Day #28 - Ending at the Alhambra

Once again hard to believe, but today is our last actual day of the trip. This is it…

We started the day off bright and early – at 6:30 am! We got up, ate, and sped-walked a steep 15-minute hike up the Alhambra to stand in the ticket line, which was already a couple hundred people long by the time we got there. You see, at the Alhambra, you have to book reservations months in advance, which we didn’t do, so the only alternative is to wait in line the day of. It’s wasn’t so bad though, once the ticket office opened at 8, since the line kept moving. I think we got in right at 9.

Some background (courtesy of Rick Steves, of course): The Alhambra itself was the last Moorish stronghold in Europe, and over 2,000 people used to live within its walls. Then in 1492 – quite the prolific year here in Spain - the Christians defeats the Muslims, and seven centuries of Muslim rule in Spain came to an end. Sucks to be them.

Our first stop was the biggie: the Palacios Nazaries. This was the exquisite royal palace, with room after room of amazing Moorish architecture and decorations. Lots of patterned ceramic tiles, Arabic-scripted walls, and carved ceilings. We saw the Sultans’s room, the fountain of the lions - minus the lions (why does every museum we go to have the cool stuff under restoration?!), some cool reflecting pools, and some more cool hexagon-ily domed rooms with great views of Granada. We had to battle past countless tour groups of 80 year olds to see everything, but it was worth it. ☺

After the palace, we explored the other buildings inside the Alhambra walls, including the Alzcaba fort, with more city views, and Charles V’s palace, which had a big, circular courtyard. Finally, we checked out the perfectly-manicured Generalife Gardens, which had lots of stray cats for us to pet. ☺

We finished everything at the Alhambra around noon, and walked back downhill to finish up a bit more souvenir shopping. This is our last stop, after all. I got a bunch of good stuff for people here. ☺ We ate lunch at a fun little restaurant with a great menu del dia – we got salad and croquettes for first course, pork & fries and flamenquones and fries for second course, and oranges for dessert (which I think is a Granada thing). Muy bueno naranajas! Hahaha…right, Katie? We also ran into some other travelers who I recognized from Swansea! They were also study abroad students and had been on the Paris trip. How random is that? 3 random run-ins in the same trip.

This afternoon it was SIESTA time! Our first siesta done the right way, in the afternoon. We almost kept sleeping into the evening, but managed to wake up at 6. Happy hour again, which meant more delicious spring rolls and hanging out with our hostel friends. At 10, we decided to go on our hostel’s tapas tour, led by this crazy Dutch guy, Mateo. He took us to 4 different places, each with free tapas, which is almost unheard of in the rest of Spain anymore. We met some more cool people tonight – a Finnish couple studying in Valencia, an Iranian-American med student, and some random American college-dropout friends of Mateos. I had fun discussing the controversy of bullfighting with the Finns, as well as asking them what Finnish culture is like, and learning that they also have Swedish as a national language. Meaning, they spoke 4 languages each. Mateo spoke 5 – sure puts us Americans to shame. ☺ Katie and I also talked to the Iranian girl a lot, she was really interesting to talk to. We asked if her life was like Grey’s Anatomy at all since she was in med school. ☺ Unfortunately not, though she did have plenty of other good stories to tell.

And such ends our last night in mainland Europe. It’s been a good one, and now all good things much come to an end.