getting wet in grenada

How do you get a ticket for the Alhambra? That’s easy. Just get up at 6:00 and head on up to the ticket booth which opens at 8:00. Turns out that about 6000 out of the daily 7,800 tickets are sold on-line (something called internet). Unfortunately this requires a little ‘advanced planning’, meaning that we had to buy the tickets on the day of the visit. Thank goodness for ipods which help standing in lines for 90 minutes. Still it was well worth it. We have mentioned the Moorish invasion a few times throughout the web log. The Moors invaded in 711, led by Tariq across the strait of Gibraltar (Jebel al Tariq = Tariq’s mountain). Within a few years, almost all of modern Spain and Portugal were under muslim control. Took the Christians about 780 years to get the peninsula back, bit by bit. The last holdout, was a guy named Boabdil, who was the sultan of Granada. He realized the inevitable and capitulated to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, shortly before they backed an Italian explorer looking for spices in India. Today, the Alhambra contains the remains of the Sultan’s palace, along with one built by Fernando and Isabel’s grandson. Ferdinand and Isabella themselves are buried in the cathedral down the hill in old Granada.

In Granada we also encountered a lot of Roma (gypsies), many of whom live in caves on a hill facing the Alhambra. Also, lots of rich Spanish kids who come down to hang out in the Albayzín neighborhood and smoke hooka pipes. Also, we encountered a lot of rain, more than we had expected. So much so, we are off to the ¿sunny? coast in Nerja…….