Espana Dias Seis y Siete

Day six we are headed to Granada but decide to stop in Cordoba on the way to see the Mezquita (which is Spanish for Mosque) there. I'm so glad we did because it was pretty awesome. What was cool about it was the mixture of Islamic and Christian architecture because the site was built as a temple, and then turned into a cathedral and then a mosque. It reminded me of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

El Sigh....I want to go back to both places now.

We then made our way to Granada. Within the first 10 minutes of our arriving into town and playing our favorite game of "try to find the hotel" with the navigation system, we ended up going onto a two way street that was only wide enough to be a one way street. Apparently this issue is solved by placing a light at either end of the street so while one direction is stopped at the red light, the other direction goes. Seems like a system that should work, but we found that on many of the streets you would have a red light, turn the corner to find another red light. Apparently that's what happened to us, and we found ourselves going up a hill with a very large bus hurdling it's way towards us with no intention of stopping. So Michael pulled over towards the sidewalk as far as he could to get avoid a head-on collision with the bus. Unfortunately.... there was a very high sidewalk to our right that none of us saw and the side of the rental car got scraped pretty bad. And sadly the only memento we brought back with us is the bill for $700 to fix the damage. Deana is fighting the charge, but we don't really know how it will turn out just yet....

So that was not good, and it started our time in Granada on the wrong foot. Speaking of feet.... I had somehow acquired blisters on the bottom of each of my pinky toes the size of a dime that stuck out about an inch from the toe. Let me reiterate that the blisters were on the BOTTOM of the toe, so that made walking very painful and difficult. And because I love you all..... Here is an extreme close-up picture of one of my toes..... because it needed to be documented for posterity or something......OUCH!!! (oh yeah, I also had a blister on that 2nd toe on that foot)

Yeah so.... We needed to drown our sorrows in whiskey and gin and tapas that evening. Since I don't drink.... I tended to frown whenever a toast was being made: The next day went to the cathedral were King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel are buried.

And then we went to the old silk road caravan which is now an office building:

And then we headed to The Alhambra..... (Cue the angels)

It was so beautiful and grand and there was some absolutely amazing architecture:


And beautiful gardens:

And gorgeous views:

The next day we got up early to get on the road so we could tour around the La Mancha region at our leisure and make it to our castle for the evening. Yep... we got to spend the night in a real castle. I'll tell you all about it in our next installment...