It’s nearly 9am before we get out of our tent and start packing up the bikes.
The later-than-usual start drives Friedel crazy in particular. Even though it’s winter and there’s no light until 8:30am, she’s been awake for at least 2 hours and would have liked to be on the road far earlier. “We’re losing the whole day,” she grumbles (we haven’t had a coffee yet either). Andrew has wisely learned to ignore these comments.
Soon we are on the road, climbing up hills, through villages and alongside relics of the past, like this wash house. We stop and wonder when the last time was that anyone had to use it? You can see the washboards are worn, and the water still runs through the basins.
We go higher still, until we reach a peak and admire the morning sun lighting up the mountains north of Granada. By now, even Friedel admits it’s hard to be grumpy when you have a view like this. We have them almost every day in this part of Spain.
It’s lunchtime before we reach the city itself. Although there was only 30km between our campsite and Granada, this last 30km seems to take ages to navigate. City traffic is almost always a bit stressful and it’s easy to get lost, which we do. Several times.
This means it’s early afternoon when we reach the main reason for our stop here; a visit to the Alhambra – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s the low tourist season and mid week but there are still tons of people here and tickets to the most spectacular part of the Alhambra are sold out. We have to settle for a walk around the gardens, but they’re still pretty impressive.
There are ornately carved door and window frames.
Beautiful archways.
And quite the view over the surrounding houses – which look more like a village than the large city of Granada.
As the sun fades away, we snap a few last shots in the glowing afternoon light.
And we wander home in darkness, past sights that are unmistakably Spanish.
