Granada

A day trip to Granada from Estepona is a bit ambitious, at roughly 2½ hours each way. It was worth doing, though – the Alambra is so beautiful. So we got up this morning at the crack of dawn (8:00am – the time zone is a little weird here), piled into the car, and set off for Granada.

We had purchased reserved tickets two days earlier, but we told that the only time available was at 7pm. This meant the earliest we’d likely leave would be 8:30, and we wouldn’t get back to the hotel till 11pm. Yelena, who doesn’t like long car trips much, would have her schedule thrown (in as much as she has one now), and would probably be awake for much of the night. So when we arrived in Granada around 1:30pm, we hoped there would be a better solution.

There was, and there wasn’t. What they failed to tell us on the phone was that they only reserve some of the entry times; others are only available at the door. So we discovered that we could purchased tickets for a 3pm entrance right then and there. The only catch was, our reservations for 7pm were already paid for, and it typical bureaucratic fashion, they could not be changed. I had to call to complain (no one working there could take my complaint), but it didn’t do me any good. In the end, we decided it was worth it to us to forfeit the 7pm tickets and by new, better ones.

With our 3pm tickets to see the palaces, we were allowed to enter the whole of the Alhambra at 2pm, which left us enough time to have a nice meal first. We had a sit-down meal outside at a restaurant called Mimbre. Positioned at the top of the hill, next to the Alhambra, Mimbre is about the only choice for a sit-down meal; therefore it is to be expected that the meal will be expensive and unexceptional. It did not disappoint. It was generally pretty good, though the service was very lackluster. (It took a very long time to get the check; it took 5-10 minutes to get the waiters attention to ask for the check, and another 10 minutes before he brought it. I was ready to walk out – I prefer to pay, but only if they will bring be the check.)

In the interest of keeping the meal quick, we skipped appetizers and just had main dishes: grill salmon for Mila, steak frites for Eli, baby calamari with hot pepper for Eric, and fried baby fava beans with ham for me.

The Alhambra itself was beautiful. Worth driving 5 hours round-trip, worth paying twice, worth braving a cranky baby. The intricately carved and decorated walls are truly astounding.

We left at about 6pm, and drove straight back to the hotel. We had considered driving down the hill toward town and seeing the center of the old city, but encountered some construction work and decided not to – instead, we drove out the way we drove in: along the backside of the hill, connecting straight to the highway.

Back at the hotel we thought we might order in, but all the options we could find seemed lackluster – overpriced Spanish food as one choice, Indian or Thai as the others. So Eli and I got the name of a local place that would sell tapas to go, and we drove off to get some. I don’t recall the name of the place – something “de Gaudalmina” (the name of the river in Málaga).

We got a rather large seeming spread: tortilla española, green olives, roasted red pepper salad, marinated mushrooms, lomo de puerco, slices of chorizo Riojana, small chorizos served whole on toast, a half hard-boiled egg served with mayonnaise and a shrimp, smoked cod on toast, smoked salmon w/ crab salad, Idiazabal cheese, a chicken tartelet, and some pieces of chicken wing. It was all quite good, though the chicken wings were nothing special. We thought we might have leftovers, but we ended up eating every last bite of everything.

All told, we are getting to bed at a pretty reasonable time, too. This is good: we got up early today, and will need to get up early tomorrow as well, to check out.

Labels: journal, personal, spain

posted by Tony at 11:40 PM