Travel: Spain 2014 | Part 8 - Granada Day 1· yc.sg

Day 8 - June 15

We had an 11.58am train to catch from Seville to Granada, and we probably woke up around 10am… We couldn’t find a taxi stand after walking for a long time (one of the main roads which were supposed to have a taxi stand was closed for works!). Turns out, there was a taxi stand right in the Alameda de Hercules neighbourhood, so we walked all the way back, and finally got a taxi. We made in in time for the train :P.

Here are some random shots taking during the train ride when we weren’t asleep:

We arrived at about 3.00pm, as scheduled.

Granada is the 4th city we are visiting in Spain!

We had liaised with our host, Olga, and she had arranged for a friend of hers, Rafa, to come pick us up. It was about a 15 minute drive, before we had to get off and walk for another 15 minutes or so uphill.

Walking uphill with her luggage under the scorching sun is not Sheryl’s favourite pastime.

We finally reached the cave, where we will be staying! Yes, we are staying in a cave in Granada!

Here’s the actual room we booked on Airbnb.

We finally reached the place! There were some hiccups as we were given a room outside the cave instead of the actual cave initially, but a quick call from Rafa to Olga fixed it, and we got the cave :)!

The cave is very cold! It felt less than 20°C despite the scorching heat outside! We were already loving the place just for this reason :P. Here’s a walkthrough of our cave-house:

We soon headed out to explore the place. We had also booked a Segway Tour with Play Granada at 8.30pm, so we had ample time to explore before the tour.

Just outside our cave-house was a nice trail with pretty nice views. We took a short walk along it:

We got hungry soon enough, and decided to look for some place with food… Along the way were lots of nice walkways:

We soon found a place to eat in some remote corner of the neighbourhood:

Can’t remember what this is called, but it’s a super tasty pork dish!

The food was really good and we were happily full after our meal. We then hanged out with the owner and one other staff who worked there, along with an Italian customer (who seems to know the place very well) who kept sharing his travel stories with us. Also, the World Cup was on, I can’t remember the exact match but I believe it was Switzerland vs another team… It was a really nice small little restaurant in a remote corner. We were the only customers along with the Italian man :)! They also gave us lots of advice and told us to be wary of pickpockets on the streets.

The owner, who couldn’t really speak English, was a very kind man. He offered Sheryl and I a sweet pear drink, and light snacks while we were watching the match for free. He had earlier heard that we did not want any alcoholic drinks and made sure to let us know that the pear drink was non-alcoholic.

Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of this place :(. If anyone knows, please let me know on Twitter @Wysie_Soh. Thank you.

We still had some time before our Segway tour, so we went to explore the other parts of Granada. It was quite a walk down from where we stayed to the main part of Granada, which had a lot of bars and restaurants.

It was soon time to go for the Segway Tour. We met at PlayGranada’s office (a really cool place!), and were briefed on the safety… Our guide then proceeded to let each of us try out the Segway. Sheryl and I had tried it previously in Singapore so we got use to it pretty quickly.

Our guide leading Sheryl during the practice…

Our guide leading me during the practice…

Then off we go! Here’s a video of the Segway Tour I did (it’s sped up by 2x), I hope you enjoy this!

At one of the rest points, our guide helped us to take this shot:

Here’s a group shot our guide took of us (yeah it was a small group, just 4 of us!):

The tour was really fun and we highly recommend it to anyone visiting Granada! Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the guide :(.

As you can see from the video earlier, we ended the tour when it was already quite dark (and cold). We decided to end the day and headed back to the lodging. It was a long, cold and quiet walk back and we thought we were lost a couple of times, but thankfully we found our way back to sleep in the cave :)!

That’s all for now :)!

Other parts in this series: