Saturday we woke up really early to head to the bus station to catch one to Granada-about a 2 hour bus ride from Malaga. This was a great day trip and when we arrived we met up with Clare's friend from high school who agreed to show us around for the day. We headed out to the city centre and right away I could tell that it was quite different from Malaga. Mainly, it wasn't quite so tropical as Malaga because it wasn't on the beach. Granada was much more brown and not quite so verdant---but also very beautiful! Our first endeavor was the Alhambra. Once again, it involved climbing up a giant mountain/hill! Here's some info about it--""literally "the red one"), the complete form of which was Calat Alhambra (الْقَلْعَةُ ٱلْحَمْرَاءُ, Al-Qal‘at al-Ḥamrā’ , "the red fortress"), is a palace and fortress complex constructed during the mid 14th century by the Moorish rulers of the Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus, occupying the top of the hill of the Assabica on the southeastern border of the city of Granada in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia. It had some pretty spectacular views of the city! And you could see the Albaicin which is a hill that led up to our next stop and lookout point. Following is info about the Albaicin--a district of present day Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain, that retains the narrow winding streets of its Medieval Moorish past. It was declared a world heritage site in 1984, along with the more famous Alhambra.
It rises on a hill facing the Alhambra and many tourists journey into the Albayzin primarily for the spectactular views of the Alhambra from the viewing point by the church of San Nicolas". Next we made our way back down to the city center to visit the Cathedral. It was pretty spectactular, but what we really wanted to see was in the Capilla Real, so we had to pay twice unfortunately. In the Chapel, we saw where Ferdinand and Isabella are buried. They were the spanish monarchs who gave Christopher Columbus the ships for his journey to the new world and they also are the parents of Catherine of Aragon. Furthermore, they also re-seized southern spain back from the moors who had taken over. After we got some more frozen yogurt (our new favourite!) and did a little shopping on the Albaicin where you can buy all sorts of souvenirs. We ended our day of sightseeing with some tapas (appetizers--ours were tiny sandwiches). In Granada, you get free tapas with the purchase of a drink, so we drank some delicious tinto de veranos and rested our feet! All of spain is full of brick roads so my feet were TIRED! We headed back to the bus to head home and made our journey back out to the hostel. When we arrived we were hungry so we had some paella which is a valencian dish popular in spain. There is a picture below because it is hard to explain--it was delicious!
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