Alhambra

7 June 2011

Granada, España

If there’s one thing you do in Granada, it’s go to the Alhambra. It’s a big fortification from the Moorish (Islamic) days of Spain, which has in it amongst other big things, a sultan’s palace.

I’m almost certain the bike riding in the Netherlands has made me fitter… For now… because I walk up to the Alhambra in a few minutes flat.

As soon as you enter through the big orange stone walls, you completely forget you’re in Spain altogether; it’s anything but meditteranean here, with big domes and arches in white and blue. The palace is just as other-worldly, and imacculately preserved. It’s as if this is what the old things in Egypt would have looked like if they were half as old. The thing is, after having gone to Egypt, all wonder and gobsmacking at ‘really old things’ has been lost pretty substantially.

Nonetheless, Alhambra puts a lot of usual sightseeing to shame.

Back in the hostel, it’s indecision that is just killing me of where to go next. At least in the common room someone’s playing a guitar and there’s no fucking Wonderwall playing. I take the decision to get an early bus. Everyone’s going out, including French JB and Mexican CT, who I again bumped into today. I can’t join, but in the morning I’ll be hopefully be in Alicante on Spain’s east coast.