it’s alhambra or nada in granada, spain

Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín, Granada

UNESCO World Heritage Site!

patio de los arrayanes (photo from wikipedia)

i took a day trip from málaga to granada. (don’t confuse granada with grenada, the country in the caribbean that ronald reagan invaded.) granada is about 90 minutes from málaga on a very crowded coach bus on which nobody observes the assigned seating.  it’s a hot and stuffy ride until a spaniard yells at the driver to turn on the A/C. the main reason to go to granada is for the alhambra, a palace and fortress complex that is a UNESCO world heritage site.

alhambra only allows 6,600 visitors a day. yeah, only. ha! you can reserve tickets on their website or wait in line at the ticket office and hope that you are among the 2,000 people who can buy unreserved tickets that day. this is a very useful morsel of information that my S.O. only came across while reading the guide book at the málaga bus station while waiting for the bus. according to lonely planet, people need to start lining up at 7 a.m. during the high season to make sure they can get a ticket that day. crap! we didn’t reserve tickets and there was nothing we could do about it. i played my nintendo DS virus buster game on the bus and tried not to think about how pissed off i will be if i make the trip to granada and don’t get to see the alhambra.

so, did we make it? were we able to get tickets? stay tuned for more when the saga continues…