My solo travelling days, well day, were done. After drinking deep of culture at the Prado I returned to find a semi random stranger installed in my room. Sadly this wasn’t a mistake, I would be sharing a room for the remainder of my trip. That evening a small gathering took place so that we could meet our tour leader and make ourselves known to her so she could identify our bodies should something happen to us that wasn’t on the itinerary.
And it was a small group, a mere five eager travelers gathered to hear the words of our leader. As I have come to expect on these holidays we were a diverse group hailing from all over Australia. We had two people from Perth which seemed a little excessive but I was prepared to be accommodating. Our tour leader was perfectly qualified to guide us around all things Spanish as she came from Mexico. She did however live in Lisbon and was quite delighted when in a pathetic attempt to impress we all announced that this was the particular part of the trip we were most looking forward to.
With the preliminaries out of the way we ate food and prepared for the next day’s journey. The next day’s journey consisted of a five hour bus trip to Granada. Pack snacks and water we advised. I duly acquired a packet of crisps from somewhere but decided that flooding my body with water was not a sensible precursor to a five hour bus ride.
We left Madrid in what was essentially an air conditioning unit on wheels and headed south. For the first time since my arrival I felt distinctly chilly. Not that I was complaining, well I didn’t complain much. At least I didn’t complain much once the other passengers threatened to throw me off the bus if I didn’t stop complaining. So I shivered and looked at the scenery.
The scenery was amazing if you have a fetish for olive trees. If you hate olive trees it’s going to be a long journey. Actually the scenery reminded me quite a bit of Australia if you can imagine Australia covered in olive trees. We crossed wasn’t quite a plain but certainly wasn’t rough enough to be considered hilly. Every so often we stopped, I thought for a refreshment break but was actually so that we could change drivers. No consideration was given to changing passengers.
As we approached Granada Spain got distinctly lumpier as we headed into the Sierra Nevada which constitute a major reason why Grenada was the last Muslim state in Iberia to fall to the reconquista. Fall it did though but Grenada is still one of the areas of Spain where Islamic influence is visible. As a stone example of said influence we would visit the Alhambra tomorrow.
For today once we had rinsed the travel dust from our bodies and made frantic dashes to the bathroom we had the traditional Intrepid tour familiarisation walk which consisted of finding the highest ground available and walking to it. This took us through the old town of Granada with narrow streets and narrower alleyways and shops selling Turkish delight. They sold other things as well but I focused on the Turkish delight.
Climbing up streets too narrow for cars, pausing to flatten ourselves against the walls when cars went by regardless, we made our way to a church perched above the city which afforded views of the Alhambra across the valley. Even those of us muttering about the climb had to admit it was worth it. The next day would have us up close and personal to the former centre of Muslim rule in Granada. For some reason we needed our passports.
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