Since my train to Granada was not until noon time I had the whole morning in Sevilla. Having said that, I found the morning was not that useful at all in Spain. I tried to find the souvenir shops but they were not yet opened at 9 o'clock. I then try to check out the breakfast but all those open-air restaurants that filled the entire Santa Cruz area during the night vanished entirely. The problem was further complicated by my belief that I wished to find a nice place to sit down for a proper breakfast since I did not have any proper breakfast for the last 10 days.

At the end I found one right-by-the-street and it even had an english menu. For EUR 6 I got 2 x fried eggs, bacons, OJ and a cup of tea. Really not bad except that I ordered Earl Grey but got an english breakfast tea instead... Lesson learnt: Never ordered anything complicated if the waitress could not speak good English.

Got back to the Cathedral again to shoot a couple more photos of the exterior and it was a good thing of waking up early... the entire square was nearly empty of people!

The souvenir shops finally opened and I did some shopping for those flamenco fans that were popular in Spain. Afterwards I had to go back to the cathedral again because I realized I set the ISO settings to high ISO just now so I basically have to re-shoot. But now the tourists had also come out and the perfect scenery was no more.

After checked-out from the hotel I headed towards the Seville Santa Justa rail station (the one I came from). As the bus stop would be almost as far from the hotel so I decided to walk my way up there.

So that was my stay in Sevilla here, it was a pity for me not to have time to check out Plaza de Espana as my brother said the Star Wars Episode I was filmed here (The Palace in Planet Naboo) I was really eager to go to see the place but it was a miracle to fit so many things already yesterday. (At the end my brother told me it was not that much worth it, after seeing it himself~)

Got on the 11:50 train (R-598, EUR 20.05) to Granada. It turned out that the train actually stopped in San Bernardo station in Seville, which was very near to my hotel, so why did I have to walk all the way to the main station?

In fact the reason why the train took 3 hours 10 minutes was really because of so many stops... Compared with the previous 2 AVE's, this one did not have a cafeteria cart but at least it had a toilet (unlike the 2-hour train to Segovia that did not have) maybe the only complaint was that the seats were facing backwards!

My 3 hours were spent in a combination of more ¹q¨®¨k and my EUR 1.5 Danish Pastry lunch bought from Sevilla station previously. As usual, no pretty ¨F´¤p©j was on the train... -_-

I was actually surprised that the Granada train station was a lot smaller than the Sevilla station. It was just a bit bigger than Segovia's! What's worse, there was no tourist information office there...... I had to walk out to the main street for bus stops. However with the level of details of the LP map I had (the only one i had) and the conflicting mesh of bus lines printed on the bus stop, I finally decided to walk to the hotel, simply because I had an appointment with Alhambra at 16:30 (already booked before my departure in HK) and there was no room of waiting or getting on the wrong bus.

When I finally found Abadia hotel it was quite a shock to me initially as it was situated in a very old, quiet and shabby area.. no wonder why their website never showed the surroundings! Luckily, the inside was very much like what the photos showed and it was actually quite promising. The center was a large patio/garden and all the rooms were built around and on top. It was very different from the previous hotel in Sevilla, which had a tone of white throughout and gave a medditerrean feel while this one gave an Arabic feel. The room inside was spacious and it was also the first hotel that gave me a fridge! Not to mention the Jacuzzi it had too! (Acutally I paid EUR10 more to upgrade for this Jacuzzi)

It was close to 16:00 so I really did not have too much time to laze around. So I asked the receptionist (who spoke really good english) for a better map (only slightly better) and headed off to Alhambra.

The directions to Alhambra was simple but the most difficult part was the approach. Seeing that there was no way for me to climb a mountain within 20 minutes I at last managed to get myself a No. 30 bus that took me straight up to the hill top, where the Alhambra ticket office was. (It was indeed a wise decision as the hill was quite steep and no way I could climb up there within 20 minutes time!)

This amazing race had not finished! It turned out that I had to be at the entrance of the Nazaries Palace (Palacio Nazaries) by the latest of 17:00 or otherwise the ticket (EUR 10.88) would be void. I thought that would be easy, I had 30 minutes to reach there.....

Alhambra (red castle in Arabic) was a fortress-palace built on a hill-top and covered an area of ~ 142,000 sq. m. It consisted of 4 main areas:

Alcazaba, Palacio Nazaries, Palacio de Carlos V & GeneralLife.

So I went to Palacio Nazaries first. I thought I had 30 minutes so I took it easy and relaxingly strolled along the gardens, taking photos, etc on the way. It turned out Alhambra was really really big and I just barely got there on time at the entrance before 17:00.

Palacio Nazaries was the gem of Alhambra and consisted of wonderful Islamic architecture, designs and masterpieces inside. There were lots of wonderful patios (courtyards) and Salas (halls) inside. (Oh! there were lots of orange trees with big ripen oranges hanging on the tree, and they looked quite tempting at that time!) Access to the complex was strictly limited and that was the reason why I had to book the ticket in advance during high seasons.

After my visit in Palacio Nazaries, I went to Alcazaba which was actually a citadel. However, not much was left beside a few towers and the largest one was Torre de la Vela which was climb-able. On the top you could see a breath-taking view of Alhambra, and Sacromonte (caves carved on a hill in which the gypsies lived)

I passed by the outside of Palacio de Carlos V but never knew I could go inside and my last destination was Generalife, which was on the other side of Alhambra.

Generalife (means Architect's Garden) was like a summer garden for the Moorish kings and their families. Lots of exotic plants were planted and decorated nicely. The architect(s) really knew how to balance the elements of water and plants in their design. Besides beauty, tranquility was the message it was trying to convey! (Ironcially, not far from Generalife was a place where the workers were setting up a stage and seats for a summer concert to be held two nights later, some sort of Granada Music Festival.)

After I came back down to the Granada city (gosh, the road was really steep... feel lucky again I didn't have to walk up!) I immediately went to visit the other two sites I wanted to see in Granada, Capilla Real and the Arabic Market (yes, Arabic Market in Europe)

Capilla Real (Royal Chapel) was the place where Queen Isabel and King Fernado were buried (and also their daughter and son-in-law) But when I reached there it was after 19:00 and the place was closed. The Arabic Market (just around the corner) was closed too but from the look of it I didn't think I missed anything as it was just a series of shops like any so-called "markets" in Australia. No Arabic style whatsoever!

It was too late for visiting anything else so I settled my dinner back at my old friend Fresc Co, Yep, it was the buffet restaurant I tried in Madrid, which also happened to be a nation-wide chain store. Again, nothing thrilling but it was time to soup up fibres and vitamins! (EUR 9.7)

As I had to reach the airport early in the next morning, I deliberately took a walk and checked out the very finely-concealed airport bus-stop right in front of a large garden. (Jardines del Triunfo)

The rest of the night (actually not much was left) was spent trying out the Jacuzzi bath and watching ¹q¨®¨k at the same time... if I only had a glass of champagne too...

My foot prints: Seville Cathedral & Giralda, Alcazar of Seville, Estacion Santa Justa Sevilla, Alhambra (Palacio Nazaries, Alcazaba, Palacio de Carlos V (passed-by), Generalife, Capilla Real (closed), Arabic Markets (closed)