Road Trip to Granada! You live and learn

So yesterday was a national holiday in Spain - where they celebrate Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas.  So naturally, it's a great reason for the Spanish to party it up and take the day off from work and school! (although the exact history and interaction of Columbus with the natives of the Americas isn't exactly something to be proud of; with thousands slaughtered and girls aged 8-10 years old were sold into sex slavery - but hey that was a long time ago!) Anywho...we had off and decided that it would be a great opportunity for a day trip to Granada because me, Lenny and Sarai had gone in the summer of 2009 and were so impressed with it we really wanted to go back and sniff it some more.

Night shot of the Alhambra

Granada is not too far from Malaga with a rich history that began with the rule of the Muslim empire, and they built it as a fortress; and was later taken over by the Catholic Monarchs where they built the Palacio within the Alcazar's (fortress) walls. 

We gave ourselves Tuesday night to leave and Wednesday night to come back.  With a little research we figured out that it would be in fact cheaper to rent a car for the day (17€ split between all of us) than to take the bus (10€ each way).  But along with this bizarre reason for a holiday I think came some bad juju for us.

Issue # 1: The car we rented was namual, but neither me, Nick, Lenny or Sarai know how to drive a manual car. But this girl Cassie said she was totally down to come with us and drive because she learned how to drive  stick in Germany. Sweet. Problem solved!

As it turns out everything together: the car rental + estimated gas price (courtosey of google travel) + the night in the hotel split between the 5 of us would come to 23€ a person! Totally clutch!

But then....
Issue #2: Took us 30 minutes to find the kiosk for the rental place RecordGo

Issue #3: Apparantly a reservation number wasn't enough for this company so we spent an hour trying to have friends of friends email the confirmation link to the kiosk people. This took an hour and a half!
But after 5 phone calls, two other Auxiliares at home helping us, it went through and everything worked.

Finally signing the paperwork for the car!

Issue # 4 Cassie had told us that she could drive stick - but that wasn´t true. =/
Luckily she knew someone who could drive stick so he came with us too and drove the whole way.

Issue # 5: We were 2 hours behind schedule and still had to pick Sarai up and Alex needed to go home and pick up clothes and stuff.
And let me tell you-navigating around Malaga Centro is quite complicated without a GPS with all of the itsy bitsy streets of cobblestone and one ways galore, but we made it!
 
And at this point - if you're keeping track we are 6 people in total.  Our car seated 5 people.  So we were  bit crammed in the backseat. But it was all good and we made it without a hitch!

Four of us crammed into the backseat
which was pretty spacious, considering!

Still not in the clear though!
Issue #6: We had only booked one room in order to save money.  But when we arrived all the power in the hotel was down (shit you not!) so the doorman had to go upstairs with us to open the door manually because the key cards didn't work.  This put a damper on our mood because tht made it 100x more difficult to sneak people in to our room! But we made it work. 

That same night we went out to a place called Chupiteria 69 where they have over 100 shots all for 1€ to let loose. So at least we all got to have an end of  long day drink and shot to celebrate our safe arrival to Granada.

List of 100 Shots

After our night out we headed back to the hotel to deal with sleeping arrangments. Since the hotel room only had two twin beds pushed together to make one double bed -Lenny with his keen eye spotted mattresses down a corredor and we decided to grab 2 of them for Cassie and Alex to sleep on.

Jackin mattresses - we so hood

Huge hill we had to climb to get to the Alhambra

The next day we woke up at 10:30 so we could get showered and head to the Alhambra. 
And of course with our luck the tickets to the Alhambra were all sold out =[
But we didn't go all the way to Granada and walk up a mountin at a 45degree slope to not get to see the Alhambra! So even though we couldn't get into the palace itself, we searched high and low to find a way to at least see the gardens! Luckily Lenny doesn't go anywhere without his guidebook and it told us that there was a seperate (not that well known) entrance into the Alhambra which was free!

Stealthy entrnce we found
that you can get into the gardens for free!

Even though we couldn't get into the Palace we still got to see the beautiful views of Granada since it sits at the top of the mountain and overlooks the whole city!

Beautiful view of the City of Granada from an art exhibit
we snuck into because it was only open to EU
 citizens - so we told them we're from Malaga

detail work throughout the Alhambra on
the walls and in the ceilings all done by hand!

The details and perfection take my breath away
every time!

But despite all the hitches we faced we still managed to have an enjoyble time - maybe next time we'll plan a little better on a national holiday and stay more than 24 hours because this beautiful city has a unique charm that would be nice to experience more in depth one day.

The six of us finally getting to enjoy the beautiful
views of Granada