Spain! Granada, besides the Alhambra.

Day 8, Continued: Málaga to Granada

Turns out that bus travel in Spain is wayyyy cheaper than train travel.  The (2 hr) bus to Granada ran us about 10 euros, whereas my (high speed) train ticket (later on) was closer to 100 euros.

view out the window of the bus from Málaga to Granada

So, we took the 2 hr bus to Granada, then a cab up the windy and labyrinthian streets and hills to our hotel (Carmen Aljibe del Albayzin) in the Albayzin district.   The Albayzin district is "old Granada", sprawling around and up the hills of the city and very narrow and confusing ways, probably on purpose originally, to foil attacks.  It's hugged on one side by a hill with the city wall remnants and a cloister; on the other side, by a mountain range, the Sierra Nevadas.

Our hotel was a very fancy place, full of pretty tile. The courtyard had a fountain and there was also a rooftop terrace, with a nice view of the Alhambra.

I like the attention to detail in the decoration. Even the ceiling is decorated.:

Entry way to our hotel, looking back at the front door

Something I noticed after the Alhambra that the tile in our hotel here on the floor of the courtyard is ( a good approximation to) in a part of the Alhambra. 

courtyard of the hotel; I feel like this is the clear "should go in a brochure" shot. 

A better picture of part of the decor by the front door: 

in the entryway to 

The hotel was very nice to look at, and furnishings-wise. The roof-top terrace was nice to go out on while it was sunny. I think it was 16-18C that first day. 

On the roof:

the rooftop terrace of our hotel

view of the rooftop terrace and behind, up to the city wall

On the terrace was a prime example of the cute kind of pottery we saw all over. White with aqua and darker blue floral designs painted atop: 

nice pottery with a succulent inside

None of us knew what the Alhambra was supposed to look like from the outside. Based on the map, we figured out where it was.

Our first view of the Alhambra, from the roof-top terrace:

Taking advantage of the sunny day, we went on a walk, heading in a round-about way(*) towards "little Morrocco", via the viewpoint in front of the church of St. Nicholas, which is supposed to be the best view of the Alhambra in the city.

(* I think there is no other way to walk around the Albayzin district outside of round-about, based on the general windy-ness of the streets)

Getting to the St. Nicholas lookout, my first non-hotel-roof view of the Alhambra (complete with weird white wall I was standing by):

the mountains in back are the Sierra Nevadas

When it was clear that the actual proper look-out area was actually sort of behind, to the right, and up 2 meters, I went up there and took a few pictures:

postcard-esque shot of the Alhambra, #1

postcard-esque shot of the Alhambra, #2

Continuing on our walk vaguely dinner-wards, we saw a lot of beautiful little nooks and crannies of Granada. The base color of everything was white, with accents given by painted brick, or doors, or the stones on the ground set in concrete into pretty patterns:

I did say that there would be a lot of pictures of the ground

Here's the narrow street around the corner from St. Nicholas' square:

I overheard a guy talking, saying that "Carmen" is the (local) word for "house", e.g.:

(or, the name of our hotel, Carmen Aljibe del Albayzin). 


Despite all the quaint-ness, things were clearly not all calm in paradise. Many walled houses and buildings had glass shards stuck to the tops of the walls to discourage people from climbing over. I didn't really notice this actively until we came across one where instead of just jagged shards, they had used almost-entire bottles:

Gate with jagged broken glass bottles atop

Little Morocco had a lot of restaurants with some variety, but all in the same vein, and what seemed like 20 little stores that all sold exactly the same clothing (that sort of hippy/caravan stuff that's actually made in Nepal) and shoes and little tea pots.


This picture is of the main street of Little Morocco. The two guys making some elaborate hand-shake were totally there when we walked by. TheY run shops on opposite sides of the street:

We stopped at a fun restaurant, which had some seriously clashing patterns:

and, in addition to our food, had "house lemonade", which was really limeade, with mint. It was delicious.

nifty teapots and our nice lemonades

After dinner, there was some more walking and looking around. 

I noticed that several bars/restaurants had white porcelain/ceramic signs with blue designs and lettering, advertising both that they sold cola products, and the name of the establishment: 

There was, in general, a fair amount of tile work strew about, decorating various things. Even the doorjams and also underneath balconies (i.e. on the underside): 

decorated doorjam

My favorite form of house-decoration in Granada was, in addition to the lovely tile on, around and underneath the balconies, the plates/bowls. I don't know if they were hung on hooks, or if they were somehow plastered to the buildings themselves. They were very lovely, usually blue or green patterns: 

Here's wikipedia's better (during the day, as well) picture of the same house:

Also, while we were in Granada, there seemed to be some kind of group-costumed scavenger hunt going on. I got a picture of the astronauts as they ran by. There were also babies, a shot-gun wedding, and various other things I couldn't quite figure out: 

the other side of the sign says "the astronauts"

Day 9, specifically the part which was the rest of  non-Alhambra Granada: 

Granada, to me, is divided up into "the Alhambra" and "everything else".  Given that, I'll put the rest of our wanderings which were not specifically Alhambra-related here, since there are a metric tonne of pictures of the Alhambra to ramble on about. 

The part of Granada that the Alhambra is accessible from is a bit more colorful than the district we were staying in: 

My best guess for this is that it's a statue of Isabella meeting with Chris Columbus. I found the metal-as-fabric draping down over the rest of the monument to be quite impressive: 

There were, around the corner, a row of awesome tetris-y lamps: