2011 Andalucia - Granada

The next day we are off to Granada early. I watch Heartbreaker in Spanish on the train, then decide to start writing this at last. The olive trees are polka-dotting the landscape, which becomes more hilly.


We have our hotel in the grounds of the Alhambra, Hotel America. The bus from the city centre to the Alhambra is tiny and narrow, made to squeeze in the narrow winding streets up the hill. We pass a series of houses, all with names of "Carmen del Mirador", "Carmen del Morisco". I read somewhere that a "carmen" is a house with an inner patio.


Hotel America is small and pretty, a boutique hotel with a beautiful collection of art objects, paintings and ceramics. Our room has wooden beamed ceiling and a stained glass door to the bathroom, but the water is brown and the shower suddenly gets cold and you have to turn it up more. The window overlooks the ochre flowery patio which is full of people having lunch. There are a couple of water streams, fountains, in the patio, that murmur together with the sound of conversations. Thankfully this is quiet at night.

We have some time before the night visit to the Alhambra, so we go back into town. I've seen enough cathedrals, this one is baroque and not that exciting. The Capilla Real boasts a Boticelli so we go in. The Boticelli turns out to be a little painting with sleeping shepherds who I could have painter, too , no gorgeous Madonna. However, we see a collection of paintings of Queen Isabel I, La Catolica, whose chapel this is, and they all show more or less the same unflattering face. So they were a true likeness, after all. I have always wondered.

We then walk around the old town looking for a Servicaixa cash machine to pick up our tickets to the Alhambra, and we get lost. The normal town looks like any other town, only sunnier. Eventually the receptionist of a hotel points us to the right place, and also to the place with teashops where I went with Anisa ten years ago. It's called Elvira, and it's full of souvenir shops with Indian stuff and so-called Morroccan tea-hops. One of them lures me in, it's empty and has a suitable number of orange silk curtains - probably also from the Indian shops. I have an aphrodisiac tea at a premium price, and apart from breaking the glass top of a table by mistake, it doesn't have any other effect. We leave and I can't resist and buy a fridge magnet with a red Flamenco dancer. It will remind me of the colourful Kazbah Elvira.

We have no idea where to eat and enter a random touristy restaurant full of Germans. The tapas bar is actually at the back, so we leave the table for a bar place. Even better, they serve a tapas free with your drink. It turns out to have been a good and well priced choice.

I am terrily alergic - hayfever. I can't breathe most of the time and my eyes itch, despite taking the tablets.

We go back to the Alhambra and visit the Nasrid Palace. I only bought tickets for the night show, and it's special. The decorations are spot-lit and the remains of colour show through. It's cooler at night, it shows we are close to the Sierra Nevada mountains which are still covered with snow.

Jay likes the ornate golden ceilings and the pool reflecting the arched entrance. There is an exhibition about the fountain of the 12 lions, which has just been renovated. The script around it is a poem about how the water of the pool is simply a cloud. Jay is telling me how much this reminds him of the Taj Mahal. Same people made them, according to the same ideals, so far apart in the world.

Back at the hotel, it's very late and there is nobody but the receptionsit, but he still can offer us drinks in the artistic lobby. A quiet moment of beauty for me and Rioja for Jay.

The following morning we have tea at the hotel, check out and go to see the Generalife gardens. It's spring and there are fewer flowers, but the orange trees save the day. There's the garden where the Sultana was meeting in secret with her lover. Were there no guards, or were they just well paid off?

The Escalera Del Agua, the water stairwell is still charming but, remembering how awed I was with it ten years ago, I can't stop thinking now it needs a fresh coat of paint. Is it my allergy, or am I getting older? Or is everything too perfect in the UK, too perfectly restored with no feel for the old and derelict?

Back to the hotel for directions, we get the worst map and directions ever. It's photocopied and the girl can't find the street so she just draws a random line where it should be. For an expensive hotel visited by the Queen of Spain, they could really do better.

The bus driver thankfully knows where we are going and the Albaicin is on its route. When we are almost there, there is a traffic jam. After a few minutes we realise we are not moving and somebody says the driver has gone and left us all in there. After the map incident I am getting a little disenchanted with the Spanish. Finally, when the driver lady returns, I find my newly discovered fluency and ask her to open the door. We walk past the cause of the jam - someone parked a van diagonally on the narrow street and left.

We sit down for lunch, there are terraces in the sunshine on the river bank with the Alhambra above us on the hill and guitarists take turns to play. There are four restaurants and one has squid ink paella, or paella negra, so we sit there - "Casa 1899". Filling, but touristy, decent price. We miss the food of Seville.

The bus back to the Alhambra takes us through Sacromonte, the Flamenco district, whitewashed, lively and steep. Looks like another place to go back for photographs. Taxi to coack EUR10. The taxi driver taking us to the coach station in Granada told us the tap water in Granada is the purest and nicest water to drink, as it comes directly from mountain springs.

We take the coach back to Malaga, the hill scenery is beautiful and dotted with patterns of olive trees. No oranges or lemons this way.

At Malaga, our perfectly located hotel, EGH Eliseos, is on a direct bus route to the airport and also near the beach and groovy or historic center. We walk along the beach until it gets dark and vow to go to the beach more often from London.

We then make a bee-line to the Teteria through the orange-blossom park. I can breathe properly now and savour it to the full. It's open until 1pm at night, so I relish the almond milkshake and rose tea once again. The crepes are nice too, a walnut, chocolate and banana works well for me, and the tea liquor for Jay.

We then launch on to a tapas bar crawl, having one or two tapas, tostitos or pinchos in each of a few bars. Pea y Pepe seems the cheapest and one of the most popular, altough a bit dirty. It's fun and interesting, a gastronomic journey for Jay, altough he comes away most impressed by a falafel in a mediterranean tapas bar called Pitta Bar. Of all things Spanish.

Back to the hotel we squeeze and roll our clothes to close the small suitcases. The receptionist knows nothing, about the hour change, about the bus to the airport, or the price of taxi. I get him to search it on the internet but he finds us a complex bus route with an interchange. I am giving up on receptionists too. I remember "I know nothing, I'm from Barcelona". Accurate.