Granada: The Alhambra and Cafe Opera 5

The main reason for visiting Granada was The Alhambra of course. This grand Moorish Palace resides on top of a hill overlooking Granada. I had bought tickets well in advance and printed them out in the bookstore the night before. This enabled us to take the "short cut", up Cuesta de Gomerez, which was basically right outside our apartment door.

Right up the street was Puerta de las Granadas and it was a nice short walk to the "Justice Gate", the original entrance to the Alhambra. Because we'd printed out our tickets beforehand, we could use this gate to access the palace. Our designated time for Palacios Nazares was 9am, so we had some time to check out the Alcazaba, a large looming fortress and tower, the oldest part of the Alhambra.

In Arabic, Qa'lat al-Hamra' ("Alhambra") means "red castle" and in the morning light, this structure, which dates back to the 13th century did indeed look like a "red castle". If you wind your way though the passages and walkways, then climb up to the tower, you'll be rewarded with a stunning view, which also highlights the strategic location of the Alcazaba. The view is wonderful and is well worth the climb up the tower........hopefully, it will be a rather clear day and the view will be like this.

You need to get in line for the Palacios Nazaries, the Moorish Royal Palace complex. There are so many features of the palace; like the Courtyard of the Myrtles; basically the central courtyard.

The Mocárabe (Stalactite Work) is amazing as is the symmetry. This is the ceiling of the Grand Hall of the Ambassadors, the wooden ceiling is made up of 8,017 wood inlays and is room itself is a perfect cube.

You could spend hours here just admiring the tile work and visiting places like the Courtyard of the Lions.

And while a sort of fatigue set in; I started looking for random and whimsical features to balance out the perfection of the place, I never got tired of the view. Near the middle top of the photo is the Church of San Nicolás, at the bottom is the Paseo de los Tristes (Walk of the Dead Ones), once the funeral procession route in the city.

We exited the palace and passed through some quaint gardens and then a series of towers. This is the "Torre de los Picos" (Tower of the Points).

Ending up at Generalife Gardens.

The Court of la Acequia is especially pretty.

As is the view of Palacios Nazaries.

After exiting, we headed down Bib Ramblas and ended up where we started.

We then headed to Mercado Agustin, but other than buying some really olive oil were quite underwhelmed....I mean, the jamon here was cut by machine! By this time, we needed a bit of a break. Down the small street next to the market we found this place.

We had intended on just getting some espresso here, but were feeling a bit puckish as well. So the Missus decided we should go ahead and have a Bocadillo as well, which sounded just fine to me. So She had me order a jamon and an anchovy (!) bocadillo. One of the things we really enjoyed about this little shop were the bottles of roasted garlic infused olive oil.....which folks just poured like crazy on their bread.

That Jamon Bocadillo must have been pretty good....because I never even had a shot at it!

The Anchovy version was too fishy-oily-salty for the Missus, but I kinda liked it with the garlic olive oil.

It was nice and briny, man that infused olive oil was good. We quickly learned that it was okay to pour like a gallon of that stuff on your bread. There were some interesting photos in this shop; when I exited the restroom, the older woman sitting at one of the tables pointed to the photo of what looked like the Emperor of Japan on the wall and said something to me in Spanish. Sorry to say I didn't understand.

We really enjoyed this little shop and would return on our way to the train station as we left Granada. Folks here seemed more friendly (and folks in Spain were pretty friendly as a whole) than anywhere else in Spain.

Cafe Opera 5
Ivaro de Bazán 12
Granada, Spain

Comments

[kat]

wonderful sights!

[Kirk]

The view from the Alhambra is so beautiful Kat!

[Ed (from Yuma)]

Great post. They say the Alhambra's design is mathematical. That ham sandwich looks pretty yummy too!

[Kirk]

Hi Ed - Yes, perfect squares, and all the designs....a mathematician's dream.

[Junichi]

Hmmm. The portrait looks like it says husband/wife of Kusano Mutsumi/Kiyo. Did a quick Google search but came up empty.

[Kirk]

Interesting Junichi! A little mystery....