Granada Day 1

In this episode, I'll go through my experience of visiting Andalusia. We visited 2 cities

• Cordoba - the capital of Islamic Spain and most populous city outside Asia for several centuries.
• Granada - the last remaining strong hold of Islamic Spain.

One great resource I found to study about this period is the Flash Point History YouTube channel. It's a secular source, and the narration is very attractive. I was unfortunate to find out about this channel only after my visit.

We took our flights to Madrid, and travelled to Granada by train (protip: if you have a long distance train from Madrid, then the transit from the airport to Atocha is free).
If you want to visit the Nasrid palace inside Alhambra, you have to book well in advance (at least a month). If you missed it, you can go for the Granada card (40 euro). This includes a public transport pass (it's cheaper to buy this separately), city train tour without hop-on hop-off (which makes it useless), and a bunch of other non-interesting places. I would suggest skipping the palace and simply visiting the rest of Alhambra. As I will explain later, the Nasrid Palace is nothing but a house of a local ruler who was allowed by the norther powers in return for significant amount of gold.

There are some interesting Islamic structures called the Andalusi monuments. For 12 euroes, you can get a Dobla de Oro Gardens ticket, which is the best option in my opinion.

Ok, enough of pre-travel planning!

Day 1

We arrived in Madrid on Christmas day morning around 10. Our train to Granada was from Madrid-Atocha 1h away. We paid for the metro ticket without knowing about the free transfer. Our train was at 14:30, so we had a quick lunch (shawarma + burgers). Most shops were closed, so we had to settle for this place with a huge alcohol counter and 4 halal certificates :).

This mosque had around 200 people for Dhuhr (most I've seen in Europe?).

The Renfe train took us to Antaquera S. Ana. The train was comfortable, but there was no WiFi. Don't be surprised if people just go as a herd straight into the bus without any signs. I guess there are no buses which go anywhere else from here. We go in between mountain ranges through a pass that was taken by different Andalusian rulers through the centuries. There are ruins along the way which make you wonder how old they are.

Antaquera S. Ana looks like a stop in the middle of the desert.

The bus arrives in Granada a bit away from the center, so we couldn't print our public transport from the Granada card (yes, I bought them without proper investigation, don't make the same mistake).

We stayed in the Albaicin (Albayzin?) region, which is a steep climb. This is where the common people in the time of the Nasrids. There was even a connection from here to Alhambra for people to appear in courts, but this was later closed.

It was tricky finding our hotel. The restaurant guy helped us by ringing the bell for Moni in the address mentioned (how were we supposed to know this?). A lady came after 5 minutes and took us to the hostel which was next door. The check in instructions in Spanish were interesting. The only word we understood was key (which sounded like the Malayalam Chaavi).

There was a young lady standing in the kitchen listening to us. Once the hostel lady left, we talked to her. She turned out to be an Australian who just finished high school. She had completed 1 month of travel around UK, France and has 1 more month left before leaving for University. Being on a low budget, her meals were like the pasta she was cooking (with just some tomato sauce) :). It's interesting to see people travel on such budgets, something rare in Asia.

We went around the neighborhood searching for As Sirat Delicatessen. It looked closed, but an old man invited us in.

The place was filled with random products. I can't say it was particularly clean.

He explained that they sell fully organic products, but also served food. It was run by a lady from Granada. We had to wait for around half an hour to get our food. In the mean time, they brought us some delicious lentil soup and tea for free.

She said it was cooked without oil, so she poured a lot of olive oil in front of us. It was better without the oil ;)

We tried rice with meat and the Pastilla. The food was worth the wait!

Pastilla, a Maghribi dish.

She asked us if we were hungry (Weird question to ask when someone is waiting in a restaurant). Turns out, she gives large quantities if we're hungry.

Rice with meat. Delicious!

While we were sitting, 2 families came, and they all seemed to know each other. They all had dinner together on the large table. Since it was very cheap (the actual bill was only 13 euroes), I paid for everything (including the free stuff). More on this later.