Granada – Moorish palaces and unwanted house guests

7 – 9 August 2019

As we made our way south past yet more shanty-style greenhouses, we spoke a lot about a close friend of ours who has been going through a near fatal battle with an infection on the other side of the world. This has been going on for a week or so, and his and his family’s plight has never been far from our thoughts or our conversations. We were chatting to him less than a week before he was struck down about the possibility of meeting up, and the next thing we know he is literally in intensive care, battling for his life. Thankfully, he now appears to have turned a corner and will pull through, albeit with a 6 month plus recovery and significant changes to his life moving forward. He is 43 and has 3 young kids and a wonderful wife who has been just incredible through this entire period.

Having this happen to someone so close clearly makes us acknowledge what we have, how fragile it can be, and just how unfair things can be sometimes too. It has made us doubly grateful for the chance that we have, and made us appreciate it all the more deeply.

It feels almost inappropriate to write about anything else whilst something so important and life changing is going on, and I’m not sure how to segway from our friend to our trip report, so I’m just going to say that our thoughts are with you, we are crossing everything for the best and speediest possible recovery and you know where we are if we can do anything.

Before committing to head north into the heat of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, we decided to hit the beach one last time, this time a place called Playa la Rijana, just outside Motril, recommended for its snorkeling. We pulled up and left the fully loaded car in the car park (never a particularly comfortable feeling, as we’re constantly concerned that it won’t be there when we get back) and headed down the rocky path to the beach.

Despite the full blown, fatigue and heat induced tantrum from Sienna on the way down, we eventually made our way to the small, rocky beach where we had a lovely hour or so, snorkeling (it really didn’t disappoint on this front), playing in the rocks and, of course, more beach tennis. Pleasingly, Sena made a full recovery from her tantrum, and had an awesome time snorkeling around and pointing out all the fish.

From there, it was north into the mountains towards Grenada.

We pulled up into the the much hyped ‘Lemon Rock’ hostel, fresh from regaling the kids (again) with (mostly fictional) stories of backpacking stories of years gone by. We had been admiring the online pictures of the hostel and were excited to be staying here. Good location, hostel facilities (read: fridges and kitchens), a cool looking place with a decent vibe.

Vibe – tick. Cool looking – let’s just say awesome photography. Bar – big tick (including live music every night!). Room location – directly above said bar. Gulp. Kitchen and fridge. No sir.

Oh well, let’s focus on the vibe.

We unpacked into our dorm room (we’re all class after all), the girls taking delight in unpacking their stuff into personal lockers and claiming their preferred beds. Daddy was relegated to the top bunk. Settled, we cast our minds to the purpose of our stay in Granada – visiting the Alhambra.

We had heard a fair bit of talk around this famous Moorish palace complex and were excited to be visiting it. The site dated back to Roman times but really came into its own when the main fort and palace was constructed by the Moors in the 14th century, and subsequently became the site of the Spanish Royal Court in the 16th century. It was the reason we had decided to deviate from the coast (whilst consciously eschewing better known (and amazing) cities like Seville and Madrid).

Unfortunately, what we were to quickly learn is that the site is rather popular (in fact, the most popular site in Spain) and books out rather quickly. In fact, about 10 weeks in advance in summer. Going there tomorrow looked impossible, but luckily there was some availability mid October. Oops.

We got to researching. There was an industry around this place. Standard entrance would cost 7 euros. All the tours were sold out. On the secondary market, we could potentially squeeze in for 203 euros (provided that we could obtain forged passports in the right names). More researching. We located some tickets to the grounds around the palace for the day after tomorrow. Better than nothing, we just wouldn’t tell the kids about the palace. Sorted. Maybe. More research. Internet talk about the illusive 200 tickets that go on sale at 8am each morning for the same day. You need to line up at 5am to have a chance. We could do that. Early starts booked in. More research. Was the 8am thing a thing anymore? Unclear. Maybe there was a 12.01am thing online instead. Could we be faster than a bot? We doubted it, but worth a shot.

Dinner was at a recommended but ultimately pretty average tapas restaurant in the old town. I think we were just pissed that we had to actually pay for food. What’s that about? Maybe we were just distracted as the minutes ticked down towards midnight.

We took an early look at the purchasing website. Practiced the buying process. Got the passports out and the numbers ready. Agreed who would be the ‘tutor’ for each of the kids (what was this form about anyway). Got the credit card ready. We could be faster than a bot. We could do this.

Home. Kids in bed (just). Nervous anticipation. More practice. 12.00. Still no tickets. 12.01. We could both hear and feel the noise emanating from the live band downstairs. Still no tickets. 12.01.30 – tickets! As agreed, we both went in parallel. Brows furrowed, fingers whirring, clicking rapidly over the now familiar (but overly complex and ridiculously bureaucratic) entry form. Submit. More information. Submit again. Still in the game. Credit card details. Submit. Confirmation!

High fives all round! Who needed to book 2 months in advance? 8 hours was all we needed! Bugger. We had to get there in 8 hours time. The kids were still stirring, our food was locked up until 8 in the hostel and nothing was open in Granada before 9.

We were about to embark upon a 3+ hour visit to a historic site with 3 underfed, under-slept kids. This was a total recipe for disaster.

The adrenaline slowly drained from our body, leaving us weak. We could both hear and feel the music from directly beneath us. With earphones in and ‘soothing’ meditation music blaring in our ears we slowly drifted off to sleep. Eventually it was quiet.

Was that a bite on my foot?

What was that noise? Was the band still playing? No, that was our alarm. It was 645 and time for our assault on the Alhambra. Up, dressed, much complaining from the kids. Forage for breakfast. Anything. Nothing. At least the cleaners were there. No, they couldn’t get us access to our breakfast stuff in the bar fridge. But they took pity on us, providing us with bar snacks and room temperature milk. Breakfast of champions.

We left on time. Drove the Alhmabra. Parked in the #1 carpark. So far so good. The kids were complaining a bit. But they were on 4 hours sleep and warm UHT milk for breakfast, so we couldn’t really blame them.

We walked the kilometre or so to the entrance to the main event, the Nazaries Palace, where we had 8.30am timed tickets. We were in line by 8.15, probably #20. Precisely 8 hours and 29 minutes after obtaining our tickets we piled into the Palace and were literally blown away by the whole place.

It has been beautifully maintained (and built on) for the last 800 years, but still clearly retains its Moorish roots. The architecture of the Nazaries Palace is distinctly Moorish, unlike anything we’ve seen in Western Europe and like nothing the girls have ever seen. The degree of decoration on the walls, on every tile, was astounding. The 8 pointed stars, the arches, the flowing Arabic script throughout were spellbinding. The use of water features and greenery within the courtyards acted like an ancient air conditioning system, keeping the whole complex cool despite the 30+ degree day.

Even on nowhere near enough sleep or food, the kids were gobsmacked, asking us to take photos of pretty much everything. Eventually they cut out the middleman and just grabbed our phones and went nuts.

After the initial success, we made our way up to the Alcabaza, still imposing and within lovely views over Grenada, but not maintained like the Palace. We were almost 2 hours in and spirits were still high, however we were now resorting to bribery (mainly Orio cookies purchased for 5 euros at the gift shop) to keep little legs moving.

We finished our visit at the remarkable Generalife ornamental gardens, outside the palace walls. Ornate hedges, beautiful flowers and more water features were the order of the day, and the kids went nuts all over again. Thankfully data storage is now cheap – we have even more photos of flowers than we do drawings of peacocks.

4 hours later (yes, 4 hours) we were done. Tired but everyone was pumped and happy. And hungry. What would you like to eat kids? (BTW, Granada was voted the culinary capital of Spain last year, but we hadn’t yet worked out why).

Pizza. Pasta. Really? Yes. OK, after what we’ve put you through, we will deliver.

We spent the next 45 minutes driving around Granada looking for an Italian restaurant, the entire time lamenting the fact that we were going ‘off piste’ when we should be eating local, and being punished for our sins by Google Maps (which is normally very helpful) consistently getting opening hours wrong or recommending restaurants that had long since closed.

Anyway, we eventually found a place and enjoyed typical Spanish lasagna, spaghetti bolognese and pizza for lunch. At least the beer was Spanish.

Well deserved afternoon naps followed by homework were the order of the afternoon before we headed out for our tapas to meet the ‘culinary capital of Spain’ label. Unfortunately, we were met with more closed restaurants, tourist traps and ultimately, disappointment.

We loved the Alhambra, but we were looking forward to heading out tomorrow, exploring the Sierra Nevada a bit, and then heading to our friends James and Elizabeth’s house in Sotogrande, not far from Gibraltar.

We arrived home at around 11 and were delighted to find that the live band tonight went until 2am, approximately 4 metres below our room. (Quick side note – we had spent much of the afternoon in the bar and had enjoyed the music and the vibe there… we just hadn’t planned on being this close to it when we’d originally booked the place).

We collapsed into our dorm room, the kids settling in to watch a movie (why not, they weren’t going to sleep with whole room vibrating anyway). Liz read her book.

Ouch!

What was that?

I just got bitten!

Really?

Look at this!

Don’t over-react.

Fuck this. I’m sleeping on the floor.

(Liz gets out of bed, rearranges the bags on the concrete floor and lies down)

Now we’re both scratching, paranoid.

Bed. The room is vibrating. We’re scratching. And being blasted by meditation music through earphones that don’t even come close to blocking out the noise.

More scratching.

At 4am we call it. This room is not inhabitable. We evacuate into the hall, thankful at least that very little (apart from our tasty bodies) have been on the beds. Ellie is up, wide eyed and paranoid. Sena and Jessie are still out cold. We leave them asleep, sacrificing them to the bugs, justifying that they needed the sleep.

We are joined in the hall by 2 American girls. Our first thought is ‘they’ve just come home from a night out. But why are they looking so sad and not talking’. It took us a while to realise they were in it too.

Ellie’s eyes go wider. At least she now has her first hostel/bug story. This is not our first, but we’d hoped that we’d been through our last one a while ago.

At 4.30, we’ve triaged our stuff. We take everything that has been worn at this place and put it into a 90 degree wash. A burning hot dry.

Eventually the day staff turned up. When we told them of our nighttime adventures, they looked at us knowingly and pulled out the industrial strength fumigator, and proceeded to fumigate our room, our bags and our clothes.

This was not the first time this had happened. We couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of there.

At 8am, full refund in hand and powering through on about 2 hours of sleep, we escaped. We had given James and Elizabeth a heads up and, thankfully, they still wanted to see us. We still stopped at Carrefour on the way out of town and re-fumigated all the bags, the soft toys and our children – if nothing else just to make ourselves feel better.

As we started to climb up the Sierra Nevada range, we felt a weight lifting from us. We would not miss Grenada, we would certainly not miss the Lemonrock Hostel (despite their quality playlists).