Hello Muddah, hello Fuddah…here we are in…Camp Granada! It is very…entertaining. And we’ve spent our time outside ‘cos it’s not raining.

Thus concludes a self imposed challenge of musical post titles from Andalucia, including one opera and three American songs from the 60s, representing 3 of the 4 songs that have been stuck in my head the whole trip. The fourth is slightly more obscure (even more than Hello …), but when walking around the centuries old masterpiece that is the Alhambra all I could think of was Lady Gaga. Alle-alle-hambra, alle-alle-hambaraaaa…just me???

Granada is another stunning Andalucian location, with the Alhambra and the valley leading down from the snow capped sierras and perfect spring weather, combining to make it super toasty in the sun and freezing in the shade. So much so that Lea almost put her shoulder out adjusting her emergency cardies.

One main road for tapas was Calle Elvira…so not for the first time we managed to get smashed on Elvira Street and wake up with jackhammers in our heads. Although in this case the jackhammers were also in the building next door, but we got a BARGAIN price. #peoplepleaseelaborateinairbnbcomments

In Granada the tapas are served for free with every drink order!!! Quiz: This can be dangerous because A) it encourages alcoholism to get free food, or, B) glutteny by force feeding you when you drink at a highly developed Australian pace? Either way, given we were suffering from both, we forged on undeterred.

The quality of some of this “free” food was questionable from time to time, which led to Lea’s final night comment on our last tapa, “that wasn’t terrible!!” In all fairness, poor Lea had eaten her fair share of mystery meat over the last few days. One plate we had wasn’t a mystery at all, it was clearly an assortment of what looked puppy penises. And they were as good as we remember…

So as little nutrition was to be had from our potato and “meat” based free food (we had too much fun to actually order anything off a menu) that we both caught a cold near the end of our time in Granada…or perhaps, Spanish flu?  In order to get something other than mystery meats, Lea suggested we go for churros and chocolate sauce for breakfast, mmmm…strangely we still haven’t recovered (now in Portugal 4 days later!)

We think we may have got cut off at one of our favourite tapas bars (whaaaaaat!!), where we thought we had a friendly relationship going with the staff (read: while they make fun of us while we smile and politely say “grassy-ass”), they said something about “cuatro” (4) and then followed with jogging motion, that was simulated for us by 2 of the bar staff….we were either being told we’d be cut off at 4 drinks/tapas so we were sober enough to walk down the mountain, or so we didn’t get so fat we’d have to go jogging! Either way, we said “grassy-ass” and moved on to our second favourite bar…

My main gripe (or wipe) with Granada was the bins in the toilets for soiled toilet paper…and I promise I didn’t want to go down this path again. I feel I’ve been up and down the road of toilet jokes so much there are skid marks to prove it…but back to the used TP bins.  The added problem of standing, while also ducking below the rafters to pee is you can’t really look away from them. And you can’t stop but wondering, “is that where recycled toilet paper comes from?”

It was made very difficult to complain about being cut off our free tapas, when we had been so very well warned of the potential danger for tourists and witnessed second hand after a poor German lady came over to us, with blood all over her to warn us of a guy going around on a scooter who ripped her camera off her arm, cut her badly and utterly ruined her holiday. We are so very lucky that the only thing we were worried about was that the overeating of free food would make us look so much like little piglets and that it would result in the locals amputating our legs to cure for the next tourist-tapas season….Jamon de James perhaps??? We’ve been so lucky to have never lost our camera, but we did come to a realisation, after many failed attempts, that Lea and the camera just don’t click…

We finally did our first “free” walking tours of the trip in Granada!!! Whaaat, you waited this long to hang out with a bunch of tight arses from ESL countries to be told by someone pretending to be a local to go to bars where his mates work hoping you might give them a tip??? I know, free tours are great!!

We again arrived slightly late to the first one, but were told it’s still 5 minutes from starting…as 5 turned into 8, it dawned on us that they were using a similar exchange rate for time as they were the Euro! We were actually lucky to get on to the first tour as they couldn’t find our booking on the back of their meticulously prepared cereal packet. A little hungover, I didn’t want to point out that there was another Lea on the tour, Lea Zeng. Being several people that may have fit the Zeng surname I was desperate to ask them if their name was pronounced Lea or Lea!! To my disappointment we realised the booking was indeed for us…Lea 2 ENG.

On our self guided tour of the Alhambra (don’t call me Ronaldo) we got stuck behind an extremely slow group of tourists (so many bloody tourists everywhere), which prompted Lea to ask “are they Russian?”, to which, of course and will continue to do so, I replied, “Russian? They’re hardly moving!” #mighthaveusedthatonebefore. But in all seriousness, Alhambra was the best monuments I’ve visited, almost perfect, except they forget to build a wine cellar…

We even saw our first/last Flamenco show in a cave while in Granada!

After an exhausting and illness building three days, on our final day, I actually heard Lea say, “that was enough for my church fix”??? Is this how we travel now?? I actually think the highlight of her day was when she managed to break a 50 to help her nefarious cheese habit which requires smaller notes…

Part B: Part mezquita

After an epic 3 days in Granada, and no way to form a musical reference from Cordoba for a separate post, we went to Cordoba.

The only reason for our visit was to see the candy-can arches of the old Mezquita and, as usual, I think Lea was quite taken by it…I guess you could say she loved Cordoba because this was the one Mezquita that didn’t bite…

Our time now done in Andalucia, we couldn’t work out if all these amazing places were built by the Muslims, Arabs or the Moors. Each name was used differently in various locations, and each came with a different sentiment towards the previous ruling inhabitants. We didn’t want to rock the boat, but being solely educated via 90s American television, we were pretty confident who they were. I’m sorry….the card says Moops. #bubbleboy

Thank you Andalucia, the more we saw of you, the more we wanted. I guess that’s because you’re a little….Moorish??