(written 11/4/06 12:42 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
Feeling much better after a good night's sleep, we headed off to find where the locals ate breakfast. We found a great buzzing little café near the tourist office where we had more fresh zumo (juice), coffees and a great feed.
The main reason we had wanted to come to Granada was the
Alhambra. Dating from the Islamic times, this truly impressive piece of architecture sits atop the hill overlooking the city.
A short walk to the bus stop later, a crazy woman bus driver shot us up the hill to the entrance at surely-not-legal speeds as we clung on with the rest of the passengers.
We decided that purchasing the audioguides was a good way to go, and this turned out to be a great way to get an understanding of what we were seeing as we spent several hours wandering around the site. The main palace itself, Palacios Nazaries is so popular they have instigated set entry times, so we looked at much of the rest of the site while we waited for our slot. There we great views down across the city, where you could see on one side the older islamic-style white buildings and on the other sides newer more varied architecture.
The palace itself was lushiously appointed, but despite the staggered entry times it was still hard to get a feel for the place with huge bus-loads of all nationalities hogging all available space and blocking photo opportunites. Oh well, we found enough other places to escape them and enjoyed the look around.
After that we walked down the hill, where we looked at some tea houses before deciding on a lunch of felafel. This was nice and filling as we ate in the Plaza Neuva sitting with some locals. One even had some puppies presumably for sale which we were both admittedly rather taken by, but we somehow resisted their charms and walked on.
We popped into the post office in town to send some things, before a naughty snack at the Häagen Das ice cream place. After this, we had a lazy siesta in the room for the afternoon to do some blogging. Liz got stuck into this while I went out and found a place for a haircut and when I came back she was still going! Seems she gets as carried away as I do once we get started.
Eventually hungry (still can't quite get the hang of such late dinners) we headed out and found a great Japanese restaurant where we had a nice variety of things, quite a change from Spanish fare. An American student there said hello and helped us work out what we had ordered, not that we could eat it all anyway as we were rather full after foolishly having some tapas first.
Back to our little room to rest for the night.