We woke up early to see the Alhambra. It was a chilly morning, but worth it because the site was practically empty. Traveling in the off season definitely has its perks. The main attraction of the Alhambra is the Nasrid palaces- full of fountains, reflecting pools, intensely complicated Escher patterns, elaborate scrollwork, Arabic inscriptions, etc. It’s details are awesome, although I had trouble imagining the use of each room (how did people adminstrate back then anyway?). It was also really cool to see the Arabic inscriptions, because they had survived. The palace was inhabited by some very Catholic monarchs, but the religious Islamic inscriptions survived because the monarchs didn’t recognize it as religious writings!
We wandered through the gardens and the Alcazaba and then got really hungry-tired. We ended up on a sidewalk café wondering how to ask for a menu, just sunning ourselves and getting sleepy. Afterwards, we shopped around for a while, but couldn’t find a pelleteria. We had another cup of tea at the hostel and used the Internet, then caught our train to Madrid.
When we got to Madrid, we decided to walk the 1 kilometer to our unconfirmed hostel. It wasn’t the best idea, because it was all uphill, but it was cheap and easy to navigate. The hostel we wanted was difficult to locate/ring, so we went around the corner to the cat’s hostel. It was loud and more people than we wanted, but it had a women’s dorm, was cheap and we were very tired.
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