Thankfully the rain stopped before we headed out to Granada from Seville. (https://chosenfugue.wordpress.com/2022/12/26/ready-for-moor/ ) As with Seville, our stay was outside of the center of town, and again in the trendy area, chosen not due to it’s Silverlake/Bushwick vibe but due to it’s proximity to the Alhambra. On our walk from the train station to our place we wandered through pretty much all of Granada, thanks to Google maps. Granada, like most of Spain, seems to have more street names than streets, so every few blocks, the name of the street changes and sometimes we followed along with it, other times not. Further complicating our progress was that usually 3 to 6 streets veered off every plaza. Which diagonal street was the little blue arrow pointing us towards? Other times it was hard to tell what was a street and what was a driveway.
Tickets for the Alhambra were time sensitive, so we booked the first time slot of the day, thinking that this was Spain and dinner begins at 9 or 10 in the evening, so no one was going to show up at the Alhambra at 9 am. We gave ourselves 30 minutes for the 800 m walk from our place to the entrance, because it was straight up. We actually did the walk quickly (well Nick did), and used the rest of the time to get lost. We did make it to the entrance on time, and yes, we were right, it was pretty empty.
Building the Alhambra was started in 1293 by the first Nasrid emir. It was a perfect location on a hill at the base of the Sierra Nevada, the site of earlier fortresses. 360o views.
The Alhambra was really a little city with palaces (6), military fortifications and barracks, worker’s quarters, gardens, baths, and Mosques. It had it’s own rather sophisticated water system. Of course, Ferdinand and Isabela eventually took it over and, of course, did some remodeling. With each subsequent inhabitant or conquest, more remodeling was done, and eventually even Napoleon got involved using it as a fortress and attempting to dynamite the whole thing when he left, but he came up short. An earthquake caused more damage. It was abandoned and became a tear down. Finally in the early 1800s a full restoration was started, and continues.
We will leave the rest of the story to pictures.
The walk back down was a bit more relaxed as we wandered through the Moslem quarter and then along the river back into the center of Granada.
We finished our southern Spain tour in monumental fashion, now off to Valencia.
Chosen Fugue 
Thank’s for allowing me to experience Europe through your eyes. I get a kick out of your frugal style.
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