granada

we decided to leave madrid a little early and go visit the alhambra in granada, which turned out to be a touch disappointing, as we missed the best part of alhambra, due to a misunderstanding, in which you are only given a half-hour window to enter the palacio navarres, after which you can stay as along as you like. strange logic. the palacio navarres has all the good stuff at alhambra, such as the court of lions, the bathhouses, and other various attractions that one shouldn't miss when visiting alhambra. but miss them we did and seeing that it would have cost another 20 euros to visit them, we gave a rude gesture of the hand to alhambra, got some ice cream and walked back to our hostel.
granada is a beautiful place, but bursting at the seams with tourists. we nearly heard more english than spanish there, of which we were obviously another case. unexpectedly, granada also seems to be a party city, as we ran into more young people spilling out of clubs while walking to catch our train at 7am. the noise from this, in addition to the heat allowed us to sleep about 3 hours a night. i see more and more why the spainards take siesta, as they don't seem to sleep at night.
a little disappointed with granada, we went back to madrid to pick up our rental car and head north to basque country, which we were eagerly anticipating.