Food...The Most Important Meal of the Day

Monday, August 23rd

Today started off with a luxurious breakfast buffet at our Sevilla hotel, Hotel Al-Andalus Palace. It was very much like a Las Vegas buffet...think Monte Carlo, not Circus Circus. After eating, we checked out and took a taxi to the bus station to catch a bus to Granada. Buses in Spain are very nice...they´re basically charter buses. While in the taxi, I tried to get pictures of some of the cool buildings in Sevilla.

We arrived in Granada around 3 pm and took a taxi straight to our hotel. We´ve been taking taxis pretty much exclusively while in Spain, as we´ve grown weary of dragging our luggage on and off of public transportation. Fortunately, taxis in Spain are cheap and everywhere.

Our hotel was located in the heart of Granada, overlooking Plaza Nueva. We were surrounded with charming cafes...and we were hungry! We ate at a Turkish restaurant and it was pretty good. They have this huge slab of meat slowly rotating and cooking and they just shave meat off of that to make sandwiches, wraps. etc. Matt was disappointed as he grabbed the ketchup dispenser and it was curry sauce...he already had a negative experience with curry sauce in Germany.

After eating, we jumped on a minibus for a little tour of the Albayzin, the Moorish part of town. At points it felt like we were on an E ticket ride. The streets were so narrow that a pedestrian had to duck into a doorway to allow the bus to pass...crazy.

We returned to Plaza Nueva and headed to the Capilla Real, or Royal Chapel. This is where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella are entombed. It seems as if this trip has involved lots of tombs...I´m at the point where ´when you´ve seen one tomb, you´ve seen them all´!

Around the Chapel, there was a maze of shopping stalls...we happily got lost inside and actually got some pretty good deals.

Queen Isabella & Columbus

Our day ended with dinner at a tapas bar. We just couldn´t leave Spain without having tapas. We had a Spanish omelet, smoked salmon on toast, pork ribs, chicken wings, pasta...way too much food! We finally rolled back to the room and fell into a deep, food-induced coma.