MacsTravel Blog

We took the bus from Sevilla to Granada, 25€ for the two of us. The ride involved a few detours due to construction but the highways were blissfully free of farm equipment.

Our apartment was downtown in the historic centre, and we decided on taking the #33 bus from the main station into the core, which would leave us a 10 minute walk. Total cost: 2.80€. The bus was absolutely jammed and split between harried tourists toting space clogging suitcases and frustrated locals trying to enter and exit the bus without sustaining permanent damage to their shins as they navigated the aisle and its suitcase obstacle course.

At the Cathedral stop we joined most of the other turistas in squeezing our way out of the bus (more shin bashing) and rattling away in different directions, staccato suitcases dragged over cobble-stone sidewalks.

Predictably, the apartment was conveniently located down a side street, into a hidden alley, up a flight of concrete steps and down an unmarked side street. Regular blog readers will assume at this point that we engaged in a keystone cops routine, stumbling around Granada in a futile effort to find our apartment.

While that would be a more than fair assumption, we surprisingly found the building with little trouble! We remedied that bit of good luck by standing out in the front for 15 minutes waiting to meet our host Paco before the door opened and a bewildered Paco, who had been inside the whole time, enquired as to why we hadn’t come in using the code he’d sent us.

We entered, checked in and were shown to our apartment: a charming, well equipped space with a separate bedroom. The building had been carefully restored and is owned by Paco and his parents, who also live there. It was a fantastic base for our four days in Granada. We highly recommend Aljibe Rodrigo de Campo.

After dumping our luggage we went out for a walk down to Plaza Nuevo and along the riverbank, admiring the views of the Alhambra up the steep cliff side.

After a while, we decided to wander up into the Albayzin neighborhood, the old Moorish quarter, in search of San Nicolas and the famous plaza which provides spectacular views of the Alhambra, particularly at sunset. The Albayzin is somewhat reminiscent of the narrow and twisty streets of Bario Santa Cruz in Sevilla but for one key difference: it is hilly! In fact, except for a few streets in the core, if you are walking in Granada you are walking up or down a hill.

We found San Nicolas and a lookout jammed with people sitting on the ledge and milling about the Roma street vendors and performers. It was a fantastic view, if a bit chaotic.

With roughly an hour to go before sunset we made the call to find a table at one of the restaurants hugging the hill just below San Nicolas and settled in to celebrate Valentine’s Day with the Alhambra slowly turning red and gold against the snow capped backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains and the joyful music of the Roma musicians above us.

It was a fantastic evening. Welcome to Granada.