Granada, a city with much more than just the Alhambra

It has probably not escaped anyone by now that we like southern Europe and this time we steered the bundle towards southern Spain and Andalusia to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. We flew to Málaga on the sunny coast and took the train to Granada. We also stayed a couple of days in Málaga, which you can read about here, as well as took a trip to the spectacular Caminito del Rey which you can read about here. There is also an entry about the Alhambra here.

Granada is located about an hour and a half northeast of Málaga and is probably mainly known for the Moorish palace Alhambra. We spent a whole day there strolling around the beautiful parks and being mesmerized by the ornate palace buildings. You will also be able to read more about this shortly.

Granada is a relatively small city with around 230,000 inhabitants. Then there are always a lot of tourists on site too, but like this in October there was actually no danger. It is good to walk around the city and most things can be easily reached on foot. We rarely run to museums, but prefer to discover the place we visit by looking around ourselves or perhaps taking a guided tour.

Granada is truly a beautiful and pleasant city. Here there are grand as well as smaller and more subdued buildings, lush parks and exciting art everywhere. If you, like me, have a poor sense of locality, the tip is to take a map with you, as due to the winding alleys it is completely impossible to locate yourself. The GPS in the mobile phone is also not of much use as the narrow alleys mean that the mobile coverage does not keep up. But like I said, the town isn't that big so sooner or later you're back where you started and you've looked around in the meantime. Granada's architecture is an exciting mix of beautiful southern European style and the Moorish older style of building with lots of pinnacles and towers with their special decorations.

The city stretches partly up towards the mountains, which provides good leg exercise as well as fantastic vantage points. The most famous, Mirador de Saint Nicolás is a popular excursion spot day and night and Bill Clinton is said to have said during a visit that here you can see the world's most beautiful sunset. Since there are several good restaurants in the area, we were there several times and I am inclined to agree, the sunset was fantastic.

The area where most of the viewpoints are located is the old Arab quarter of Albaicín. The neighborhood was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List along with the Alhambra, which means that during a trip to Granada you can squeeze in two World Heritage Sites in one day. The area consists of winding alleys and small restaurants and shops.

Just before our departure, Henrik had heard about a fantastic meat restaurant, Negro Carbon so we looked for this one the first evening. We hadn't actually booked any restaurants at all, but fully trusted that as Swedish tourists we wanted to eat dinner long before everyone else and that there would therefore always be a table at seven or eight o'clock. It actually worked and here we managed to book a table the same evening. The pictures below can perhaps speak for themselves, but gosh, how happy I was that I chose clothes that didn't fit over the stomach, here they ate so that the stomach was in four corners! The restaurant's menu consists of meat in all its forms and a little (and I mean a little) side dishes. You can eat a regular entrecote or fillet of beef, but you can also choose their specialty steaks, with everything from wagyu beef, to Finnish cow, whatever it is. We chose a "certified ox" which was reportedly a "sharing for two". They come out to the table, display and weigh your piece of meat after which you are given a marginal space to protest the large piece which is then served along with some side dishes. For those wondering where the roast in the picture weighed, it came out at 1.1 kg, just enough for two. 🙂 A very nice evening with good food and drink, but I have actually eaten a little less meat since I came home from Granada. Hmm, wonder why?

If you don't just want meat, which is otherwise eaten quite a lot in southern Spain, you can visit one of the many Italian restaurants. We fell into Parole, a bit of a coincidence. The lunch places open a bit later but Parole opened early and despite being in the middle of the tourist district we decided to give it a go. The weather was nice so we sat outside on their nice outdoor terrace but slipped into the restaurant to look around, what a cozy place! After yesterday's meat explosion, I had a mushroom and truffle pasta which was absolutely fantastic and Henrik had a carbonara. When the waiter came out with a giant Parmesan cheese, we wondered at first how wrong we had actually read the menu, but it turned out to be for serving the pasta, fun and delicious!

For our wedding anniversary we had asked the hotel to recommend a restaurant and they suggested we visit Carmen El Agua, a cozy restaurant in Albaicín with spectacular views of the Alhambra. The food was classic Spanish but with an exciting twist and with many good and different flavor combinations.

No visit to Andalusia is complete without watching Flamenco. We therefore booked an evening with food and flamenco evening Jardines de Zoraya. The origin of flamenco is certainly not completely clear, but it is mainly associated with the Spanish Roma and Andalusia. Everywhere in Granada you can find advertisements for flamenco shows in restaurants and so-called "Gipsy caves". There are probably a lot of tourist traps here, but at Jardine de Zoraya we found a performance that we felt was reasonably genuine. Here there were not only tourists, but the majority of the audience were excessively enthusiastic Spaniards, something we took as a good sign. After a different dinner and performance, we walked home through the alleys with all the clapping and heels ringing lightly in our ears. Many photos were not taken, it was simply not possible to capture this experience in a picture, but the video below might give a small hint of what we saw.

Before we went to Granada, many friends told us that in Andalucia, you can't order a drink without getting a tapas. I, who love sangria and drank sangria until it almost poured out of my ears, however quickly learned that it is not really like that. If you order wine or beer, you get a tapas, but if you order sangria (like a typical tourist?) you will be without tapas. Might be good to know for the hungry.

After four nights in beautiful Granada, it was time to jump on the train back to Málaga where we would spend a couple of days before going home again. From here we took a trip to Caminito del Rey, which you can read about here.