Trip journal UK and Spain (September 21 – October 12, 2011)

Part 7: Alhambra & Granada October 6

October 6 (Thurs): We participated in a day tour to Alhambra*, Granada. It took over three hours for our tour bus to reach our destination @ around 10:00. Our group was allocated an admission time of 11:30 for the Nasrid Palaces (all other sites have no such requirement). After Alhambra we were driven to the town center for lunch and sightseeing on our own at 13:00. We loitered towards the Granada Cathedral (Cathedral of the Incarnation) which was closed to the public in the afternoon. After a quick lunch (sandwiches) we went to the bus pick up point (a local emporium) @ 15:30 for the return journey to Seville. Our hotel has an open kitchen (actually it’s a service apartment extension of the hotel - Murillo) we bought some foods from a nearby supermarket (MAS) for our dinner. Perhaps the dinner prepared by my wife smelled so good the next morning I killed twenty-one Spanish flies (all in the bathroom except one in the living room)!

*The Alhambra is a Nasrid "palace city". It was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1984. It is certainly Granada's most emblematic monument and one of the most visited in Spain. It consists of a defensive zone, the Alcazaba, together with others of a residential and formal state character, the Nasrid Palaces and, lastly, the palace, gardens and orchards of El Generalife. The Alhambra occupies a small plateau on the southeastern border of the city in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada above the Assabica valley. Some of the buildings may have existed before the arrival of the Moors. The Alhambra as a whole is completely walled, bordered to the north by the valley of the Darro, to the south by the al-Sabika, and to the east of the Cuesta del Rey Chico, which in turn is separated from the Albaicín and Generalife, located in the Cerro del Sol. (source: Wikipedia)

Equipment used: Olympus Pen E-P3 – Olympus M. Zuiko Digital 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 II (35mm equiv. 28-82mm), Panasonic Lumix G Vario 45-200mm F4.0-5.5 (35mm equiv. 90-400mm) and Nikon 52mm Circular Polarising filter.