Our accommodation has been perfectly satisfactory and was finished off with a superb breakfast. It wasn’t any of the usual cheap and nasty continental breakfast but the absolute full monty. We are going to have to do a lot of steps today to wear this lot off.
A 15-minute walk back to the railway in time to catch our 11.30am train to Granada. The distance is 175km and our train reached speeds of over 300k on the straight parts of the track.
It was almost impossible to get a photo of the sped it was going due to the damn reflection from the overhead lights, but you can just make our a 3 and it was 301k at its fastest.
It was extremely smooth and comfortable, but the train is hardly appealing to look at. It looks a bit like a platypus. The train driver was this ultra cool young dude with aviator glasses and a swagger to match.
Once we settled into our hotel, we headed straight back out to the Albaicin area of Granada to make the most of the cooler weather. We have adapted quickly to understand that you do everything you need to in the cooler hours of the day. Our first port of call was to a Persian tea shop where we partook of some lemon and orange blossom tea and met a couple of Aussies girls and got to talking about their travels to date.
Once rehydrated, we wandered past the most colourful array of shops selling spices, teas, pashmina scarves, lanterns and everything that you would find in a grand bazaar in the Middle East.
You felt like you had stumbled across the Silk Road.
We made our way up a rather steep hill heading to a look out where we could see across to the Alhambra Palace which we will be visiting tomorrow and spending most of tomorrow. The climb up was steep but more tortuous was the very uneven cobble rocks jutting out at all angles and different heights which were just waiting to pounce on your unsuspecting ankles and send you spinning off towards a ride in the local ambulance.
This picture is of a very wide section of the pathway heading up and very smooth believe it or not.
Though it was difficult it was a lovely walk, and you were among people’s home and not some fabricated village.
This is what the effort was all about. Between us and the palace was a valley with a river which we will negotiate tomorrow, possibly with a taxi as it isn’t a straight walk there according to our hotel reception.
Whilst up there we came across these Three Amigos playing to the large crowd.
We realized very quickly that these guys did not have a large repertoire of songs and in fact it amounted to four songs only!! Maybe they were put there by the local city authorities to keep the crowd moving through as there wasn’t a lot of space available up there. It certainly gave us a chuckle. We would of been able to do another round of their songs but they were really not that good.
We attempted to make our way back down via a slightly different path, but you can guess how that ended.
We got back to the hotel for the midday siesta and thought we should look at how to tackle this obstacle in our bathroom. We noted it on our arrival but decided we would head out and ignore the problem.
From what friends have told us in the past, this would be an uncomplicated model or better known as the poverty pack unit. Uncomplicated or not, we have decided to throw a towel over it and hope it will just go away!!!
After a much-needed siesta until 7.30pm, we then headed out to some recommended tapas bars to see how this way of eating worked. It appeared that every man including his dog came out of the woodwork at the same time foraging for food. We purchased a warm tapas meal which included salmon in cheese (that was a first), pork on green peppers, egg and potato tortilla, green beans and bacon, croquette – well we think that is what we got.
We went for a further wander around the tight little lane ways as well as into the main city cathedral. It was all very dark and spooky, so high tailed it out of there and back home.
Steps today 17,473.
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