Don’t ever drive in Granada Spain

We’ve been back home for a month and a half since our last trip.
A nice little surprise turned up in the mail.
3 traffic tickets from when we were driving in Granada Spain to the tune of 75 euro.
Let this serve as a lesson to anyone planning on driving in Granada.... DON’T DO IT!!!!
We aren’t even sure what the infractions were for, but a brief google search indicates that this is very common.
Chances are that  we broke the traffic laws somehow while we were looking for parking for our hotel which was impossible. Literally impossible.
One way streets, gps sending us down undrivable streets, and a very unhelpful  hotel front desk caused us a lot of stress and the last thing we were expecting was some invisible enforcement that could ping us later (with no way to contest the charges).
Screw Granada’s driving laws!

Tangier, Morocco- First Impressions

We stayed at the historic Hotel Continental. It was one of Tangier’s first hotels and opened up in 1870.

Not super fancy, but it was kind of cool to stay in such an old hotel.

This was the view from our room:

We immediately ventured into themedina to look for a museum we wanted to go to. We thought we had it handled by trying to use our maps.me app. Oh how naive we were! The Medina is a bustling maze of narrow streets with no names. Touts were everywhere trying to get us to follow them for tips. 

We finally found the Tangier American Legation Institute. Apparently, Morocco was the first country to recognize America’s independence and so this museum is dedicated to that relationship. 

We capped off the evening with some yummy Moroccan mint tea.

And watched the almost full moon rise over the port.

We left  Gibraltar and went across the border to do some laundry before dropping off the rental car in a port town called Algeciras. That car was surprisingly inexpensive considering we rented it in Barcelona and dropped it off all the way down in Algeciras!

We bought ferry tickets on FRS to go from Tarifa (about 30km away) to Tanger Ville in Morocco. They put us on a shuttle bus to get to Tarifa. The tickets were about $43 each one way.

It sounds like a pain in the butt but it really wasn’t and everything went relatively smoothly with the ferry ride taking about 1 hour. 

Finally, we are in Africa!

Gibraltar

Gibraltar...a British territory that appeared to be more British than anything we’ve ever seen. Maybe it just seemed that way because we arrived one day after their big patriotic national holiday.

We took a tour of the famous rock, which we really enjoyed as it has a ton of history. There is a cave that they sometimes use for concerts inside...and monkeys....LOTS OF MONKEYS!!! We couldn’t get enough of the monkeys!

The Alhambra in Granada, Spain

The Alhambra was a must see for us and we thought we were being proactive by trying to buy tickets a month ahead of time. Just a note: if you ever plan on seeing the Alhambra, buy your tickets like 3 months in advance. Because this place is so popular, and they limit the amount of visitors, we had to get our tickets through a third party and they were quite expensive. It felt worth it in the end because the tickets came with a tour guide who had a history degree and he gave some great context to what we were seeing. 

It was definitely the highlight of our brief stay in Granada. Not a highlight: driving and trying to park in Granada. This was ridiculously stressful and parking was VERY expensive (like 30 a day!). I’m not sure what the alternative would have been as I don’t think there is a train that goes to Granada, but we managed to get through it unscathed!