A Travel Blog
Any view east down Princes Street from the center of Edinburgh terminates with Calton Hill. At just over 100 metres in height, it can be climbed with modest effort and provides nice views of the city.
Not content to simply enjoy the natural views, Edinburghers of the past built numerous monuments on the hill. The Dugal Stewart Monument was built in 1831 to honour a Scottish philosopher.
We timed our visit to Edinburgh well, escaping Toronto’s heat just as it exceeded 30C for the first time this year. The much cooler and windier Scottish weather is a bit of a shock, though.
On our last full day in Granada we hiked up to Sacromonte, the more remote eastern portion of Granada’s Albaicín neighbourhood.
The walk took us about an hour and the views became surprisingly rugged and rural quite soon after leaving the bustle of the Carrera del Darro area.
We visited several historic churches while in Spain but the Basilica de San Juan de Dios in Granada was easily the most astonishing and, in some ways, horrifying.
One of the smaller sights we visited in Granada was the Carmen de Max Moreau, a traditional house high in the Albaicín that was the former home and studio of Belgium-born painter Max Moreau.
Moreau lived in this house for the last 30 years of his life, until his death in 1992. He left the house to the city of Granada and it was opened to the public as a free museum in 1998.
Granada’s main draw is the Alhambra, a sprawling complex of palaces, gardens and towers that loom over the city.
Construction began in 889, on top of older Roman fortifications, but most of the palaces were built during the 12th and 13th centuries by the Emirate of Granada, the series of Muslim Emirs and Sultans who ruled the city at that time.
Sunday was forecast to be the sunniest and warmest day for a while, so we took advantage and spent most of it trudging the knee-punishing hills of Granada’s Albaicín neighbourhood.
The streets immediately around our hotel — including the ones we use to get down to what I call “civilization” — are ludicrously scenic and we still can’t walk them without taking numerous photographs.
The Darro River runs between the hills of Granada’s Albaicín neighbourhood and the towering Alhambra complex. Along the banks there is a very scenic street known as the Carrera del Darro (Road of Gold in the original Latin).
The stone-walled Carrera runs along the left bank of the river. It’s lined with small shops, restaurants, and historic buildings. Stone bridges cross the river at several points.
The afternoon of our Pueblos Blancos tour took us to the spectacular city of Ronda in Málaga province.
In a country filled with stunning scenery, Ronda may have the most dramatic. The city balances on top of an enormous cliff and is cut in two by a deep gorge (El Tajo) connected by an arched bridge.
Seville is a city with no shortage of luxurious Andalusian palaces to wander through. This week we visited Casa de Pilatos (“Pilate’s House”) and filled our cameras.
Though the main purpose of our day trip to Córdoba was to visit the Mezquita, the city itself is also very scenic and we enjoyed wandering and seeing how it differs from Seville.
Córdoba has more hills than Seville, and more narrow winding streets, particularly in the Juderia, or old Jewish quarter. It reminded us a bit of the Alfama neighbourhood in Lisbon.
On Saturday — the first cloudy day since we’ve been in Spain — we took a high-speed train from Seville to the city of Córdoba to visit the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba, more commonly known as the Mezquita.
The train took 40 minutes each way, which was the perfect length for a convenient day trip. We headed to the Mezquita as soon as we arrived around 10 am.