With an early morning flight out of London City Airport and with public transport unable to get us there in time for our flight, we decided to spend the night at the nearby Holiday Inn Express Excel. This hotel is just a short walk from the Royal Albert DLR stop so was pretty much in a perfect spot.
After a quiet and comfortable night in the Holiday Inn Express and partaking in the usual delicious buffet breakfast we followed the hotels free map and took the short walk around the dock to the airport, it’s not too far either, about 20 minutes, but our walk was very blustery this morning.
Sadly for our first time out of London City Airport, we get delayed due to the approaching Storm Doris, eventually taking off at 10:30, an hour and 20 minutes or so adrift. Doris was causing problems with aircraft arriving or even being cancelled, so we were luckyt to get away at all I think. After a very turbulent takeoff the remainder of the flight was ok.
Granada airport was deserted!
Just us plane load from London City so we were very quickly processed through customs and reunited with our bags.
Preferring to use local transport wherever possible we picked up the Granada Airport coach and for the princely sum of €2.90 each we were quickly whisked through the outskirts of Granada and dropped off at the Catedral stop, just a short walk from our hotel, the Hotel ParragaSiete, in Parraga Street. Reception was clean and very smart looking and
very friendly guy helped us check in, helpfully to sort out our breakfast basket option.
Our room, up on third floor, was lovely. High ceilinged. Clean and minimal. Sadly no view as such, just a typical Spanish street below us with a scattering of small shops and apartments. Very quiet too despite being near the main city center.
Cases unpacked it’s time to explore Granada and taking our free map from the hotel, nicely annotated by our host, we headed out to see what we could see.
Our first port of call was the Mirador de San Nicolas which offers great, no, great is not good enough, stunning views of the Alhambra perched way up on the hill opposite. Getting up there was a bit of an effort, not only because it was a steep climb, but the roads in the vicinity are cobbled, uneven and not kept well and also the dust, the whole area is covered with dust. Add to this dust a light spotting of rain and it magically turns the cobbles in to an ice rink!
Reaching the small plaza we were greeted with a breathtaking view of the Alhambra. Quite simply stunning.
Albaicin is an area of Granada that is populated by many North African’s and the shops on the hill are more like a Souk than a Spanish city. On our decent from the viewpoint we stopped at a delightful cafe amidst the shops selling all kinds of tea and scrumptious food. Two pots of tea were delivered as were two tasty crepes. A little ‘something’ to keep us going.
After a brief siesta we headed back out in to town looking for food, it was busy and we ended up in small cafe/bar call Siloe adjacent to the Cathedral. Great value meal. Lovely warm and attentive service, topped off with two glasses of free bubbly at the end of the meal. Highly recommended.
One slight negative from our Granada city break is that some cities are cleansed of the days detritus during the night and these charming, quaint, narrow streets somehow direct the hubbub of these industrious street cleaners upwards, at the same time managing to amplify it perfectly too which has the potential to disturb ones much needed beauty sleep!
mrandmrsyoung 