Grenada, Spain – 06/02

(Michelle) After getting about 3 hours of sleep (maybe) on the overnight bus, we dropped of our bags and we headed up (at what I thought was early) to Alhambra. For the main tourist attraction, this place was seriously lacking signage. It is a huge area and it took us like an hour to figure out where to buy tickets. Once we found it, we waited in line for 2 hours to get the tickets. By this time it is now almost 1 pm, we were told we could go into the complex at 2:00 and that we could go in the palace at 5:30. What? We really had no intention of spending our whole day in Grenada at the Alhambra. We decided not to wait until 2 to get into the grounds and snuck in via a side entry we found when we were looking for the ticket booth. They don’t collect “tickets” at these random side entrances, but they do at the three main exhibits. The Alhambra dates back to when the Moors ruled in this area of Spain from the 13-15 century. The Nasrid dynasty (pronounced Dinasty by our audio guide) wanted to build something that was a Mulsim heaven on Earth. The integrated gardens and water fountains were meant to accomplish this task. Unfortunately, I was possibly a bit too tired to fully appreciate this heaven. The palace was pretty cool though once we finally got to see it. Our time slot also housed a Japanese tour group. I forgot the common response to any non Japanese person speaking any word of Japanese was “Jyozu Nihongo” Aka “You are skilled at Japanese”. I’ve pulled out a few Sumimasen (excuse me) as we’ve tried passing through these tour groups at various tourist attractions and the response is always funny. A shocked look and a “Jyozu Nihongo” response. It’s so cute. Forget that I can barely say more than 10 words in Japanese anymore, I like to feel skilled. We returned to the Oasis hostel in time for the BBQ dinner on the patio. We had a nice conversation with 2 German women from our room over cheese stuffed peppers and chicken.

(TJ) Grenada was warm.

Books read this far…

Last King of Scotland
The Big Sleep
The Historian (working on)
The Alchemist (Next in Que)

If anyone has any Book suggestions let me know.