Travels low cost: The Alhambra in Granada

Since the bus to Granada didn’t leave from the bus terminal in front of the train station before mid-morning, we had all the time to stop and have breakfast with some fantastic churros (fritters for dipping in hot chocolate). In less than two hours we arrived in Granada, we left the station, took a bus to the city center and we were lucky enough to get down right in front of our "hotel". The quotation marks are a must, considering the accommodation we had been given: a small room, minimum standard cleaning, a super noisy fan, and the view.... oh well, should I go on? However, the most spectacular thing was the distorting mirror, at least we laughed a little.
We walked up and down the main street of the city, following signs for the Lonely to nibble some great tapas in a place crowded also with locals, where everyone screams and you must scream too and elbow if you want to be served.... well, let’s go with that! Sebastian was not very happy with his lunch though...

The distorting mirror

Do you wanna see all pics taken in Granada? Then click here

Granada is the capital of Andalusia and, a part of from the Alhambra, there’s nothing else spectacular to visit. Sure it is nice, but it’s not worth more than 1-2 days of stay.
The Alahmbra is a whole different thing, this place alone is worth the trip.
Etymologically, Alhambra is "al-Hamra '" (the Red الحمراء) in Arabic; in fact, its full name was “Qal at al-Hamra” (Red Fortress).
According to some versions, the name derived from the pinkish color of the walls surrounding the Alhambra. It’s a real walled city that occupies most of the Sabika hill. The Alhambra style represents the supreme apex of the Andalusia’s art.
The World Heritage Committee of UNESCO has nominated the Alhambra and Granada’s Generalife Cultural Heritage of Humanity. I will not indulge in telling the whole Alhambra’s story because it can be read in any guide or source from the Internet.
I had to book the tickets 3 months (the maximum) in advance to be able to visit them, and I did that directly from the site www.alhambratickets.com, where I had to choose at what time we would have been at Palacios Nazarios. We got there at a decent time, around 9 am, and there’s already a long queue to get tickets. I had to witness to this scene where an Italian woman, in her bad Spanish-English, was expressing her displeasure, saying that it was inconceivable that she had arrived at 8am and all the tickets were already gone! The guy tried to explain to her that we’re in the middle of August and there’re people who had been in line from 4am (I would have been happy to intervene to shut her up) .... what the fuck was she expecting?!?!? Anyway, in the end I didn’t really care and I happily went to collect my ticket directly from the ATM: you simply insert the credit card which you bought the tickets with and voilà, you have the ticket in your hand in 5 minutes. We entered at 9.30am and we went out at 2.30pm; we were tired and hot, but satisfied. It was just a shame that the best thing to see in Palacios Nazarios, the fountain with lions, was in the process of restoration ... :(