Dear Dayre,
Sorry for the disappearing act the past few days, reason being I was literally living in a cave and had really bad wifi and reception so I didn't update!
So here's some photos of our absolutely beautiful cave: it's a REAL cave house built into the hillsides of Sacromonte, where all the gypsies used to live and still do!
What have I learnt about living in a cave? It is rather humid, gets real cold at night, and comes with other guests: bugs 😳 We found a couple of unidentified insects and also a spider and a cockroach, but really they didn't bother us much at all. My little cave room was so comfy that I fell into slumber the moment I snuggled under the covers of my bed!
Also the toilet was right outside the cave itself and that makes it very insufferable at times because you have to face the cold to make it to the loo and showering at night/early in the morning especially is a teeth-chattering experience.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed staying in the beautiful cave house so much just because come on, have YOU ever lived in a cave? No right? It is a super cool experience like no other to fall asleep under and surrounded by roughly hewn walls of rock and curved ceilings and doorways.
The cobbled sloped hill that we had to drag our luggages up.
The city of Granada really intrigues me! Despite being a Spanish city, the Arabic influences are so strong, especially in the neighborhood where we stayed in and even more apparent from la Alhambra, which we visited on a cold and rainy day.
It was an arduous hike from our cave to La Alhambra in the gloomy downpour, but we made it!
La Alhambra is a palace that used to be home to the Islamic rulers of past, and is a magnificent work of art itself, with incredible architecture, adorned with carved Islamic scripture/calligraphy, stalactite ceiling decorations with a long long history. It's one of Spain's national monument and is a UNESCO world heritage site!
We bought tickets for a guided tour through La Alhambra and it took us almost three hours to make our rounds through the garden and palace.
Beautiful decorations and walls and doors.
Some of the original wall decorations found in Alhambra, with scripture carved into the walls and the original tiles used.
Beautiful huh?
The gardens of Alhambra, called Generalife. (I don't think it's pronounced general-life -.-)