Ed and I were eager to visit the Cathedral because 30 years ago we had done Christmas Eva midnight mass there. The children and I remember how cold it was (coming from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia it was cold) and waiting outside for the church door to open. We found a phone booth to stand in to wait, so the two kids and I piled into it to wait.
The cathedral is one of only two Renaissance churches in Spain, the other one is in Cordoba (which we had seen). Granada's cathedral is the second largest in Spain after Sevilla's. While it had started as a Gothic church, it was built using Renaissance elements, and then decorated in Baroque style.
That day for lunch Ed & I had stopped in a sidewalk cafe for a light lunch and then did a little window shopping. The shop owner was very kind to hold up this beautiful Spanish hair comb - really a work of art.
Ed and I walked by this coffee/tapas cafe and just had to step in. There were hundreds of hams handing from the ceiling and little white umbrellas (cups) hanging from the ends. It took me a minute to figure out why the cups were there - to keep the ham juices from dripping on the heads of the customers….
It was very sad to think this was our last night in Granada and next to last night in Spain…. Ed and I had selected a restaurant that we hoped would provide us with a memorable celebration dinner.
The first thing we noticed when the group arrived were the number of locals having a tapas…but not like any we had seen before. This restaurant was know for their Churros con chocolate (more later on that)
The Grand Finale!
Our group just had to share one order of Churros con chocolate - this is like a long fried donut dipped in a very thick chocolate pudding….just a few calories….
The next morning we checked out of the hotel and hauled all our stuff to the parked cars in the garage next door. Our parking bill for the two cars for three days was 120 Euros - almost $160!
Once the cars were loaded and everyone seated, we just had to find our way out of Granada to the highway north to Cordoba where we were dropping off the rental cars. We had tried to plug in the train station in Cordoba but that failed but it was take the city center. We were off and going well until we missed a turn then the GPS system got confused and decided to take us a different route which had us back tracking for 20 minutes. A simple two hour drive took three. On the outskirts of Cordoba, I lost Ed's car and I had to find my way with Sheila & Tony has my co-pilots. We found the train station but missed the One-Way street to enter, so we went around the block once then twice. Third time was the charm and knew how to get into the rental car return entrance! But, just we were next to the train station, Ed pulls up behind us - where did he come from? Both cars returned - and we get our train tickets to Madrid.
The train ride was less than two hours but we made a picnic out of it…we had potato chips, nuts, two types of olives, beer, wine and water…life is good for us.
Again, we ran into the problem of dinner and wanting to eat early at 7:00pm…by Spanish standards. The hotel restaurant didn't even open until 8:30 or 9:00 so we settled on having bar food on their patio.
I did the grilled chicken that was very good and left the potatoes.
Well, where did the three weeks go? Was it really time to leave Spain? Did we do and see everything in the cities we visited? The only thing I know is I learned a lot and fell in love with Spain all over again from 30 years ago!
Peggy
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