Last Full Day on the Costa del Sol

Not that we don’t like to sleep in on vacation, but the Costa del Sol region of Spain has had us getting up early almost every day and today was no exception. We left the condo at 7 am to make the 1 hour and 45 minute drive to Granada in order to be there for a morning tour of the impressive Alhambra. We don’t typically take guided tours but we wanted to get the most out of our time at this runner-up for one of the modern wonders of the world. We had a great guide, Alberto, a born and raised local Grenadine who had honed his English speaking skills while studying in Dublin as a college student. He spent 3 hours filling us with historical facts, religious details of the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish faiths which factor in so importantly to the Alhambra’s history, poetic translations of the Arabic inscriptions accompanying the artistic detail on the walls, anecdotes from past important guests such as Washington Irving and Claude Debussy for instance, horticultural details from the extensive gardens of the 850 acre grounds, and even threw in several so-called legends of the place from the last 900 years. Every moment was fascinating and the information came so fast and frequently that it was hard to take every bit of it in. Even without words to listen to, every view, each sideways glance, and all the visual stimuli of the architecture and the surroundings made for a rich treat for the senses. We hope the photos here will give you some idea of what we experienced today. Tomorrow we’re off for Barcelona and our final, exciting, adventures in Spain.