Today we went to the Alhambra. Simple enough one would think, right? Well, it also involved checking out of our hotel at 730am, going to get our car which was parked by my apartment and me going to get my passport…since I forgot it… and its kind of important for going to Gibraltar and Italy… so we made it out of the hotel, to the car and successfully retrieved the passport, then it was on to the Alhambra. We got directions from the hotel and had a go. Luckily, we found it without one problem, parked the car and were on our way.
Our ticket time for the Nasrid Palace was 9-9:30am, since there can only be 350 ppl there at a time. So we go to the Palace of Carlos V, thinking it’s the Nasrid Palace because we didn’t do our homework and mom goes “this is it?!” it was pretty unimpressive. The exterior was a square and the interior was a circle. Tricky. So we head over to this Alzcaba place, which is one of the three parts of the Alhambra and the guy taking tickets turns us away and tells us to go to the Palace, I try and tell him that we already went, but he assured us we hadn’t and that we could come back once we had gone to the palace. So we made our way back to the “palace” and only then realized that we had actually skipped the Nasrid Palace, the most impressive part of the Alhambra, because we thought it was just the one room that was the palace of Carlos V. So, lesson learned; do your homework before you visit the Alhambra, or get a map or something!
An entire tour of the Alhambra takes about 3 hours. About an hour in each part: Generalife, which is the gardens and patios, Alzcaba, which is the old fortress part, and the Nasrid Palace, which is self explanatory and has some of the most intricate designs I have ever seen in my life. I don’t even think the Vatican can compare to the detailed carvings of the columns. Unfortunately, one of the most famous rooms, the Salon des Leones, was under restoration, so we did not get to see the fountain of the 12 lions. The basin was there beings restored but the lions had been taken elsewhere to be restored.
The large reflecting pools are incredible. Mom says they built them to reflect light, whatever the reason, they are absolutely gorgeous and since they are perfectly calm they are as smooth as glass and the reflection is as accurate as the original. Alzcaba was less interesting. Climbing the towers offered incredible views of the Granada but other than that it didn’t have much to offer. The Gardens of Generalife were quite beautiful, and its November. I can’t even imagine how beautiful they are in the spring and summer; but then again the hoards of tourists probably ruin it. After our 3 hour tour we returned to the car, and were luckily not stuck on some island…
We decided to take the scenic route to Málaga instead of the quicker route. The coastal route took us past Salobreña, where I was lucky enough to go to the beach earlier in October. After miles of scenic coastline, white towns tucked away on the sides of mountains and curvy roads we opted to take the more main highway the rest of the way. This is where it got interesting. Up until this point mom had printed directions and a map to every place imaginable, in every combination possible. I say up until this point because while I was looking for directions to our hotel outside Málaga I came up a bit shorthanded… there was no map and there were no directions.
Our hotel was in some little touristy town called Torremolinos that my school director, Pilar, described as “horrible”. Not off to a good start. It was chosen for its proximity to the airport and not its likeness to Myrtle Beach, who would have known. So, the daring adventuresses we are we set off to Torremolinos without the slightest idea of where we were going. We drove and drove, went through tons of round abouts, all in search of the tourism office where we might find a map. Finally, we see some signs and follow them. After a few twist and turns there are no more signs and mom is convinced that we have missed the Office. We park the car with the intention of hiking up the hill to ask for directions at one of the nicer hotels we are NOT staying at. As I’m getting the reservation information together mom yells “Elizabeth, look out!” and I see a HUGE tour bus coming down the hill, right towards my open car door. Instinct tells me to slam the door and get out of the way. Unfortuanately my purse didn’t make it all the way out of the car and is now shut in the door. I figure it’ll be ok there, until it decides to go limp and turn upside down, spilling EVERYTHING into the middle of the road. The bus is now parked, in the middle of the road as I scramble back to the car to pick up my cell phone, camera, ipod, and other valuables that are now strewn across the street. The bus driver is laughing as I finally get everything BACK in the bag. As he passes he said something, which I assume was humorous, to me in Spanish and drove off…followed by at least six to seven cars as I had managed to cause a mini traffic jam. Excellent.
So we hiked up the hill and went into some swish hotel to ask where the tourism office is and the man at the desk curtly replied something to the effect of “baja la calle y a la derecha” which means “down the street, on the right” so we set off back down the hill, about halfway mom decides she’ll walk back up to get the car, I’ll continue walking. So I make it almost to the bottom of the hill and mom shows up, I hop in and we drive to the tourism office, which was a good 2-3 minutes away in the car. Thank you nice hotel man for telling us that it would have been kind of far on foot. I walk up to the office while mom parks illegally on the side of the road and it says the office closes at 14:30. WHO CLOSES AT 14:30?? I look at my watch 2:50, we missed it by a mere 20 minutes. Which, after all the driving and wrong turns and bag spilling seems like mere seconds. I locate our hotel on a sun-bleached map hanging in the window and decide that we can make it, damn it, we can make it. Back in the car we go and on our way to our hotel, which better be some luxury resort at this rate.
We make it about as far as we can go on the road, and turn up a street that looks to be fairly residential. Mom makes a U turn and then I see the street name and it sounds familiar, as in that it’s the street our street is off of. We make another Uturn and continue up the road. I see our hotel in the distance as well as our road Sistema Iberica, so we turn. NOT. It’s a one way road. Reverse, back on the main road wondering how to get to the elusive mecca on the other side of the houses. So we take a turn or two and end up in front of the hotel. Then we park down the road a bit and walk to the hotel. At this point we are laughing so hard because it has been so terrible finding the stupid place that it better be a nice place. We walk up to reception, we are greeted in Spanish. Mom asks a question in English and BAM, the receptionist is British. Saves the day. About 1,374 questions and inquires later and we are unloading bags and heading to our room, which is, if I may say, pretty nice. Its no Ritz or Four Seasons, but it will do the trick. The gregarious receptionist suggested that we tour downtown Málaga, and since that wasn’t one of the ‘already planned days’ we headed into the city via the train since the station is about a 3 minute walk from the hotel.
Once in the city we found some old church, and then some other old building. And something else old that was falling apart, and then there was MANGO and ZARA and more shopping! Hooray! Málaga has shopping, because it is a CITY, not a town, like the ones we have been visiting all week. To be fair, yes we did go see the cathedral and other educational things. The Cathedral was started in 1528 but never finished, and in 1765 they decided to restart construction, much like La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona… except that they ran out of money and just left it, so one of the bell towers is completed and the other is cut off about mid-column. This is why it is affectionately known as “La Manquita”, The One-Armed One. Interesting. After the 3 hours of walking around the Alhambra early this morning, the stress from not being able to find the hotel and the hunger from not having eaten all day we found ourselves pretty exhausted so we headed back to the hotel at about 6 to catch dinner at 7.
What was supposed to be a quiet traveling day turned out to be a very hectic day indeed. And tomorrow promises to be just as interesting as we cross the boarder and head to Gibraltar. Hopefully I will remember my passport ☺
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