travels with toby

I’m continuing my series of posts about our trip to Spain in May. If you missed my first two posts you can find the first one here and the second one here. My favorite story of the trip is told in my first post. The story of a chance but serendipitous meeting that still makes me smile and likely will for some time. It was nothing short of amazing!

Ah, Granada. Such a lovely town. You can’t help but fall in love with Granada.

We arrived on the train from Madrid to enjoy two nights in Granada. The photo below is a scene of a small village on that train route with what looks like a castle on the hill:

No trip is without hiccups and we experienced our first one on our first train ride. I thought I bought first class tickets and in the past a meal was always included on longer routes. It turns out there is a new class which is the one that I bought, elige confort. I would have had the option to buy a meal if I had used RENFE’s (national railroad of Spain) site but I used a third party’s site and it didn’t have that option. It all worked out and we did get breakfast and now we knew that we had to do a similar thing on our last train ride from Málaga to Madrid a week later because I purchased those tickets on the same third party site.

It was fun to see the expanded train station. When we were there in 2010 it didn’t have as many tracks and there is a new building now. It was just as crowded as the last time however. There was a long line to get a taxi into town and when we left to go to Málaga, it was crowded inside with passengers awaiting their trains. Granada is a popular place!

We did get that taxi to our hotel, got checked in and unwinded. After a bit we went to find food. I had read that Granada is a great city to enjoy the tapas experience. I’m here to tell you that it’s true. We went to two places on Calle Navas first stopping at El Fogón de Galicia where they served us a deep-fried something with mustard sauce with our drinks. It was good.

I was craving a salad so we headed down Calle Navas and found Nuevo Restaurante and the salad I wanted was on their menu. We headed indoors because there weren’t any tables on the patio and right away a gentleman asked “para comer?” (do you want to eat?) and when I said yes he led us through the restaurant and out the back door to another patio. It was lovely and there was a row of orange trees with an abundance of oranges. There was one other American couple with I’d guess one of their mothers having lunch. They were having the same salad I ordered. Oh my, it was super!! And just what I wanted. The service was excellent too with friendly wait staff who let me speak Spanish. And oh yes, we got served a yummy tapa of some sort of beef with skinny potato chips. That was delicious too!

After lunch we did a little shopping in the Alcaicería then relaxed at the hotel before going back out to a flamenco show at La Alboreá. What a great show!! There was one guitarist, one singer and a male and female dancer. All were fabulous! So much emotion, so much passion in every word, every dance step and every strum of the guitar. It’s really hard to relate in writing or photos, you really have to experience it for yourself so if you get the chance, definitely see a flamenco show! This theatre had tiered seating so it seemed there was no bad seat. Hubby purchased the guitarist’s CD and we’ve enjoyed it at least once. He was just great!

After the show we went to Los Diamantes that I mentioned in my first post. But I’ll mention it again because we really enjoyed that place. We started with drinks and they gave us a tapa of fried boquerones(anchovies). We also ordered the gambas al ajillo(shrimp in garlic sauce) and a customer next to me gave me his free tapa of mussels because he didn’t like them. Okay! Then we got another free tapa of delicious mushrooms after hubby ordered another beer. We also went to another of their restaurants in Plaza de Bib-Rambla the next day and it was just as good. These photos are included in the food gallery above.

This is a main street in the center of town, Reyes Católicos, heading towards the cathedral where Ferdinand and Isabella are entombed:

An interesting feature of this town are the tiny streets you come across. But beware, if you’re using a map app, your blue dot does weird things when you’re in between thick, tall walls. The mosaic pedestrian areas are just gorgeous!

We didn’t get to see a whole lot of Granada but we enjoyed mostly everything we did. There were a couple of restaurants our last evening where we had odd service. For example, at the first one the bartender didn’t have a corkscrew for my wine and asked if I wanted something else? But I didn’t want anything else so off he went to look for that corkscrew. We thought it odd that a bar didn’t have a corkscrew. We weren’t offered a tapa and we didn’t stay long. Overall we enjoyed seeing Granada again from a different perspective. And of course I was thrilled to be back at the Alhambra again. What a treat! Stay tuned for my next post about it. And thanks for following along 👍