The directions seemed a bit intense, so we just got a taxi to the place where we could catch a bus up to our hostel. We caught one of the busses, which were like mini-vans (kind of like the Tel Aviv bus-taxi things). It drove us up the hill and through the old part of the town, to Carrer Tina, our street.
This part of town was cobble stone on the streets, narrow passages, and a general genuine vibe about the place. The hostel itself was a family-owned and run guest house, with a really nice family at that. The daughter, who spoke English, helped us check in and showed us to our dorm room. She also offered us coffee. Mmm, coffee (we were a tad tired from the night train journey).
We got settled in, freshened up and headed out and up the street, to a lookout point at a church called St Nicholas. From here there was a great panorama view of the Alhambra. The morning air made it even nicer; it wasn´t too hot yet and there was that great morning mist about that changed the lighting of the place.
We headed down then to Plaza Nuevo in the touristy bit of town. We found along the way a bakery at which we bought some tuna pastries and a glazed doughnut. The doughnut just looked so good that I had to have one. We also bumped into one of the Australian girls that was staying at our hostel in Barcelona. Funny, that.
We walked around for a bit, popping into shops and the such, and then when it was finally nearing 2pm we headed back to the end of Grande Via and we caught a bus up to the Alhambra. We picked up our ticket from one of the yellow machines they had set up in a little room on the end, and we headed into the place.
We started at the gardens, called the Generalife (for some reason). General life? I just don´t get it. Anywho, the gardens were quite cool. They were filled with a maze of hedges, although it wasn´t quite a maze. The hedges simply formed the walls of a grid of ´rooms´. The doors between these rooms were pointed archways cut into the hedge. Quite cool, you know; solid walls of green.
There were ponds and things, and it was all quite pretty, but it was all a lot of the same and the heat got to us at some point. So, we headed into the first little building thing. This little house complex had several large rooms with gardens set in the middle, and it led eventually to another walk back towards where we entered the gardens. On the way there was a thing called the water steps. It was basically a series of flight of steps, with water flowing down the sides in little aqueducts carved into the hand rails. It was quite cool.
We then bought some chocolate from a vending machine. I got Mars and Em got Twix, I believe. Yum. I haven´t had chocolate like that in a while. While we were sitting there, chomping away at our vending machine goodies, Emma posed a problem. This problem was pretty much the riddle from Labyrinth in which there were two doors, one lying and one telling the truth, and the main character had to determine which door to go through with just one question to ask them.
Damn her, because that put this thing on my mind for the next however long it was until the answer came to me. I couldn´t stop thinking about it. We went into a large square building with a middle that was hollow and circular, like an inverted colluseum almost. We sat there for a bit, out of the heat.
Eventually, we made our way to the Alcazaba, the fort. It was a bit boring, being just towers and stuff, and with lots of dust. Though while were going through I finally found a solution to the riddle. Yay for the power of logic, and...um...Karnaugh maps. What is the solution to the riddle? Well, you´ll just have to figure it out for yourselves! No, no. You can see it in the picture, silly.
We still had some time to kill, so we stopped and got some beer. We sat in a shady area and drank and listened to music on my Ipod. The time slowly ticked away and we found ourselves finally at 6pm or thereabouts. We went into the Palace of Nazrid, going through a bit of a queue.
Inside the palace it was quite cool, very extravegantly decorated with frescos and mosaics. Unfortunately, most of them weren´t in the best of conditions. We were both a tad tired and hot at that point, so we went quickly through it all, and made our way out of the grounds eventually.
The walk down the hill was nice. It took us down a wide shady path that was covered in canopies of deep green, the sun breaking through at points and shining beams down to the ground.
Our next goal was to find food for dinner and then head back to the hostel. We looked all over for a supermarket but they seemed to be all shut at that time of the evening. We walked for nearly an hour, all the way down the Grande Via and through the city, and finally found an Asian food mart. We picked up some instant noodle bowls and some tuna.
By this time we had really walked far and got ourselves a tad lost. We were pretty much off the maps we had. So, we just hailed a taxi and ot them to take us back to our place. We ate dinner, used the net and then hit the hay.
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