MacsTravel Blog

Our four day visit to Granada finished in sunshine as we had two glorious days of blue skies and temperatures in the mid to high teens. It was great weather for walking and exploring the city.

Winters in Granada can be notoriously fickle with temperatures plunging below zero on occasion. We are only 30 minutes or so away from the ski hills of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. This winter has been atypically mild. Summers here are a furnace, with temperatures routinely over 40 degrees Celsius.

We decided to explore the Capilla Real (the Royal Chapel) and the Catedral de Granada (Granada Cathedral). 6€ entry (you can by a Granada Card which saves some cost if you visit a few additional sights) and there are very good audio guides that you can download on your phone to listen to as you tour.

Both are active religious sites, and photos are not allowed in the Royal Chapel (burial site of Ferdinand and Isabella). The Royal Chapel is fascinating and contains some very impressive works of art including a Botticelli. The Cathedral is the second largest in Spain (after Sevilla) and has Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque elements as you would expect from a 200 year construction project.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Alcaizan and along the river, popping into the Gran Taverna for tapas and snacking on empanadas.

We stopped at the apartment to freshen up before heading back out for a Tapas Tour we had booked with the Spain Food Sherpas company.

We met our guide Katia and the other two couples (one American, one British) and set out to explore the food scene in Granada.

We have had great luck with these kind of excursions in the past, and this one was similarly excellent. Katia moved to Spain 20 years ago from Russia, is a former chef and speaks a number of languages. She had both insider knowledge and an outsider’s perspective and took us through an interesting and delicious tour of Spanish wines, olive oil and small plates. Andy and Tracy (the Brits) and Jamie and Emily (the Americans) were good company and we all shared some of our favourite experiences so far in Andalusia, which was great.

We visited three different restaurants and wandered through the old spice market area. We started at the trendy Michelin recommended Almeda, lingered at Casa Castaneda for an extended dive into the world of Spanish olive oil (Spain is, by far, the top producer of olive oil in the world) and finished at the venerable Chikito, an institution in Granada. The walls at Chikito are lined with signed photos of famous celebrities who visited over the years. We were informed by Katia that Maradona (Diego) was one of these famous visitors. All three women in the group heard “Madonna” and there was some excitement, then temporary confusion, but we got past that.

It was close to four hours before we said our goodbyes and wandered back to the apartment.

I woke up Saturday and decided to do a quick load of laundry. Paco had indicated that the laundry room was just off the magnificent central hall with its trickling fountains and soft, soothing lighting.

I lugged our small load downstairs and surveyed the washer and dryer with growing apprehension. Unfamiliar Spanish terminology and hieroglyphic icons were splashed across the panels.

I loaded the washer and pushed some buttons and set the timer on my watch to return in 45 minutes. Upon returning the washer was still in the rinsing stage. I had inadvertently selected the eco setting, where beads of water are gently drizzled over your laundry, which in turn is nudged ever so slightly with the slow turning of the cylinder. I returned again an hour later: it was still in the very early stages. It dawned on me that we would have to extend our reservation by several days if I was to wait for the laundry to finish. Rather than do the sensible thing and fetch Robin to help me out of this mess, I pushed more buttons and twirled more knobs with limited success. I tried jumping to the spin cycle, which the washer begrudgingly accepted, but after an eternity of gentle tossing and massaging the load was still not done. I tried turning it off, but the door would not open.

45 minutes later the load was finished. I moved the laundry to the dryer and selected the “mix” setting. For the next three hours, the dryer gently fanned air over the clothes with limited effect. It dawned on me as I unloaded the dryer that our clothes had spent the day in some sort of “laundry spa”. Our clothes were refreshed, rather than clean.

Leaving the laundry behind we headed out into an absolutely beautiful day, appropriate as it was also Robin’s birthday. As we walked into Plaza Nueva we came across a group of seniors dancing in the square to traditional music, a cheerful sight and one that speaks to the longevity of Spanish people.

We had a fabulous walk up into the hills of the Sacromonte district to visit the Cuevas del Sacromonte (the cave homes, some of which are still in use).

This is the Roma district, and the Museo Cuevas del Sacromonte does a great job of introducing the visitor to the history of the area, the Roma people and their ties to Granada (including the evolution of flamenco music) and the cave houses themselves.

At one point in the early 1960’s there were close to 4000 of these caves occupied. After severe rains and flooding, the government ordered the evacuation of most of these homes, another chapter in the continued displacement of the Roma people.

The neighborhood clings to the arid southern hillside and faces the lusher northern hills. Views of the Alhambra are spectacular.

After visiting Sacromonte, we headed through the historic district and wandered around in the area south of Plaza del Carmen where we ambled down to a lovely park along yet another river.

The sidewalks and park paths were jammed with locals enjoying the evening paseo. We stopped to get a oreja de chocolate (chocolate ear) for Robin: I pointed at it in the bakery and asked for the corazon de chocolate ( chocolate heart). I got some strange looks. You be the judge.

We finished the day at Wild Food, a trendy vegan restaurant around the corner from our apartment. The (likely apocryphal) story is that there are so many pork dishes in Spanish cuisine because Ferdinand and Isabella were trying to encourage Jewish and Muslim residents to convert or leave. Tonight, we pushed back against the systemic prejudice that is the Spanish love of ham.

The veggie croquettes and Vietnamese rolls were both excellent.

We were wiped: we had done over 20,000 steps and climbed the equivalent of 40 flights of stairs (granted, most of those were doing laundry). It was a great day celebrating Robin’s birthday, and a great end to our visit to Granada.

Tomorrow we head to Malaga to pick up our rental car before heading to Ronda and the White Hill Towns.