Wanderung 17

No Rain in Spain, not even on the Plain!

April-May 2008

Sunday April 27th 2008

Noon position: Passing the Sierra Nevada Mountains en route to Grenada, Spain.

Bob:

Well, sleeping the clock around certainly put me in better shape to continue our drive than I had been the previous day! We had a simple breakfast of milk and cereal plus some Muesli breakfast bars and were back on the road by about 9:15. We continued along the coastal road a little farther past Alicante and then we turned basically due West to head for Granada. The climate changed rather remarkably as we very gradually climbed from the near-sea-level coastal road up to the central plateau of Spain that seemed to be about 3,500 feet in that area.

Monika:

I woke up a couple of times during the night. Once when two cats had a rather loud argument, another time when a train rumbled by. In the morning, when I walked outside, I found that there was a rather pretty railroad bridge not far from our place. But altogether I got a rather good night's rest. After checking out, we looked around a bit and found the hotel was rather pleasantly located with a terrace overlooking the Mediterranean in the far distance and the mountains rather closer on the other side. We rolled down the mountain, it did not seem as far as last night, and went on. Past Alicante the road turned westward. At this time, the road could lead to either Granada or Almira. I was surprised to see the signs for Almira also in Arabic. But when checking on the map, it turned out that Almira has a ferry going over to Africa.


 

Bob:

Although the interstate went up a broad valley for a long time, we continuously saw small mountain chains on either side of us, and eventually we had to wind our way around and through them. In the mountains we started to see trees other than citrus orchards. I think I saw stands of beeches that were clearly being cropped at one point, and farther on we encountered pine forests. The land clearly seemed to be getting generally wetter with the increased altitude, and we finally saw some kind of grain, which we guessed was winter wheat, being grown in a few fields.

But just after I had made a pronouncement about at least not having to "worry about snow", which I meant as a joke, I suddenly saw those little cautionary snowflake signs on each side of the road. At first I thought God was just teasing me a bit, or maybe trying to teach me to be more careful about making blanket pronouncements like that, but then son of a gun if snow capped mountains didn't come into view. Well, you could have blown me down with a feather! In fact, for the last hour or two on the final leg to Granada we drove in the valley along one edge of a huge ridge of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains. Gosh, who knew? Do Spanish folks ski on those slopes?

Monika decided to take the direct route into Granada rather than circling around on the Autovia (Interstate highway), and for any of you who may be tempted to retrace our steps, for heaven's sake TAKE THE AUTOVIA! Predictably, we got lost, completely turned around, and ended up heading North out of town before we finally realized our error and retraced our route to the downtown district. Then we spent another hour of quality time getting lost and frustrated in the maze of narrow, often one-way streets that characterizes Granada.

I ended up turning the wrong way down one-way streets at least twice, and once again the Spanish drivers were very polite about it, honking to notify me that I was doing something REALLY STUPID and would DIE SOON unless I backed out of the street. The second time I as I backed out I was being pursued by a bus coming head-on at me, and that was quite disconcerting. You never saw anyone drive in reverse gear as fast as I did when faced with a charging 10 tons of Metro bus! Say what you will about a charging rhinoceros on the African savanna, that bus far outweighed any rhinoceros and I lost no time in getting us backed up out onto the main street where the bus could get around us. Whew! So by the time we found the Hotel Senator Granada and signed in, I was ready to have our usual dinner of sandwiches and collapse on the bed a while.

Monika:

Going west we steadily climbed to a plateau of about 1000 meters. The region seemed to be rather arid with little vegetation except were there was irrigation. Of course, there always was the odd castle or watchtower on many a height. In the cities there were pretty churches and also out in the country there were some beautiful houses. What I found interesting, were houses that were dug into the mountain. It reminded me of a hobbit hole. But in hot weather they probably would stay nice and cool.

Suddenly there loomed snow covered mountains in the distance. Somehow, I had not expected snow covered mountains in southern Spain. But looking at the map, I saw that the Sierra Nevada just south of Granada could reach a height for 3500 meter (or 10,000 feet). No wonder, there was snow on them thar mountains!

We reached Granada around 3 PM. I had my Spain map, which had the normal yellow blob where Granada was, and the Granada city map, that did not reach as far out as the Spain map. We had found the street where our hotel was on the Granada map, but I still had to interpolate on how to get from here to there. I chose a road coming in from the east, thinking it would get us to the circle road around Granada from where I could find the street to the hotel.

But after twisting on a narrow two-lane road downhill, we came into Granada with me not having a clue where we were. Here I was with two maps and a GPS and couldn't make heads or tails out of it. Street names were hard to come by and the Granada map did not point north/south, so it did not align with the GPS. Bob finally came to a stop, took a look at everything and got us going in the right direction. Luckily it was a Sunday, so driving along the street that normally was reserved for buses and taxis did not seem to bother any one.

We finally got onto the street where our hotel was supposed to be and I saw the hotel. This, of course, did not mean, we could drive to the hotel. We probably spent about 15 minutes driving through narrow one way streets, until we finally found one that led to the hotel. We parked the car, checked in, and signed up for a parking space in the underground garage. It cost 15 Euros a day, but for the peace of mind, that seemed a small price. To get to the underground garage, we had to take a car elevator. It let us off at the second sub-basement, we parked the car and went to our room.

Bob:

But after my nerves un-jangled a while, I was ready to walk (but not drive!) around the city. We rambled across the almost-dry river next to the hotel and in the general direction of the Alhambra fortress. Along the way we saw something that nonplussed us completely: a series of at least15-20 book stalls set up along a major avenue, all selling different varieties of books on different topics in Spanish. It was bookstores, and only bookstores, for about 1/4 of a mile along the street and I have no idea why all those bookstalls were set up or who was sponsoring the whole event. I would have dearly loved to really look at some of them, but they all were, predictably enough, in Spanish so I had to give up that idea.

We continued on to the foot of the hill on which the Alhambra is located, took some pictures of the view from the bottom, and took a different route back through the old town area toward our hotel. Granada is not that large a city, so although driving in it strikes me as insane, walking in it is an eminently practical way to get around. The streets were thronged with people of all ages. I particularly noticed a large percentage of young folks, couples, and young parents with their small children. I had missed the young folks on the cruise ship, which tended to have the Old Fogy crowd, so it was pleasant to be among all the younger generation for a change.

Many of the old buildings in that section of town also had a very intricate architectural style that I liked very much. Monika also pointed out the inlaid pattern or designs made with the street paving stones. The stones were much smaller than the cobblestones used in, say, Old Town Alexandria in our area, and the light and darker colored stones were placed in patterns somewhat reminiscent of the Portuguese sidewalks in Lisbon and the Azores, but in shades of tan rather than the stark black-and-white stones used by the Portuguese. It was 23 degrees Celsius (80s Fahrenheit) and all together a very pleasant walk. So we returned to our room, worked on the computer and our puzzles a bit, and turned in for the night.

Monika:

After all the tortuous city driving, Bob really had to relax a bit. Through bookings.com we had found the "Granada Senator Spa Hotel" a four star hotel for a reasonable price. The room was nice, and the minibar was free. So Bob had a nice cold Fanta, while I had some of my special Lidl wine. After kicking back for a while, we felt ready to explore the city.

Walking up one of the streets, we found it lined with stalls of different bookstores. Unfortunately (or fortunately as far as time, space, money is concerned) all books were in Spanish and we did not really know what was what. So we proceeded on into the city. There were a lot of people slurping icecream cones. I finally could not stand it anymore, and Bob bought me a nice ice cream cone. Thus fortified, we walked up one of the main streets, the the Plaza Nuevo and from there to the Calle de Dorra, where the hill upon which the Alhambra rests rises from the river Dorra. This is supposed to be a very romantic street, and we certainly enjoyed the small bridges that go over the Dorra but not the many tourists that crowded the street.

On our way back, we passed the Cathedral and then went through small streets with lots of little tourist shops that were open although it was Sunday evening. But we were tired, so we returned to our room for another good night's sleep.


 

Copyright 2008 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
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