Day 3 - Toledo to Granada

After a quick breakfast and a turn around the new part of Toledo in search of a SIM card for John's phone, we took off on the highway for Granada. About a half hour out of Toledo, we saw some windmills, but they were the modern kind for electricity, not Don Quixote's kind. But on the facing hilltop, we saw a fort, which Margy determined was called Almonacid. Possibly used by El Cid befpre 1100, there was no clear way to get to it. After nosing around some olive groves in the car, and a turn-off to no-where, we were wandering around the town at the base of the hill and asked for directions. "Sure," he said, "people do it all the time. Just go to the end of the street and turn left." And so we did, and climbed a moderately steep set of switchbacks to an abandoned fort. It was magnificent, and dominated the plain around it. You could see the whole plain, maybe a 30 mile radius. The fort had an outer curtain wall and a keep. It looks to be at least 10 feet deep in dirt and fill, and would make a fascinating site for excavation. Zac was as happy as I've ever seen him, bounding about.







Almost as much fun as the castle was driving through the very sleepy town of Almonacid. Market had been set up in the central square, so we had to detour around it and didn't get to see the church. But it was very clean, very quiet, and I don't think we saw a single person under 50.








About a half hour later, after passing several other castles on hilltops, we saw castles and windmills. That was Consuegra, on the "Ruta de Don Quixote." The local trade school has been
restoring the castle and windmills as part of their trades program. So it's somewhat rebuilt, with some furnished rooms. The windmills have beeen restored as well, and at least two could be moderately functional. The enthusiastic and warm door keeper didn't have change for my 20 euro note, and so sent me down to the tourist office (2 minutes) while engaging Margy and Meg in intense conversation.




Frankly, I'm not sure the rebuilt castle was that much more interesting than the ruin. I think an archeological and historical dig might have been the most interesting.

By then we had burned up enough time that we had to boogie on to Granada, driving through flat countryside filled with a mixture of grape vines servely pruned to the ground and gray-green olive trees. But we had to stop at the pass of Desapenaperros, where the Christians threw the Muslims to their deaths in 12 something or other. As they were moving south, this mountain range (the Sierra Morena) served as the boundry between the two empires. When the Christians finally decided to invade, this is where they had their decisive victory. The mountains aren't much to look at as you're approaching them, but the pass is quite spectacular and very narrow. We stopped at least to look around for a bit - it's all national forest.



We were going to detour though the largeish town of Linares for lunch but as soon as we got off the highway we saw a restuarant with enough cars in front of it to be plausible - the typical travellers' hotel and restaurant that have all been replaced by chains in the states. We had a plausible dinner - lamb stew, saladas, pasta, etc. And back on the road to Granada, with the entire landscape carpetted in live trees as far as the eye can see. We calculated that we saw at least 100,000 olive trees , maybe as many as a million. (20% of the world's supply of olive oil comes from Granada province.)



Granada is a big city. That fact seems to have escaped us, and we were thinking of it as Toledo, which is quite a small city. Our apartment had complex instructions about parking the car with a weekly pass and taking a taxi to a bar to meet the owners. Without a phone, we couldn't call ahead to say that we were running late. After a trip down the bus-and-taxi-only lane of the Gran Via de Colon (named after Christopher Columbus), we turned around and went back to the parking garage, not without some twisting and turning through the streets. We reorganized the bags and walked a fair distance to find a taxi (one of the surlier taxi drivers I've ever dealt with), and finally go to the bar to meet the apartment ownwer about a half hour late. He was quite nice about it and showed us our lovely apartment, which is exactly as it claimed to be in all the web information. Here's the view from our terrace:



The Albaicin (old Muslim quarter) is a rabbit warren of streets, some as narrow as 1.5 meters, but all with car traffic - though on what schedule and by whom we're not exactly sure. There is bus service to the car park, which I guess we wish we'd known about. But Meg and Jordan walked to the nearby main square and finally bought a telephone card for the pay phones. And we walked around the Albaizen and had a lovely (if chilly) dinner in a Morrocan restaurant. After having all the restaurants closed in Toledo on Sunday, most of the ones in Granada seem to be closed on Monday.

But we're tired and tucked in and ready for bed, wondering exactly what we're going to do tomorrow, since we don't have Alhambra tickets until Wednesay. A trip to the mountains, we think. Meg and Zac and Jordan joke that they want ot go skiing, but it would be too big a hassle.

If this is posted, it's because we got to the Internet Cafe with the data on a memory stick and that all worked.