Back to Granada

So I never got around to finishing my story about how Granada was, in particular the Sierra Nevada.

Well, it was amazing. Really amazing. And a little scary, to be honest. It probably took about two hours to get there from where we were staying – and on the drive there, you could see the massive shadow of the Sierra Nevada looming ahead, covered half in mist and therefore looking sinisterly like a massive shadow.

As we started the ascent up the mountain (in the car, of course – the top peak is massive, you know) we started to lift up out of the town. Now we’ve all seen these movies – they’re usually either a Bond or a 1940s/50s movie where the man drives the classic convertible around the mountain roads like there is no tomorrow and the heroine sits in the passenger seat, hair bound by a scarf, or flying freely (but still styled, you’ll note) behind her, dark glasses covering half her face, cigarette (on holder) between her fingers, looking glamorously gorgeous. Well, that is not how I looked!

I spent large parts of the journey clinging onto anything I could, yelling “slow down” and “oh my god” as we whipped precariously around bends, me trying to fix my eyes on anything other than the 2000 meter drop looming just centimetres from the outside of my passenger door.

So when we got as far up as you can in a car, we had reached the ski resort area, where you could catch a telecabina further up the mountain. Now, much as I do not wish to admit it, even the telecabina scared me slightly – what if it falls of while we’re on our way up? I tell you, having a vivid imagination does a girl no good.

But we got in the telecabinas and headed further up – as I peered from the window, I noted a number of crazies actually climbing the mountain. Lunacy.

We didn’t go all the way to the top as that required a series of further chair lifts and we just didn’t have time, but it really was great up there. Granada is just covered in mountains dotted with little white houses in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and fields of olive trees in their neat little rows, at varying angles, marking higgledy piggledy lines across every inch of landscape as far as the eye can see.

After having spent a few hours looking down from higher up the mountain, I coped much better with the downward drive and on the way back, we took a slight detour to do a drive by (no guns involved) of the Alhambra. We hadn’t booked tickets in advance, so didn’t get to go in, but it was massive. A great fortress of redness protruding from the equally red, dusty earth.

Granada seems like an amazing place, with its olives and figs and almonds, its arid landscape and hot, dry temperature, its huge mountains that turn into highways of skiers in the winter, while people at the bottom are still in shorts and t-shirts.

I’d definitely recommend it.