I am posting this post from La Linea because I haven't gotten the chance to report on our trip to the Alhambra. In case you're wondering, we've gone to Almerimar, Torre del Mar, and Marbella before coming here.

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Our trip to the Alhambra proved to be much more eventful than the eventful trip we had planned. We had intended to take a bus to Granada (the city where the Alhambra is) directly from Torre del Mar in the morning and take a bus back to Torre del Mar via Malaga in the afternoon/evening. It didn't go like that.

We started the day off with a bang by missing the bus that took us to the main bus station. It was a risky enterprise anyway, because we probably wouldn't have made the bus to Grenada anyway. Luckily there was a bus that came right after the first going to Granada that was going to Malaga! So we took that one and luckily (again) made it to Malaga in time for a bus going to Granada (they run every hour on the hour) and we were able to make it to Granada by 11 a.m.

Then we had to catch a bus that met up with another bus that went to the Alhambra. That took us a while, and it was one o'clock before we were actually outside the gates of the Alhambra. Our ticket was for 2:30. So we had a cheap lunch for an expensive price and got in line to get into the building (you have to enter at the time specified on the ticket).

The Alhambra was pretty nice. I mean, we've seen fortresses and palaces before, but to see them all rolled up in one place was unique. But it wasn't just fortresses and palaces. There were many gardens (which we'd never toured before), piazzas, and many other assorted buildings that didn't go with fortresses or palaces, but rather with both combined. I've attached a photo of my parents standing in front of the Alcazaba (fortress). There is an Alcazaba in Almeria which we toured, and was rather like this one, though without all the gardens.

The return trip was equally eventful, if not more so. We caught the bus back to Malaga OK, but had a really tough time figuring out how to get to Torre del Mar. Eventually we got one to "Torrox", which is supposedly where we came from. We found out that Torrox is a town further down the coast for Torre del Mar, but the bus stops at many small stops from Torre del Mar to Torrox. We needed those small stops because that marina we were at was out of town a ways. Nothing like walking two kilometers at 10:00 p.m., right!? We didn't have to walk, because there was a nice man on board the bus that told us where to get off. We made it back to our boat very uneventfully and spent a very restful night there

Anyway, I've blogged long enough. My dad wants to check his e-mail. I'll post another blog tomorrow about how we got here.