Day 93, 5 October 2012, Relaxing in downtown Granada by day... train to Madrid by night - We returned to downtown Granada at midday after checking out (loving this civilised notion of a midday check out as standard). We took a different route and headed down through the gardens with chattering channels of water following us downhill. Turned out we were in the Alhambra Wood and we managed to trip over an incredible exhibition of photographs of marine creatures great and small. The photos were from a recently published book highlighting how the human race is essentially ruining the oceans, thus the world and then ourselves.
This route popped us out at one of the town gates and we continued back through the boutiques and behind the Cathedral until we ended up in the area near the university. Cheap-ville! Restocked our selection of costume jewellery at a great shop selling most items for €1. We were an hour or two later than yesterday in town and it was like a different place - almost a ghost town. Even the fortune telling gypsies had tootled off for a siesta and a lot of the shutters were down. We stopped at a bar for a nibble to keep us going, utterly bamboozled at the value represented by spanish tortilla for €2 a serving - Then we found our new best friend - a small grocery store/corner shop owned by a Chinese fellow who spoke perfect spanish, no english and was selling whole tortillas for €2.50! Great - means we'll be eating well for the rest of the Spanish sector... hunting out Asian mini-marts who are open during siesta! We sat down whenever the opportunity presented itself and listened to buskers playing the Spanish guitar. Unfortunately our time in Granada was coming swiftly to an end and we meandered back to the hotel to get the bags and take a taxi to the station for our train to Madrid. At one point we suspected the cab driver was angling to actually drive us to Madrid... but to give him the benefit of the doubt it was peak hour and we were tourists... so it's 50/50 on the rip off front. We were expecting big things from the super duper high speed train system and were initially disappointed... just chuffing along at a fairly normal speed. Then there was an announcement about changing from Spanish tracks to international tracks. Woo hoo! and we were off an racing for the second half of the trip to Madrid. We didn't arrive until about 10.45 pm and it was officially awfully dark. And it turned out our lodgings, Hostal Cordoba, was just off the map we had - so we headed in the suspected correct direction, only needed directions once and after what felt like hours but was only 30 minutes eventually completed the 10 minute walk. It seemed like a dark and stormy end of town - but was more tiredness and heavy bags than anything. Had a lovely gentleman with no English check us in and it turned out to be one of the best rooms we've had in quite a while. Yay. Sleep!