Day 16 - Friday 13 July – Cordoba. 38C, cloudless day and hot once again. It is the week of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, so every morning over breakfast at 8am we watch on TV with amusement as the rocket fires the start and the bulls run through the streets chasing the crowds. Then the injury count starts, the cameras zoom in on the wounded – each one usually surrounded by 10 paramedics and 20 cameramen. Then a few minutes later a cross to th...

Day 15. Thursday 12 July. Granada to Cordoba by train. We could only get tourist class seats when booking some months ago, however a very comfortable journey in a full train. The trip was about 2hrs 20mins and we passed a million olive trees – no exaggeration – and large numbers of corn fields. The apartment in Cordoba is very nice, quite modern and very close to all the sites. The temperatures for the next 3 days are the same as it was today - fore...

Wednesday 11 July, on a recommendation from a friend we have changed hotels and moved up the hill to the Alhambra for our last night in Granada. The hotel is the Alhambra Palace and is very beautiful inside with similar decorations in the walls to that which you would find in the Alhambra itself. After arriving this morning we walked back to the city centre and then into an area called the Albaycin which is one of the oldest arab areas in the city. There was a co...

Day 13 Tuesday 10 July and we are up early to go on a tour of the Alhambra. Our guide was not as interesting as the one in Seville. We were all hooked up to personal hearing devices which is understandable when you realise that the Alhambra has around 8000 visitors a day and 3 million a year which means it's particularly crowded and would be difficult to be heard if all the guides spoke loudly to their groups. When we first met our guide we walked for some 10 min...

Day 12 Monday 9 July. From Ronda back to Seville then onto Granada. An early start to drop the car back to Seville by 11am, once again noticing all the sun flowers and little white villages of the Andaluz along the way. The train system is very good in Spain and today the one to Granada is full. It has 8 stops from Seville to Granada and we pass once again olive trees, sun flowers, olive trees, wheat fields and more olive trees with dusty little Andalusian vill...