The Alhambra

It's a three hour drive to Granada from Seville. My pick up time for the tour was 5:45 am. In the morning! Since my hotel is on a tiny street,the tour company asked me to walk a couple of blocks to the nearest big road to meet the bus. I didn't want to miss it so I got there by 5:25. Good thing, because the bus pulled up across the street at 5:30. Luckily it wasn't raining and the almost full moon was still bright in the night sky. There was a Canadian family of four girls ages 8-15 with their mother already on the bus. I enjoyed getting to know them during the day, especially the oldest who turned 15 today.  It took almost an hour before all the other passengers were picked up. So it really took 4 hours to get there including a coffee/pit stop at a touristy truck stop.

Once it was light enough to see, the drive was nice as we drove through a huge valley in the center of Andalucia where there are more than 3 million olive trees, vineyards, fields of asparagus and artichokes and cotton and oak trees where the pigs feast free range on acorns. In the distance were the Sierra Nevada mountains which were white capped with the first snow of the year. 

Our guide Javier pointed out the sights as we went along. 

When we arrived at the Alhambra our driver let us out and the English speakers met our guide Angel. We were told it was important to keep together because it would be easy to get lost. As we walked towards the entrance I heard someone yell San Francisco! I scanned the line of people waiting to enter and I saw the Korean couple that I befriended on the Camino but hadn't seen since Leon. I waved and yelled hello but wasn't able to go greet them or I would have been separated from the group. I loved that we happened to be at the Alhambra at the same time. 

We walked around the outside of the Alhambra aways before entering the palace area. The hedges had arched windows carved in them which allowed for interesting views on either side. The fortress/ palace/ town housed 4,000 people in its heyday. Much of it was bombed and destroyed by Napoleon.  Very little of the artwork and decor is fully intact. The overall layout of the gardens and courtyards and buildings are still in place but none of the surrounding town is there now. 

The water system that was engineered by tapping a river higher up on the mountain 800 years ago is still fully functioning. The Alhambra was far advanced in hygiene compared with the rest of Europe. Apparently there were even toilets for the horses. It's not that they were trained to do their business over a hole, but their caretakers only had to push the dung a little ways to the hole where it would be swept away by the flowing water. Now that's impressive, especially for 800 years ago!