October 15, 2009
It’s a traveling day. I’m beginning to dislike the process of moving from one place to another. You lose time and it’s stressful.
But we still have the entire morning to tour Granada more and we use it to walk up the hill across from the Alhambra. There are guide posts along the way with an audible number to allow you to play the appropriate information from your rented audio guide. The guide that we do not rent. If they had one for life’s journey, I would have gladly rented one. Can you imagine having a guide like that? For instance, if you run your car into a fire hydrant there would be a number printed on said fire hydrant which you would push and it would say, “This is the site where you did not pay attention. It will be a sore spot for the rest of your life because the city will charge you a fortune to pay for the repairs.” Along the way we stop at a history museum and an old palace. Don’t ask me their names. They are pretty and their inner courtyards are cool and they have benches. Have I talked about benches before?
We take a right at the top to view the Sacramonte barrio. Many of the homes are just holes dug into the side of the hill, sort of like a hobbit’s home. There are many flamenco and classic guitar cafes located here. We enter one of these caves not as a tourist but only to buy drinks and potato chips by Lay, my favorite, but the chips are not like ours back home. These are cooked in olive oil and they are crunchier, so yummy it’s good for my tummy. They are called Artesanas.
We retrace our steps and cross over to the left side of the main road. There is a cathedral and small village located on the top of the hill. It is called Albayzin. Can you recognize the Moorish name? Moorish names begin with AL. We have our “dinner” there and then slowly walk back down the hill. Once in town we sit on another bench. We have time. We have lots of time. In two hours all we have to do is collect our bags from the hotel and walk 3 blocks to the bus stop. After a long sit we decide to get our bags and spend the rest of the time waiting at the bus stop instead of the bench. Good thing. No sooner had we reached the bus stop but the bus shows up. The schedule indicated it wasn’t going to show up until another 35 minutes, but then again the schedule was in Spanish. Obviously there was something lost in the translation. We could have avoided all of this trouble had we caught a cab but the cab fare would have been 30E compared to the bus fare of 3E and we are Lonely Planet travelers, cheap, tuff, and dumb.
It is not clear sailing yet. While we are waiting for the plane, Emi discovers that we are actually flying into Girona, a city outside of Barcelona. We run back to the check-in in a state approaching panic, but all is not lost. The people working for Ryanair calmly state that Barcelona is close by and with each flight there are buses waiting to take people into the city. It doesn’t cost much and it only takes about an hour. They were right. There are many others like us. We all file out of the plane, collect our bags, walk the block to the ticket booth and voila we are in the bus and on our way. Within Barcelona we catch a taxi and within 15 minutes and with the aid of the taxi driver’s gps we are at our hostel. Our room is three flights up with no lift, but the room is apartment-like and comfortable. It is past midnight and we are beyond tired. Just a normal day of traveling.
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