GRANADA , SPAIN

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Alcazaba — Empty old fort with tower and views[/caption]

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View from the Palacios Nazaries[/caption]

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Generalife Gardens[/caption]

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View of the Alhambra[/caption]

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Palacios Nazaries[/caption]

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Islamic Art[/caption]

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Courtyard of the Lions[/caption]

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Beautiful Islamic Art[/caption]

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Moorish part of Granada[/caption]

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Shop in the Moorish District[/caption]

Our trip from Seville to Granada was a surprise , we had booked on another bus ,also ALSA but this bus was called a SUPRA ECONOMY which of course we had no idea what it meant but for the fact it cost 6 euro more per seat. Well this bus turned up, it looked like something out of a movie, maybe the best way to explain it is business class on a plane.

So if you are ever travelling through Europe on a bus, try and pick this , it was a superb ride comfy leather , screen on each seat , free papers drinks and snacks, free wifi, a great way to travel.

The journey took us quite close to the mountain range the Sierra Nevada which was quite beautiful and unbelievably they where full of snow on the caps, apparently it had the first snow the night before. They say this is the best skiing in Spain, not that we will be doing any of that ,those days are gone.

Four hours later we arrived in Granada. Granada’s main industry is it is a University town, 60000 students a year, and other than that the famous Alhambra that has an average of 8000 visitors a day. Our hotel was called Hotel Macia Plaza, not the best place we have stayed , it was in the Rick Steve’s book So you couldn’t really go wrong and at 50 euro a night ( on last minute .com) it was small and clean.

The main reason for coming here was to see the amazing Alhambra, we had not booked tickets to get in to a tour it being November and we luckily got the last two seats with a guide, this place is that big you need a guide , I would imagine it would be very difficult to do a self guide and know what you have seen at the end of it , we had a guide and I still cannot remember most of it , the tickets were 50 euro each by the way.

The Alhambra is apparently the last and greatest moorish palace in Europe, and this place shows the splendour of the moorish civilization in the 13 and 14 centuries. The four main things we saw was the moorish palace , the Christian palace , the massive amount of cultured gardens , and the Alcazaba which is the old fort and tower that protected the palace. and of course the whole area was walled and enclosed . Most amazing as with most of the historical buildings we have seen on this trip was in fact the way in the evenings it has been lit up , quite the site . Enough about that!!

The old town of Granada was most probably a bit of a let down after Seville ( anything would be a let down after Seville), this place was more about Tapas bars with plenty of free tapas than restaurants, so we found it difficult to find something nice , we did eventually and ended up in a bar later watching Real Madrid play Liverpool in a cup game, the spaniards where really friendly when they realized I was from Liverpool and disliked Liverpool football team as much as they did. The next day gave us our first day of real rain since we started our trip so no complaints, more cathedrals, churches and walks around the old town and then we were done!!

The next part of our journey was supposed to take us to Madrid and Toledo, after seeing how close w ere to our base camp Murcia we decided to go from Granada to Murcia for some much needed Chill time and some much needed home cooked meals and yes you guessed it some golf .

later

M and T