Granada!

Ella took me to Granada for my birthday. It was so much fun! We arrived late Thursday night, but still had time to go out for tapas and seafood. We went to a place called "Diamantes" right off of Plaza Nueva that was really tasty.

The next morning we went to the Alhambra first thing. The palaces were spectacular. Moorish Architecture is just incredible. One of my favorite things was the Myrtles Court with the beautiful reflecting pool.

I also learned that the exquisite ceiling of the Hall of the Ambassadors was made from jigsaw like pieces-- over 8000 of them.

The grounds were beautiful, the palace was amazing, and I'm blown away by this totally different style of building. It's incredible. My favorite spot was the Arabic baths with perfect acoustics in one spot. It sounded like I had a microphone and great speakers. Ella and I could whisper to each other from across the room.

After the Alhambra, we decided to go to the grocery store for lunch. We realized on our way, however, that the way to the grocery store was almost the same as Rick Steve's walking tour! So we did most of the walking tour on the way to the grocery store and had a lot of fun wandering the back alleys and streets of Granada.

The Cathedral was impressive. It towered over the rest of the buildings, with a relatively simple, triumphant baroque facade. There was a fun market just to the side of it that was the site of an ancient fortified market during the Moorish kingdom.

The next day (My birthday) we walked through the Albaycin, the moorish quarter. It was beautiful! We enjoyed a smoothie on our way to lunch. We got a big sampler platter that was very fancy.

After lunch we went to learn how to make arabic sweets. They were really tasty! While we worked on them, the host helped us see the difference between spices and ground and whole spices. It was a much bigger difference than I expected! The one that was the biggest deal was nutmeg. The whole nutmeg smelled so much better than ground nutmeg!


 That night we went to a flamenco show! It was so much fun. This was definitely a birthday for the books. Ella really out did herself again.