2016.10.04 (Nerja – Granada)

After an early breakfast at another café, we packed our luggages and walked back to the main road to catch our bus to Granada. We were pleasantly surprised that the bus was starting its journey from Nerja – hence it was empty and waiting for us to board. The two and half hour bus ride was very pleasant, namely along the Costa del Sol – a 150km stretch of coast where all the Spanish and foreign tourists visit for some sun. During the bus ride, I discovered while reading our travel guide that visitors to Granada should book their tickets to visit the Alhambra, the top tourist attraction of Granada, a few days or weeks ahead of their visit. I guessed “just-in-time” travel planning did not always work out. With the help of the wifi on the bus, we tried to reserve tickets but discovered that none of them were available until the end of the month. We remained hopeful that our hotel would be able to help us out. The bus station in Granada was in the suburb but it was very easy to catch a city bus to the downtown area where we found our booked hotel. The hotel desk agent suggested that they might have been able to book some tickets for the Alhambra for us but after checking their own website, they conceded that we were on our own for the tickets. They suggested that we could possibly get tickets for a night visit of either the palace or the gardens. We left our luggages at the front desk and took a local mini bus for an exciting drive to the Alhambra ticket office. We managed to purchase tickets for a 10pm visit of the Generalife (gardens) on the same day. We had supper at a Chinese restaurant as it opened an hour earlier than the rest of the other restaurants. We took the mini-bus back to the Alhambra for our night visit of the gardens. The Generalife visit was peaceful and even romantic. We caught one of the last mini-bus back to town center.

2016.10.05 (Granada)

After some coffee and pastries, we followed a self-guided walk of the historic center of Granada. We took another mini-bus to visit Granada’s other valley hillside on the opposite side of the Alhambra. We walked down along various narrow streets and alleyways back into the town center. We had honey ribs for lunch. Back to the hotel for our afternoon siesta, we caught up with our blog at the hotel’s rooftop terrace. We dropped by a Mexican restaurant for supper. Although we had read since our early arrival in Portugal that this part of the world had been occupied for seven centuries by the Moors, it was only in Granada that we truly started to understand, with our visit of the Alhambra, the extent to which the Muslim religion had been well established in Portugal and Spain.

2016.10.06 (Granada – Cordoba)

As part of our travel itinerary changes made during our recent stay in Nerja, we opted to fly from Madrid directly to Nice [France] instead of our earlier plan to fly into Marseille. We re-jigged a few dates around, which allowed us to introduce a visit to Cordoba, and also gave us a bit more time in Nice – a destination that we had planned to visit in 2011 but we had dismissed due to some train limitations.

We repeated yesterday’s breakfast routine after which we took the city bus back to the bus station. It seemed that half the city was heading the same way as the articulated city bus was overflowing with folks and their luggages. Upon boarding our bus to Cordoba, everyone was offered a white paper bag which I imagined contained a nice sandwich. Unfortunately, it only contained a small water bottle, a cookie and some earphones for the on-board entertainment system! The bus ride to Cordoba offered some nice country side views. In Cordoba, we took a long city bus ride to the historic center. We checked into our hotel that was located just across the street from the Mezquita, Cordoba’s top tourist site. We had some tapas nearby to keep us going until the evening. For supper, we aimed to visit a bar/restaurant picked up from TripAdvisor but unfortunately it did not open until 8:30pm. We opted instead to eat at one of the many restaurants surrounded by a lovely large plaza.

2016.10.07 (Cordoba)

This morning, we stepped out of our hotel at 8:15am to join a small mob of tourists that awaited the opening of the Mezquita gates at 8:30am. A well-known tourist tip is that the Mezquita can be visited for free before the 9:30am mass – instead of the usual 8 euros/person entrance fee. The Mezquita houses one of the most unusual churches. We opted also to visit the Mezquita’s bell tower before breakfast. We continued our visit of Cordoba tourist sites with the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos and its beautiful gardens. After some tapas, we visited the Calahorra Tower and returned to our hotel via yet another Roman bridge. In the evening, we returned to yesterday’s plaza for supper.

2016.10.08 (Cordoba – Madrid)

After a peaceful morning walk to a small café for breakfast, we returned to our hotel and made our way with our luggages to the nearby city bus stop. We arrived almost two hours ahead of our train departure to Madrid. The AVE bullet train, traveling at a speed of 270 km/h, allowed us to reach Madrid in less than half the time it would have taken us by bus. Coming out of the train station, we were expected to simply walk into Madrid’s Metro station which would have brought us to the door step of our hotel. Unfortunately to our disappointment, we learned that the Metro’s Line 1 was closed until mid November. We struggled, just as other travelers, to make our way to the city center using the city bus. As we stepped off the bus, we were confronted to some very heavy pedestrian traffic – as one would find in China. Jenny was a bit excited at the view of the many Primark shopping bags being carried around by the abundant shoppers. After our check-in, we went for lunch at an all-you-can eat shushi restaurant. Back at our room, we discovered that the largest Primark clothes store was only a block away from our hotel. I escorted Jenny to the store and returned to the hotel for some travel planning and rest. A few hours later, Jenny returned empty handed as the Saturday crowd was simply too overwhelming for any productive shopping. In the evening, we managed to drop by the Chocolatería San Ginés, a 120 year old institution, selling chorros and chocolate dip. At 10pm upon our return to our hotel, the pedestrian traffic remained very heavy. Both Jenny and I didn’t recall Madrid’s city center being so busy during our visit in 2013.

2016.10.09 (Madrid)

We started our day at McDonald’s for breakfast which was at the ground level of our hotel building. The pedestrian traffic was lighter this morning. We set out on our self-guided walk and stopped along the way for some nice pastries, a visit of the Royal Palace of Madrid and lunch at a small Peruvian restaurant for some BBQ chicken. Back at our hotel, Jenny went back to Primark and came back this time with a shopping bag. Later in the evening, we had some expensive paella at a nearby specialty restaurant. Our conclusion from our brief stay in Madrid is that it is probably a better idea to avoid Madrid over the weekend!