Last night we arrived in Granada after a train, a bus, a plane and a bus--basically a LONG day of travelling! We grabbed dinner, got our bearings and headed to bed so we could get an early start Saturday.
We woke up at 7 and got to the ticket counter for the Alhambra at 8am because they only give out a limited number of tickets per day and you are given an exact appointment time in which you may enter. Ours was at 2pm. So until then we wandered around the city.
Granada is a relatively small city, but its really cute. Everything architecturally here is much more plain compared to the intricate details of the Florentine building facades. It feels absolutely amazing to speak Spanish again!!!!! After taking it my whole life it is really the first time I've been able to put it to use in the "real world." It is coming back to me SO well! I can have pretty detailed conversations with the locals, which has been great! In the beginning it was hard to get back into the habit of saying "gracias" not "grazie." Realizing all the times so far where Italian words have almost slipped out makes me realize that I've learned more Italian than I thought! I'm so excited to be here in Spain for 10 days and see how much my Spanish continues to improve! Part of me is sad that I didn't study abroad in Spain just because I know I would've become fluent, but nothing beats the Italian culture for me!
Since the Arabs inhabited Spain for many years their culture is everything. Lots of great shops with fun jewelry. So at 2pm we arrived at the Alhambra for our appointment to view the huge palace. The grounds are so green and lush and have the most gorgeous gardens! We explored and enjoyed all the panoramas from the gardens and on top of the fortress. The whole property is on top of a huge hill so it is quite a workout walking around it! As we made our way around the grounds aimlessly we noticed after about two hours that you didn't even need a ticket to be in the area we had been walking around. We decided to ask what the ticket was good for and found out it got us into the main palace. The main palace is the building with the large fountain in the center courtyard. This was the single image of the Alhambra that I had always known, ever since my AP World History class sophomore year in high school. We were excited to see it! We give the lady our ticket and she informs us that we are two hours late for our reservation so we can't go in. No one had told us that the main entrance where we gave our ticket at 2pm wasn't the area our reservation was good for! There were no signs and the ticket did not specify! We were so mad! We had woken up so early to get the tickets, waited in the cold, arrived early to our appointment and didn't even get to see the actual Alhambra palace. I guess I'll just have to come back again one day!
It is amazing how much the terrain here resembles California!!! Even the weather!!! But anyways after a long day we went our for tapas or basically the Spanish version of appetizers and I had my very first Sangria! It was soooo good! I'm obsessed! We then walked down the main street in the opposite direction we had been going and were so excited to find it very busy with lots of fountains and cute shops and even an outdoor concert going on! This definitely heightened our impressions of Granada. Jillian and I decided we would still only give the city a "B" rating. It is beautiful, but we just didn't find it to be anything extra special. Nevertheless we loved it and can't wait for the rest of Spain!!!
adios!
~ K
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment