Granada: Day 1

Tuesday we drove about 6 hours to Granada in the Andalucía region of Spain. We stopped for a quick bite to eat in a tiny little town (Cullar), selecting the pizzeria because we figured we could order a pizza for lunch…good plan, but they only serve pizza at dinner time, so we were stuck with a ham and cheese sandwich. The bread was so tough neither of us was able to eat much of it. The lady running the place was very, very nice and spoke no English at all. We asked for mustard and she came back and explained that she didn’t have any mustard but she had something which was like mustard – turned out to be ketchup!


We checking to our wonderful hotel right on a main street in town and hopped the bus to the center of the city. After locating the Tourist Information office (this is the mandatory first stop in any city we go into) to obtain bus maps and city map, we purchased our tickets to see the wonderful Alhambra tomorrow morning.

With that all arranged, we wondered over to the cathedral which surprised us both by how big it was – very tall, with huge columns, many alcoves and a massive main area and incredibly ornate alter. It reminded us of St. Peters in Rome – that’s how big it was.  It was quite attractive as well.

It was as impressive outside as inside but it is hard to get a sense of it walking around it in the city as it is jammed in by buildings on all sides.  The next day we saw it from a distant hill and it was obvious how much it towers over the rest of the city buidlings.

Granada has an interesting history having been a seat of power for the Moor’s for about 250 years as the Catholics slowly took over the rest of Spain. Then in 1492, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand laid siege to the city and eventually won it – she liked how it looked. (1492 was a busy year for her!) It was Isabella who commissioned the cathedral to be built although it wasn’t even started until after she died in the early 1500s and it wasn’t finished until the early 1700s.

Next to the cathedral is the wonderful Capilla Real  (left picture below)– the ornate chapel Queen Isabella had built to be her tomb (and Ferdinand’s, of course). It was quite amazing to be looking at their lead coffins lying in the crypt knowing it had been just there for almost 500 years. Her daughter, son-in-law and baby grandson are in the crypt as well.

Then we walked around the bazaar market (right picture above) behind the cathedral.  The specialty souvenir here was the inlaid wooden boxes.  They came in all sorts of sizes and shapes.