had missed before. Once we had located it, the lady in there was extremely helpful, and provided us with a huge list of pensions.
Picking a direction with a few luckily not far from where we were, we headed there. One of them,
Hostal Los Arrayanes turned out to meet our desires of price and also have parking available. We quickly were very happy to drop our things, move our car to their parking (in the basement of a bigger hotel, not far away), and be done with the matter of getting into the city. Not a fun afternoon.
We wandered towards the centre later and found a cheapy dinner not really to our liking, but for some reason couldn't find the restaurant strip in town so just settled for it.
We were both sick and run down so headed back to bed early.