Granada Highlights (and Lowlights)
So Rachel has been talking about Spain for-"like"-EVER. I just checked my e-mail, and the first record of her mentioning Spain was on Feb 1 2006. However, the context of the e-mail suggests that we had discussed Spain previously. Point is: I've been revving up for Rachel and Dave's Spain tour for a while [1]. As convenience would have it, their trip fell soon after my arrival in London, making for a great excuse to visit Spain, a new country for me! So Tim and I flew to Granada for a long weekend and a very happy reunion. There are many awesome things that happen in life. But catching up with far-flung, dearly-missed friends in a new country is a very special kind of awesome.
Reflections of Granada: old, hills, tourists, Sierra Nevada mountains, trap restaurants with pictures of menu items plastered in the windows, orange trees, scam artist gypsies, construction, Moorish-ness, the Alhambra fortress, properly cold beer, occasionally yummy tapas, pickled white asparagus, lackluster bread, ham.
Lots of ham.
But aside from all the sights and sun, there's a little cafe/bar called Paprika just on the fringes of the old town. Paprika defines holiday in my book: comfortable chairs, chill music, long meals, slow drinks (with the occasional fast and cold beer after a long walk in the sun), and one of the greatest joys of European travel: nonintrusive wait staff. Yes it may take 30 minutes alone to get the bill, but the point is not to rush. Slow service adds to the sun, fountains, mountains, and endless supply of bars and cafes, putting the breaks on our London pace and beckoning us to relax.
We found Paprika on our first night, after a late flight that felt longish for a supposedly quick weekend-jaunt over to Europe. Why didn't we spend that time reading about Granada and its choice late-night eating establishments? Right, because our guide consisted of photocopied sections of an outdated Lonely Planet Spain book on loan from the Stoke Newington library (am I a budget traveler or what?). So when we went out for a wander, we had no idea what we'd find.
As luck would have it, just up the road from our hotel was Paprika, inviting us in with its outdoor seating and cozy interior. It's such a rare pleasure to be able to sit outside at a bar! So we grabbed a table on the sidewalk (which wasn't really a sidewalk but a series of wide, deep-set stone stairs) and ordered two much-anticipated glasses of wine. "Dos vino rosso, por favor." Oops, "Rosso" is rose, as opposed to "Vino Tinto" (red wine). We worked our way through the oops wine and some average tapas (overly tart olives and weird hummus cracker things) before moving indoors and on to the tinto. To my relief, the kitchen was open. With some translation help from the cute waitress, I managed to order a salad and Tim the veggie moussaka. The food kicked both of our asses. Their "Ensalada Tibia" was sublime: sauteed mushrooms, onions, and peppers on fresh greens with the richest balsamic vinegar and fresh parmesan cheese. The moussaka was comfort in eggplant form.
So was it any surprise that on Sunday, feeling a little ill from all the tourism [2], we ended up back at Paprika? (It helps that Paprika seems to be one of the few non-touristy places that stays over during "siesta". Siesta - what do people do for those hours in the middle of the day when everything pretty much shuts down? Where do they go? I still haven't figured it out.) We settled into the recessed booth at the rear of the cafe for a 3-hour lunch. The tapas was delicious this time - white asparagus with an orange sauce (possibly made of pureed squash?). I ordered the salad again, and also tried a yummy salt cod with shrimp. Salt cod is really salty, by the way, but also quite tasty. Tim had a meaty tajine thing. And at the end we were given complimentary liquor (something thick, coffee sweet, and very yummy).
We stopped in for one last treat on Monday, while killing time waiting for our flight. Their kitchen was closed, and disappointment must have been visible in my desperate[3] hungry eyes[4]. So the waitress said "I bring you good tapas!" and she returned with bread, veggie couscous, and later, some potatoes: a starch fest that never tasted so good (and helped absorb the beer I kept drinking).
It's worth mentioning what a mission our last day in Granada was. We woke up at 5:45am (4:45am London time) to wait in line to visit the Alhambra, Granada's main tourist attraction - a 13th century Moorish fortress, palace and garden. Alhambra ticket sales are limited to 6000 per day (and always sell out) which helps the place from being completely inundated by crowds. It's well worth a visit. Fueled by coffee, we ended up having a very nice morning strolling around the compound. After checking that off the list, we checked out of our hotel and found some monotonous salads, followed by more interesting tapas and drinks, followed by retirement at Paprika. I couldn't seem to get enough food in me that day, but had no problem with alcohol. As a result, I spent most of the afternoon feeling rather tipsy (a condition likely reflected in my postcards). Our flight was at 10ish, and we didn't get to London until midnight. Once there, I waited nearly an hour in line at customs - torture! The train back to London was no longer running, so we wrongly opted for a bus rather than a taxi. We sat in the bus for 45 minutes before it actually left, then another hour's drive to Liverpool St. By this time it was around 3am and the place was deserted, except for fellow travelers and their rolley bags, fighting for the few available cabs that occasionally drove by. We finally caught one, and made it home near 4am. So we were up for close to 24 hours, and poor Tim had to work the next day.
It really is The Suck, the way air travel can put such a damper on an otherwise awesome trip. Not to say that our long day ruined anything. But it's such a low-point to end on. I'll do it again, though, because Europe has warmth and sun and good food and wine and clean streets and mountains and ........
[1] Check out some pics from Rachel and Dave's drive around Spain.
[2] Speaking of tourism, tim and I both recommend Lonely Planet's walking tour of the Albayzin, Granada's old Muslim quarter.
[3] The word "desperate" will forever remind me of Bill Bob Thorton singing "The Desperate One" on some PBS program, which Tim and I lamely watched on Thanksgiving several years ago. The song is apparently BBT's brain child ("Do you really wanna let me be the desperate one? ... I thought you were my friend!") It offends me that famous people get to sing music publicly just because they're famous. It's just kind of embarrassing. They should stick to celebrity karaoke (provided it's not televised).
[4] "Hungry Eyes": classic 80's cheeze-pop, sharing the Dirty Dancing soundtrack with "She's Like the Wind". Patrick Swayze: now there's an actor who can sing for me any time.
