La Alhambra
Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Sun 29 Aug 2010 20:59
Having collected the
car (somewhat battered but the aircon worked!) and done a quick booze trip to
the local supermarket (cheap beer and VERY cheap wine) we set off to find the
road out of Almerimar to Granada. The car hire guy had suggested we use
the motorway rather than the local roads as it's quicker and more
straightforward, so we were expecting a couple of hours of boring motorway
scenery,but were very pleasantly surprised to find this not to be the
case. The roads were excellent, traffic sparse and the scenery was
stunning. The roads skirted around the edge of the Sierra Nevada and it was odd
to see snow on the peaks in the height of a very hot summer.
We had a moment
of panic when a beep sounded in the car and a light appeared next to the
fuel gauge. We had checked the fuel level before leaving and as the needle
was three-quarters of the way across to the right we thought we had
three-quarters of a tank full. However, as the warning light had come on
we assumed it wasn't working, and cursing the crap Spanish car hire firm managed
to find an exit with a petrol station before we ran out of petrol. When we
checked the fuel gauge again, the needle had gone all the way to the left,
apparently now empty, until we looked closer and realised that the gauge worked
from right to left,and it was in fact showing full! The tank had only
been one quarter full when we started, not three!
Der!!
Anyway, with no
further excitement we followed the excellent signage around Granada's equivalent
of the M25 and arrived at the Alhambra at lunchtime.
We spent a very
enjoyable afternoon wandering around the extensive site, which includes several
buildings as well as the palaces and some beautiful formal gardens full of
attractive water features. The tickets are sold with a time-slot for entry
to the Palaces and ours was not till 6 p.m. so we had plenty of time to wander
around and see everything else and to just sit and enjoy the gardens before
rounding the visit off with a tour of the Palaces.
Palace
shots:
