The Alhambra-Last Day in Spain
The Alhambra is a 13th century palace (although it was initially a military defense and then later a palace) built by the Muslim rulers in Granada. This place was incredible. It was so unlike any other palaces/castles we'd seen before in Europe and I loved it. The gardens around the palace are so expansive, beautifully laid out and full of amazing plants and water fixtures. There were parts of the palace that were fairly crowded, but most of the gardens were quite empty and the day was like something out of a poem. We could hear the birds chirping, bees buzzing, water babbling and it was a perfect day with blue skies, puffy clouds, and enough shade that the hot Spanish sun wasn't unbearable. And a big bonus for my tired, pregnant self were the abundance of benches so I could take a couple of breaks!
After exploring the gardens, we headed more into the palace. The detail in all of the design was amazing. I was so blown away.
After exploring to our hearts' content, we headed out to find a kebab place for dinner. As I mentioned in a previous post, our best laid food plans were thrown off thanks to the laid back Spanish lifestyle, and this was another time our food plans were foiled. A lot of the kebab places close to us were closed thanks to mediodia (yes, siestas are real and most things are closed from 1 or 2 until about 5 or later). We drove further away hoping that Google Maps was right about a kebab place a little further out that was open still. It wasn't. So one of my only regrets of this trip was that our last meal in Spain was McDonald's... We so wish we'd planned better with snacks so we could have snacked more in the afternoon and been able to wait for dinner until later so that wasn't the case, but we didn't plan for places to still be closed at 6 and no signs telling us when they'd be open again. So that was very disappointing, but at least the McDonald's had croquettes (which were surprisingly pretty good!) so we did get to have some "Spanish" food. We had an uneventful drive back to our Airbnb and then spent the night packing as much as we could since we needed to leave early the next morning to get to the airport for our flight to Paris. I loved Spain! It was so fun hearing Greg speak Spanish all the time and be totally in his element showing me some of his favourite places. I was pretty sad that we were leaving because there were a lot of other things we wish we'd had time to see and we were really wishing we'd planned to just spend our full two weeks in Spain. We of course loved the rest of our trip so we were happy with it, but we just didn't want to leave Spain!
After exploring the gardens, we headed more into the palace. The detail in all of the design was amazing. I was so blown away.
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| Zoomed in look of the above picture so you can get a better look at the detail |
After exploring to our hearts' content, we headed out to find a kebab place for dinner. As I mentioned in a previous post, our best laid food plans were thrown off thanks to the laid back Spanish lifestyle, and this was another time our food plans were foiled. A lot of the kebab places close to us were closed thanks to mediodia (yes, siestas are real and most things are closed from 1 or 2 until about 5 or later). We drove further away hoping that Google Maps was right about a kebab place a little further out that was open still. It wasn't. So one of my only regrets of this trip was that our last meal in Spain was McDonald's... We so wish we'd planned better with snacks so we could have snacked more in the afternoon and been able to wait for dinner until later so that wasn't the case, but we didn't plan for places to still be closed at 6 and no signs telling us when they'd be open again. So that was very disappointing, but at least the McDonald's had croquettes (which were surprisingly pretty good!) so we did get to have some "Spanish" food. We had an uneventful drive back to our Airbnb and then spent the night packing as much as we could since we needed to leave early the next morning to get to the airport for our flight to Paris. I loved Spain! It was so fun hearing Greg speak Spanish all the time and be totally in his element showing me some of his favourite places. I was pretty sad that we were leaving because there were a lot of other things we wish we'd had time to see and we were really wishing we'd planned to just spend our full two weeks in Spain. We of course loved the rest of our trip so we were happy with it, but we just didn't want to leave Spain!
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