Granada

We've had a full day in Granada. We arrived Saturday afternoon after trapesing around the city trying to find out hotel for 45 min's. We are right on the main drag here close to the major sights. We checked in, dumped our stuff and headed out to tour the Cathedral. This one houses the tomb's of the famous Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand. Their tomb's made out of the white Carrara Italian marble and is massive. Also included near their tomb is her crown, scepter and the king's sword. As well as some of her personal art collection. We then stepped into the cathedral. It has massive columns and again several chapels but the interior was painted white so it is much brighter inside then most cathedrals. Outside the cathedral we wandered through some old silk merchant stalls which now sell tourist trinkets or as chris called it Morrocan Tijuana junk. They all sold the same items. I could have gotten a nice gypsie outfit with sparkely attachments but Chris wouldn't let me :). It wouldn't look too flattering at social events and would draw all the wrong types of attention. We then hiked up the hill for about 20 minutes to St. NIcholas church which had a fine veiw of the Alhambra. President Clinton brought his family up here once for the view and for some dinner a local place with the same outstanding view. Yee haw.

Then the rest of the evening we wandered through some of the streets and got dinner. We've been eating late every night. Usually around 11pm or later and it's 1am or so when we get to bed. The Spanish stay up very late but I think we have adjusted. So far we haven't eaten too much "Spanish" food. We tried Tapas one night in Barcelona which was ok but most of it is seafood and as most of you know we don't do seafood. So it's been a lot of McDonalds and so-so italian pizza and pasta. I haven't seen the churro's and chocolate yet. Not sure I'd want them anyways since who wants hot, thick chocolate when it's 110 degrees outside. Chris said he saw some in Barcelona but maybe in Madrid we will get some if there's some ultra unusual cool spell, like temps in the 50's or something. Not real big on the ice cream here either. I think we buy water more then anything because it's so hot. We go through several bottles a day.

Sunday morning we headed up to tour the Alhabra, a Moorish palace. We had made our reservation to see it a few months ago as it's very popular and they only admit 8000 people a day in. Our scheduled time was 11:30 so we got there about 10:30 this morning and wandered the grounds before going in. Once in the palace we toured the various rooms and court yards. It had a lot of wood carvings, arabic scripts carved in stone and cool archways. It was taken over in the Reconquista and Queen Isabel took up residence here when she was in power. In the grand hall Christopher Columbus made his pitch to Queen Isabel for her to finance his journey to the new world and she agreed.

We toured through the fort on the grounds which had some great views of the city then decided to head back to the hotel for a late lunch (at the McDonalds next door) and write our blog here until it cool's off then tonight we will head back up the hill to the Alhambra again and tour the Kings gardens.

Will post some pictures of the Alhambra later. Tomorrow we head for Toledo about 4 hours drive north. At least we have Harry Potter book 6 on CD to listen to in the car to help pass the time.

Later,

Anneka and Chris