The Worst of Times (so far)

The road to Cordoba to Granada had some great surprises. Including an exit to Alameda which the kids loved. As well there were some amazing mountain ranges, which I couldn't always capture. A few are here, but I couldn't quite get the cave houses (literally full-on houses built into caves) or the snow of the Sierra Nevada, which was just too far away but still amazing as the temperature outside our car was definitely 100+. We also saw lots of trees we couldn't identify. Some we guessed were peach or orange. One set of what tall trees in structured rows as if they are farmed is shown in the fourth picture here and if anyone has any idea what they are, we'd be very curious to know what crop or use they yield.

Anyway, this day came to a bad end as Granada has both notoriously small streets and videotaped and heavily fined no-access roads. We got bit by both. We had exact instructions from our next apartment renter, a GPS unit (nicknamed Jane, who we previously loved for her hilarious roundabout instructions but more on that later), and a map, and yet there was frustration ("it's telling us to take a right onto the pedestrian walkway"). And yes, Virginia, even a little yelling ("where are we? i don't know! is this a bad road? yes it's a bad road! what does the GPS say? it took us in a circle! can i make this turn? I don't know! I don't know! I don't know! Crunch...scratch...[expletives deleted]. Granada sucks!! ok, we're here"). It was awful, the worst 2 hours of our trip to date hands-down, and we'd been photographed going up every blasted no-access road, we'd gotten hopelessly lost, we'd crunched our brand-new rental car, and we then had to drag our luggage up a steep hill hunting for the elusive apartment. But finally the day ended and we had air-conditioning and beds. We gave poor Ed, who has shouldered the driving--due to the cost difference of a manual vs an automatic--a ton of kudos for handling it with serious grace. Travel is so easy now that a couple of bad moments can remind you that we're lucky.

Thank goodness for the Alhambra too--its beauty took a little sting out of the bruised car.