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!

Calasparra, Spain

Visiting Calasparra is the main reason we’ve come to Spain. Helmut has some family history here so we decided to see if we could find any long lost relatives.

We hadn’t even been in town more than 24 hours when we found some people who would help us.
We approached a bunch of older folks sitting in a park and through charades, Google Translate, and some really bad attempts at Spanish, they connected us with someone who gave us some pretty good info about possible family relations in town. It was pretty cool to watch it all unfold.

We stayed the Primavera Hotel and we were surprised to find a full size jacuzzi in our room!

Turns out all the bullfighting people were staying at our hotel.

Bullfighter’s capes draped over the fence outside the hotel

On Day 2, we got up early and went to see the running of the bulls

Calasparra was having a Festival and the bullfighting was a big part of that. I will post some photos in another post, but beware that some of them are gory.

So far, Calasparra is our favorite. Not touristy at all and the people have perfected the art of hanging out!

Jesus...his family owns the Primavera Hotel and he was super cool!