5 September 2019

What a great day!! So much to tell.

We drove to the car park at the Alhambra and walked back down through the forest to Grenada old town. It was so cool, literally! (Walking back a few hours later , our guide said on really hot days, the locals come here to escape the heat. It’s several degrees cooler. )

We wandered around the old part of town searching for “cafe con leche” (coffee with milk). We found this guy taking his bath for a walk!

And this wonderfully talented group of girls only, playing great music and being escorted by the Policia. Not sure why!

The shops around the tourist spots are bulging with exactly the same souvenir stuff as the one next door, but imagine our surprise when we came across this one with its own unique style of marketing. Apparently ancient Grenadians also used boomerangs.

We met our tour guide and headed back up the hill to the entry of Alhambra. She was amazing. She smiled (despite the rudeness of some in our group), told jokes and filled our heads with historical facts and some not so historical facts. She was a true believer in the “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story” school of thought. However, she did always point out the fact from the fiction during her spiel just in case.

The Alhambra itself was stunning.

The views were spectacular.

And the gardens were divine.

Needless to say, we loved our afternoon at the Alhambra. Grahame was pleasantly surprised and pleased that I had insisted we visit!

We left Grenada and headed 2 1/2 hours to Seville.

Once again the scenery was amazing! Stark, rocky and dry!

We had left the mountain scenery and travelled for ages through olive plantation after olive plantation.

En route, I booked our Airbnb for the night. Little did we know what we were in for. Our host met us in a little narrow street in the centre of Seville. There had been a slight mixup regarding parking. However, unperturbed he grabbed his skateboard ( longboard) and a set of keys and took us to a different property with a parking station nearby.

Once parked, Yuri loaded our bags on his board and took off at a speed on knots. Grahame and I jogged along beside him trying to keep up. I was in fits of laughter, imaging how we must look, chasing Yuri and our bags down the street.

We arrived at our alternate accommodation and imagine our delight when taking in the interior decor!

Anyway, Yuri skateboarded off into the distance, whilst we made ourselves at home!

We headed into the centre of town to find some dinner and get a feel for the place.

After dinner, and still feeling reasonably energetic we made our way to Plaza d’Espagne to check it out without the crowds.

We returned to the centre of town for a nightcap before trying to remember where we lived!! We noticed two men standing near us both wearing exactly the same “Keens” branded sandals as us. Grahame’s in brown leather and mine in blue cord matched exactly. I made a flippant comment about footwear and next minute we had struck up a lengthy conversation. About 10 minutes in, the two wearing brown leather “Keens” discovered they had a common acquaintance. The English guy had an old school mate living in Dunedin ( NZ) who was the same bloke that played in Grahame’s soccer team at the World Masters 2 years ago!

Small world!