Jasmine's 2011 Trip: Granada

We had a day to explore Granada, as our train was leaving to head back to Barcelona that evening around 10 pm. We figured we would have enough time to see the Alhambra, a Moorish palace and World Heritage Site. We couldn't check our backpacks in at the train station (a precaution some of the stations in Spain have taken since the Atocha train station bombings) but you can check them in at the ticket office of the Alhambra.
We bought our tickets and had sometime before we could get in (they only let in a certain amount of people each day, once in the morning, and again at 2pm). We walked down a path that led to a plaza located at the base of the palace. The plaza is located at the south end of a World Heritage site called the Albaicin.
The Albaicin is a district of Granada comprised of preserved buildings and narrow winding streets, remnants of the Moorish rule of the middle ages (prior to the forced conversion of Muslims to Catholicism in the sixteenth century). It was beautiful, take a look! We had lunch, and wandered around the little shops. I couldn't pass up haggling with a Turkish shopkeeper, for earrings (2 pair for a little over the price of one!)
We went back to the palace and walked the grounds. The Alhambra has an interesting and very complicated history. I recommend wiki-ing it but to make a long story short, it was originally a palace/fortress built on a high hill overlooking the city by the Moorish Sultans in the mid-fourteenth century, over a citadel that had been there since the ninth century. Later, catholic rulers built a palace within the fortress. Over the years, sections of it were torn down to make room for newer buildings, nearly destroyed entirely (by Napoleon - tradition has it that a crippled Spanish soldier risked his life to put out all the fuses), used as a prison, forgotten, and then re-discovered by poets and artists, notably Washington Irving. The Alhambra has also undergone a series of sometimes awkward renovations over the years (Victorians attempted similar renovations in the nineteenth century with Edinburgh Castle, in order to make the castle more "romantic" and fit with an image they had of Scotland at the time).
We had misread our ticket and were not able to get into one of the palaces, but were still able to see most of them.
It had been raining off and on for most of the day, but it finally cleared up. We decided to head down to a beautiful church we had seen from the towers of the Alhambra, a little further into the city. It was getting sort of late and we were about to head back when gypsy woman approached me and tried to give me a flower. I said no and started to walk away. She followed me and grabbed my arm. That is when Jenny came in told the woman to leave me alone. Suddenly all the gypsy women became very upset and called her a bruja! It was really annoying. A taxi driver later told us that it was just a ploy to get money, they also often offer to read your future, but I had actually been more concerned about having something stolen. One of the tips to avoid pickpockets in Spain is to watch out for groups of women or children who get too close. Anyhow, the trip back to the station was uneventful, and we were off to spend Jenny's last few days of vacation in Barcelona.

The hostel we stayed in was in an area under heavy construction, and we weren't sure what to expect of the rest of the city...