Two On Tour

Saturday 20 December

Granada has settled into a spell of damp, chilly, gloomy greyness. The Christmas lights do their best to cheer the city up, but it’s an uphill struggle.

Practicalities rule today: I need a new suitcase and a new mousepad. I’ve coped with a broken handle on my suitcase since we were in Gdansk in the summer, but I’m concerned about lugging such an unwieldly beast around some of our more out-of-the-way destinations in Central America—especially the remoter corners of Guatemala. Now I have a biggeer backpack (from Gibraltar last month) and a smaller suitcase. This promises a better balance and I’ll no longer be dragging around the suitcase equivalent of an SUV.

Wheeling my new purchase back to the flat, we buy a cone of roasted chestnuts, find a nearby side street where we can peel off the shells, and munch them down. Very festive.

I read this week that Spain has more bars than the rest of Western Europe combined: 138,000. There’s little sense of oversupply—almost every one is either pleasantly busy or no-room-for-elbows packed. With our own elbows well tucked in, we’re back at the same lively bar as last Saturday discussing logistics for the second half of 2026:

Sunday 21 December

It’s cold and wet from dawn to dusk—a day for nestling indoors with the lights on. With the sad news about Georgie Eadington still fresh in mind, I learn today that my first mentor and role-model Sally Hirst has been suffering from motor neurone disease for several years and can now only communicate now by blinking. She’s just seven years older than me. Awful.

It’s already dark by the time I pop down to the local supermarket for a few basics:

Monday 22 December / Tuesday 23 December

Two quiet days before Christmas. We’ll be doing plenty later this week, so there’s no need to push ourselves now. On Monday, we wander through some of Granada’s less celebrated neighbourhoods to get a feel for where most locals live:

Our Airbnb host Mikel shows me where to park the rental car that we’ll be picking up on Christmas Eve, and how to drive in and out of the immediate neighbourhood. It’s complicated and takes some time to demonstrate, so we fall into conversation. I learn that Mikel is a professor of the History of Science at Granada University, and he’s looking forward to a well-earned semester break. We talk about family and Christmas, his month-long visit to China and Hong Kong some years ago, and his two years living in London.

Tuesday is overcast and damp. We retrace the narrow cobbled streets that Mikel showed me yesterday until we’re certain that we can drive to the parking garage without relying entirely on Google Maps. In town, out of curiosity, we wander into a record shop. A whole section of albums sorted simply by era catches my eye—to the way my mind works, this is simply marvellous:

We pick up a couple of seasonal treats from the El Corte Ingles department store, one of which we slip to a middle-aged homeless lady, together with a few euros. Homelessness is immediately visible in Granada (I don’t recall seeing any signs of it in Estepona). Each supermarket we’ve visited here seems to have a regular homeless person stationed outside, and we’ve spotted half a dozen others around the small part of the city that we circulate in. The winter nights are chilly here. It’s no place to lack a roof over your head.

Wednesday 24 December: An accidental white Christmas Eve

We have a car for three days. I’m still not sure whether we missed a turning or whether Google Maps was taken over by gremlins, but instead of following a perfectly ordinary road to the mountain village of Güéjar Sierra—recommended by Mikel, our Airbnb host—we somehow end up far above the snowline in the Sierra Nevada, inching along a perilous, slippery, single-lane back road. I haven’t driven in months, so unfamiliar mountain roads covered in slush are not exactly ideal.

At first, everything is fine: snow all around us, but the road clear and the sun shining. Then Google Maps directs us onto a much narrower road that drops down into a valley, and suddenly I’m out of my comfort zone. The brakes scrape and jar against the slush-covered tyres as we nudge around hairpin turns. There’s not another car in sight. How can this possibly be the way to a village of 3000 people?

 Eventually, another car appears ahead of us, and we follow it gratefully into a small parking lot.  In appalling Spanish, I ask a man standing with his dog whether we should turn back. Thankfully, he speaks some English and we establish that, yes, we should. Driving back up the valley is easier than coming down, although my concern is meeting a car coming in the opposite direction on a single-track road with verges covered in thick snow. It never does.

Soon, we’re back on the main road—higher up but in good driving conditions— and we continue towards the Sierra Nevada ski village, not by design but because I turn left instead of right. This turns out to be a blessing in disguise. The scenery is spectacular, and although K has seen snow in Tibet and Iceland, she’s never seen snow weighing down the branches of trees. We could park at the ski village and hunt for some lunch, but the forecast isn’t good and conditions can clearly change fast up here. I don’t fancy driving back down in a snowstorm, so we retreat to lower ground.  A café just below the snowline serves good americanos, and we make do with muffins for lunch.

We eventually reach Güéjar Sierra via the road that we evidently ‘should’ have taken, but our earlier navigational mishap naturally turns out to be the highlight of the day. The village itself is built on a steep hillside with stunning views of the surrounding mountains. The streets are quiet and there’s a comforting smell of woodsmoke in the air. We wander into a tiny local bar for a mint tea, where huge jambons and dried peppers hang behind the counter. Locals start drifting in for Christmas Eve drinks. We don’t want to intrude on the local festivities, so we sip up and take our leave.  

On the drive back to Granada, we’re battered by heavy rain, and manoeuvring into our narrow designated parking spot is a twenty-minute ordeal that I only solve by turning the car 180 degrees and reversing in from the opposite direction.

We’ve barely been home a few minutes when Mikel knocks to ask if the white car in parking space seven is ours—because if it is, we’ve left a window open. I head back up to the parking garage but get waylaid by the gorgeous last light of the day on the city and mountains. To get a good shot, I hurry on past the garage to a viewpoint, where I run into two twenty-something Scottish chaps travelling around Spain for a few weeks. We chat a while and part wishing each other a Merry Christmas.

We’d expected Granada to be full of people on Christmas Eve. That’s what we’d been told, but the opposite is true. By the time we step out, most bars and restaurants are already closed and the narrow streets of the old town are eerily quiet. We duck into one of the few places still open which turns out to be run by a South Asian family. As one of the only places open, it’s enjoyably buzzing with other out-of-towners in Granada for Christmas. Afterwards, K wants to hunt for one more Christmas Eve drink, but everywhere is either closed or closing. Instead, we return to the flat and watch Gremlins.

Thursday 25 December

We’re due at Steve Bennett’s for Christmas lunch, at his rural retreat near Motril.  Mum arrived yesterday, so we have quite a reunion lined up.

Before we leave, I stride up to the San Nicólas viewpoint overlooking the Alhambra. It’s a beautiful, chilly morning and the viewpoint is almost deserted. Taking in the view is a Christmas gift in itself. On another day, this might have been the highlight of the day, but today we have more lined up.

It’s an hour’s spectacular drive down to the coast with the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada towering off to our left. Steve’s place lies a couple of miles off the highway in an area dominated by tomatoes growing under plastic sheeting, but with a fine view of the Mediterranean. I last saw Steve sometime around 1990. He would have been 41 then; he’ll be 77 next week. He’s clearly not in the greatest of health, but it’s good to see him.

Mum’s in her Christmas sweater scurrying about preparing vegetables for a Christmas lunch of turkey tenderloin. After a chaotic video chat with Ian, Rose and Rose’s parents —mum’s still darting around popping parsnips in the oven and asking Steve where he keeps various kitchen utensils mid-call—we settle down to eat, chat and reminisce.

It’s not hard to see that Steve has become a lonely, rather dispirited figure, with few close relationships. He seems to rely heavily on his occasional Russian housekeeper for both practical support and human interaction. He clearly loves Spain, where he’s lived for almost 25 years, and he loves the Spanish people. But beneath that, he cuts a rather melancholy figure. With this in mind, I feel guilty taking our leave shortly before sunset. We could talk for hours more, but I don’t have a lot of confidence driving after dark.

By the time it’s truly dark, we’re approaching Granada, and I’ve had time to adjust through the dusk. We wind down Christmas Day with It’s a Wonderful Life— the first time in a few years.

Friday 26 December

It’s our third and final day with a set of wheels. Inching our rental car through the narrow streets leading out of the Albaicín neighbourhood, I manage to scrape the front corner against the side of the alley. The sound is awful and my stomach drops. Then I remember that the rental agency staff hard-sold me the full insurance package, and the irritation of two days ago turns to relief.

We drive half an hour out of Granada to the Los Cahorros hiking trail near Monachil—less celebrated than the Camino del Reyes, but far more accessible for us. Boxing Day isn’t a public holiday here in Spain, and the trail area is more-or-less empty. Before starting the hike, we stop for a polite coffee at the trailhead so that K can use the bathroom.

While she’s gone, at the next table I hear a family speaking Turkish as they attempt selfies. I wander over and offer, in Turkish, to take a photo for them. As always, this party trick goes down a storm. I haven’t spoken Turkish in nearly a year and I feel a small familiar tug from another time of life. But I avoid getting pulled into a longer conversation—we have a hike to do. K returns, we neck our americanos, and hit the trail.

I watched a YouTube video about the Los Cahorros del Monachil route before driving out here, so I have a good idea what to expect as the path narrows along the river cutting through the deep gorge. Soon we’re using metal hand grips embedded in the rock and occasionally shuffling through the narrowest bottlenecks on our bums. If we lose our grip, we’ll only tumble six feet into a cold river, but I’d rather not.

Somehow, we squeeze through the gorge and complete a loop by climbing up a track that eventually leads through orchards and horse paddocks back to the car. It’s a rewarding little adventure to wrap up our three days on wheels. We drive back through suburban Granada, drop off the car, and return to city life.

Saturday 27 December

After three days with a car, we’re back to getting around on foot. I settle into an editing project for KTEO that will probably keep me busy until Tuesday, and we return to a sense of routine after our modest adventures over Christmas.

We have tickets for a concert tonight: The Beatles Show. We arrive at Granada’s municipal theatre nearly an hour early, assuming that others will be congregating in the bar for a pre-show tipple. We’re completely wrong: it’s just us, two bottles of Alhambra, and a packet of ham crisps in a bar so deathly quiet that it feels like we’ve arrived on the wrong night. We sup up and head upstairs, where we’re relieved to find the theatre nearly full and buzzing with Beatles fans of all ages.

At seven o’clock sharp, John, Paul, George and Ringo appear and launch into I Want to Hold Your Hand. They’re good. Very good. And it’s not just the precision musicianship: all four have the mannerisms and personality of the Beatle they’re playing. Chippy Paul takes the lead with the audience in a mixture of English and Spanish; Ringo also speaks Spanish and backs him up, as well as singing Act Naturally and Yellow Submarine (the following morning I discover that Paul, and probably Ringo, are in fact Spanish and the band is based in Benidorm); John is Mr Obvious Wig—a little older than the others, but with Lennon’s nose as well as his voice, especially when he belts out Twist and Shout and Rock n Roll Music; George is simply fantastic: clearly the youngest, the only one who appears to be wearing his own hair, and with every Harrison mannerism down to a fault.

They play for two hours without a break. If I have a gripe, it’s that they lean too heavily on the Beatles’ early catalogue (do we really need Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey?) and not enough on the later years. But it’s a minor quibble. George sings Here Comes the Sun and I’m back in Basing with some of my earliest memories. Trite, overfamiliar Let it Be is so unexpectedly moving that I find myself in floods. And the surprise of the night: the biggest crowd pleaser of all is sappy Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, which has the entire audience on their feet as a conga line snakes through the theatre. A superb night out.

On nights we eat out, we’re usually fed and home by nine. At nine tonight, we’re only just starting to look for somewhere to eat, and Granada is heaving. There’s barely room to stand at our usual place, let alone sit, so we settle for eating outside next to a heater, with me stamping my Converse-clad feet to keep them warm.

Sunday 28 December

Rain. And work.

Monday 29 December

Sun. And work.

Tuesday 30 December

By late morning, I’m finally done with the big editing job for KTEO, the world widens again, and we spend an hour catching up with Graeme and Selin in Cambridge. We haven’t seen each other or spoken for 18 months since we stayed with them in Çanakkale. We talk of Cem, now a fitness instructor; Alp, now studying economics in Bristol; and their friend Enver in Çanakkale, who is sadly terminally ill.

We make the most of a beautiful sunny afternoon by visiting the Cave Museum in the Sacramento neighbourhood. This turns out to be far more diverting than I’d expected. We’ve been in Granada nearly a month, yet I hadn’t realised that Sacramento is the old Gypsy neighbourhood and the home of its many flamenco establishments. These days flamenco is squarely aimed at tourists like us, but the old neighbourhood is charming and picturesque, winding its way up the north side of a valley separating it from the Alhambra. Doubtless we should have found time to attend a flamenco show while in Granda, but it just hasn’t fitted into the rhythm of our days. Our loss, no doubt.

The museum itself turns out to be a folk and craft museum arranged through several old cave dwellings, covering everything from basket weaving to the origins and history of flamenco. In another setting it would be serviceable, but its actual setting—scattered across multiple lime-washed caves with views along the valley into the low-hanging late afternoon sun—makes it far more memorable that it might otherwise have been.

With the expectation that every eating place will be packed on New Year’s Eve, we move our midweek eating out night to tonight. This is a good call as everywhere is packed even on this night before New Year’s Eve: the centre of Granada is a river of people wrapped in thick coats and scarves wandering the narrow alleys. We squeeze into a manga-decorated ramen joint with young Chinese waiting staff (university students?) and enjoy a good filling of ramen and Japanese curry (which inexplicably comes on a plate).

Wednesday 31 December

We see out the year by accidentally stumbling onto a spectacular hike before joining the revellers in downtown Granada to see in 2026.

I’ve spotted yet another viewpoint on Google Maps, somewhere above the Alhambra across the valley from the cave homes of Sacramento. We’re in deep shade as we start climbing the side of the valley beneath the Alhambra walls—parts of the paved path are icy and we have to tread carefully. Eventually, we leave the asphalt and follow a stony zig-zag track, gradually climbing higher until we’re rewarded with stunning views of Granada.

I’m expecting to use the same track to descend. But as we finally crest the hill and welcome the sunshine, we find ourselves in an upland olive grove with breathtaking views of the Sierra Nevada. A few cyclists flit about on a dirt track, but otherwise it’s beautifully empty.

Google Maps suggests that we can continue around this plateau and take a big loop back down to the city. So we do. It’s gorgeous. This is why we travel.

Back at the flat, K cooks and we bide our time by with a few episodes of Benidorm. At 11, just I’d usually be heading to bed, we wrap up and wander down to Plaza del Carmen to mingle with the New Year crowds. The police have put crowd control measures in place so we line up patiently for half an hour, gradually shuffling forward until we squeeze though the crowd control barrier. The plaza itself filled long ago; instead, we’re among a rapidly swelling crowd on the street adjacent to the plaza. Just as I’m beginning to feel anxious about being pinned in the middle of a big crowd, we see that behind us the police have stopped letting people through the barriers. We must have been among the final hundred to make it through. I breathe a sigh of relief that I won’t be trapped in an unpredictable crowd.

Five minutes later, we’re well positioned to see in 2026 with a burst of fireworks. The locals have brought little containers of a dozen grapes—one for each strike of midnight—and everyone rings in the new year with party hats and confetti. The fireworks end in a riot of colour and the crowd immediately starts thinning out. We mill about a while longer enjoying the atmosphere and call mum. We can’t hear a word she’s saying, but what do you need to say except ‘Happy New Year’?

And that’s it. That was the year that was 2025. It feels like at least two years since the last New Year’s Eve. That’s what happens when everything is constantly new and interesting.

Thursday 1 January

A quiet start to 2026. I make the most of the early morning sunshine to climb up to the Mirador de San Nicolas one final time and gaze across to the Alhambra. It’s late afternoon before we step outside again for a stroll around Granada city centre. Nearly everywhere is closed, as it should be. But thousands of folk are out promenading, drinking coffee, munching churros and enjoying the fairground rides down by the river, where we stop for an afternoon americano:

This evening’s viewing: a Netflix documentary, It’s All Over: The Kiss that Changed Spanish Football—a fascinating insight into the backstory and fallout surrounding the unwanted kiss that the President of the Spanish Football Federation landed on the lips of star player Jenni Hermoso during the presentation ceremony of the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Friday 2 January

Our final day in Granada.

Granada has been one of our favourite stops on our travels. We’ve loved its stunning natural setting. We’ve loved its big-city feel despite its modest size and ease of escape. And we’ve loved the jovial camaraderie of its many bars—whether or not we entered them! What’s more, we’ve spent a month in a charming Airbnb with genuine character, something of a rarity for us over the past 12 months.

I’m often a little sad to be moving on. That feeling nearly always disappears as soon as our bus or train pulls away. But I suspect I’ll genuinely miss Granada. The only other place I’ve felt this attached to was Sarajevo.

I take some time in the morning to catch up one-on-one with Auntie Sue. It’s midsummer in Auckland now and the family road trip last March and April feels a long time ago. We agree a fine time was had by all.

We spend our final afternoon at the Basilica de San Juan de Dios, a stunning masterpiece of Baroque architecture, or—in this philistine’s view—a grotesque monstrosity of Catholic bling. Then a final trip to El Corte Ingles department store to buy one last fig cake to keep me in morning snacks for a few days.

For our last meal in Granada, we bag the last two seats at a nearby bar that we’ve been saying we’ll return to since our first days here. It’s jammed—exactly the sort of place we want to be on our final night. We order a smorgasbord of smoked fish and chug down one more drink than we usually would.

Back at the flat, the electricity is erratic: some lights are working; other flicker on and off. Our hosts Carmen and Mikel are away on the coast, but a few texts establish that the whole street is experiencing the same problem. Fortunately, normal power resumes within an hour and I doze off watching Benidorm.

Saturday 3 January

We leave Granada on an almost-full midday bus. Soon, we’re rolling through the mouse-brown winter Andalucian countryside dotted with an occasional small town nestled underneath towering hills. Halfway to Malaga, the bus begins its descent to the coast, barrelling relentlessly downhill for well over half an hour until we reach the city.

Our room in Malaga is no more than we can expect at an Ibis budget hotel, but it’s clean and bright. The forecast for Sunday is hideous, so we set out right away to explore while we can. First, a sandwich and a coffee as we catch up with the new-year-with-a-bang news that the US has just kidnapped Venezuelan cartoon villain Nicolas Maduro (on charges, among others, of owning machine guns—“Second Amendment for me, but not for you”, as one wag puts it). Then, a surprisingly long climb up to the castillo for views across the city and to get our bearings. At the summit, an early taster of tomorrow’s rain kicks in, so we pass on coughing up the entrance fee and gingerly make our way back down over the slippery-looking flagstones.

The rain relents, so we spend an hour wandering the Christmas/New Year markets around the harbour, where a chic couple are dancing tangos for spare change. We stop to watch them, munching on fresh cinnamon-coated peanuts to see us through to dinner time:

Earlier, we spotted a ramen joint just round the corner from our hotel. It will do. We tuck into steaming bowls of ramen and discuss logistics for our arrival in Costa Rica four weeks from tonight.

Sunday 4 January

Our one full day in Malaga is splishy-splashy from well before dawn until well after dark. But that’s OK as our sole business today is museums. The Malaga Museum is a curious mish-mash of archeological finds, many several times my weight, and old maps, paintings, photos and architect plans that chart the course of the city’s expansion from medieval Moorish stronghold to the roaring capital of the Costa del Sol. Upstairs there’s a fine collection of mostly nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish art, including this 1917 painting, Winter Gloom/Grey Landscape, which reminds me of yesterday’s bus trip down from Granada:

At the Picasso Museum, I learn that Señor Pablo was a sculptor as well as a painter. But the biggest takeaway is the astonishingly precocious paintings that he was dashing off by his mid-teens, including this watercolour of his father:

To this layman, there’s a lot of filler in the museum among the uncontestable highlights. Kate Bush albums come to mind: always dazzling but just a little boring when consumed in volume.

Halfway through the museum, all of us are equally startled as every phone in the building suddenly shrieks into life with an urgent shelter-in-place catastrophic downpour warning. We peer into the museum courtyard, but there’s nothing going on in downtown Malaga except steady, relentless, light rain. When we eventually emerge, many places are already shut. It’s unclear if this is usual Sunday practice or it it’s related to the extreme weather warning. After considerable searching, we locate a still-open coffee shop and slurp down an americano before stepping back out into the rain to locate Picasso’s childhood home on the edge of a nearby plaza.

It’s still barely 5.30 in the afternoon, but there’s little point walking all the way back to the hotel before pitching out again into the rain to eat. Instead, we nab a table at a cosy-looking restaurant. It’s squarely aimed at the tourist trade, but that’s fine with us today: we tuck into an early dinner of grilled sardines, curried mussels and spicy potatoes.

We’re off to Madeira in the morning. But that’s a new blog.