Granada Awed Me

day EIGHT (Sept'07). Hahahhahaa..... Kewl hah!


We had a good rest in the hostel; have to admit this is one of the best hostel we stayed during this trip. We had such a good rest, The Alcazaba Hostel was perfect, bed being made daily, clean bathroom with tub, hairdryers available (finally I can look good! Phew!), I couldn’t ask for more. Awesome! To make it even better, there’s a sundry shop below that sells Walls ice-cream of which some are not sold in Malaysia, fascinated we are (I sound like Yoda or maybe Yoda, I sound like... hemmm....).

It was a 5-7mins walk from our hostel to the Hop-On Hop-Off stop at Granada Cathedral, and we were early thus decided to take a stroll in the cathedral. Nothing much outside but we did see a mime artist - look armaturist. We were drawn to walk further in by the side of the cathedral, and guess what we found, nice little souvenir shop with pretty tile paintings. I also noticed that they put a lot of effort and emphasis on their balcony. Ahh…….. Very quaint.

We stopped at Garcia Lorca Park, hemm…. Basically nothing much but it’s nice to see other country’s park I feel, diff plant, diff flowers, diff landscape, diff scent…. Everything but everything was diff. Thus making it exciting and nice :D The park is actually surrounding the house of Federico García Lorca - is one of Spain's best-known and most loved writers, poet and dramatist, skilled painter, pianist and composer. Now the house has been converted to a museum.

Continued with our HOHO ride, seeing the little town from HOHO roof top, felt the clean air of Granada’s Sierra Nevada….refreshing! We also noticed a lot of parks in the city, the nice buildings, nice balconies, cycling expedition and Andalusia Mountain.

We are excited with the next stop - Albaycin. It overlooks Granada and also the birth place of Flemenco. Amazingly Albaycin was able to retain the narrow winding streets of its Medieval Moorish past. And was declared a world heritage site in 1984, along with the more famous Alhambra. Aren’t I lucky! To go to Albaycin, we need to take an Alhambra bus which is a smaller but to enable us to get thru the winding narrow street uphill. I have to say, the view up here is SUPER MAGNIFICENT!

Here you will see small houses facing the either Alhambra or Granada, friendly locals, culture retained - authentic in nature. Albaycín to its neighbouring Sacromonte and for many centuries it has been populated by the gypsy community. The mixture of Arabic influences combined with many centuries of gypsy influence eventually created the famous flamenco dance. Am fortunate enough to be able to catch this lovely dance in Barcelona (but not the bull fight though - seasonal apparently, there goes my chance to see a real matador).

The as the sun begin to set, we went for break fast before starting our journey back to hostel. Despite our tiredness, we “don’t” really want to waste our precious moment in Granada, thus we took a night walk nearby the hostel. A perfect way to end our last day in Granada. Overall, TWO THUMBS UP for GRANADA.

Next - Barcelona

Credits : Wikipedia, Whatsonwhen, Specialtravel, The Star, Ladrondeagua