Grenada flight, the Alhambra, and Ronda

Ian’s alarm sounded at 6:30am. We collected our belongings (including packages of Fiber One) and headed downstairs for breakfast.

Day 3
7:00am Breakfast in lobby restaurant. Have bags ready inside the room for pickup by bell-staff.

In the hotel lobby, after breakfast, I met Walter Garrett, husband of Sally and business school graduate from Corona, CA, and when I was tunneling through the bus aisle to hurry into my assigned seat, Martha Aronson introduced herself and her husband David from St. Louis, MO.

8:00am SHARP Depart for the airport to fly to Grenada.

As someone remarked, the tour group experienced a little thing called “hand-holding” as Karen directed our luggage, checked us in, and walked us to the departure gate. It all would have been quite stress-free except that partners kept misplacing their other halves and husbands kept waiting for wives who in turn were waiting for husbands in entirely different areas. But come wheels-up, everyone was in position.

BCN to GRX 1005A-1140A Iberia

The flight to Grenada took us out of Cataluna and into mountainous Andalucia, where rows of asparagus and birch trees filled the views from our airplane portholes. On the ground and in a bus, we motored past cave dwellers, horses, and prickly cacti bearing fruit.

12:00pm Lunch at La Ruta del Veleta.

Ian ordered chicken and I a vegetarian dish at a restaurant famous for serving royalty. We lunched with Joe, a pilot, and Steve from Connecticut.

1:45pm Approximate departure for the Alhambra.

The world contains an estimated fifteen million acres of olive trees; Spain alone claims over four million of these. Due to Spain’s high quantity production and certain other countries’ disproportionate consumption, oil in the olives from the orchards that we passed would likely end up in a bottle labeled “Italian Olive Oil.”

Alhambra, Arabic for “red,” described the rose tinted color of the mountains of Andalucia. The history: Muslim Moors came en masse to Spain from Africa in 711, landing at Gibraltar and, over the next two years, conquered the Iberian peninsula or nearly the entire non-unified Spanish region (having never taking some of the northern regions) via the extensive Roman system of roads. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella concluded the holy war to remove the Moors from Spain; the final battle was fought in Alhambra. Surviving Moors escaped into the mountains and set-up camp until Ferdinand and Isabella’s army herded the Moors into caves and burned them.

We toured inside the one and a half-mile wall that enclosed La Alhambra, home to approximately two thousand people and house of Palacio del Generalife (Arabic for “general life”) that contained the Paradise Garden, Palacios Nazaries, Alcazaba, and Palacio de Carlos V.

4:30pm Approximate departure for Ronda. Enjoy a scenic drive through Andalucia.
7:00pm Approximate arrival at historic Parador de Ronda, nestled in the heart of town.
8:30pm Dinner opens downstairs in Parador de Ronda. Suggested dress: no jeans or shorts.

Due to a post-8pm arrival, the night’s dinner dress code dropped a few notches, and group members arrived in varied degrees of formalness. Ian and I made appearances in off-the-bus clothing styles. The hotel lobby restaurant reserved four large tables for us, which we filled with gusto. To be more accurate, our table gusto-ly filled the entire restaurant with jollity. The full cast list for our table, going around the circle, was Carol Kaliebe, Ron Kaliebe, Harriet Schultz, David Aronson, Martha Aronson, Mark Gilbert, Karen Gilbert, June Schultz, Ian, and me. Plates of anchovies, deer, ox tail, risotto, cold soups, jamon, and day-old bread made the several rounds among us since no one seemed too timid to share or taste a little. The main event began when June brought out her Blackberry for the rest of us to, in turn, report to her sisters the neglectful treatment of their mother, who earlier in the day—while everyone else enjoyed Alhambra’s refreshing gardens—was abandoned to roll her own wheelchair down a platform and occupy a stone bench for two and a half hours, without money and companionship and with no access to a bathroom. Being responsible travelers and class-one world citizens, we dutifully reported the abuse to family members before finishing off the remainder of our table’s vino tinto.

Back in the room, after Ian called Judi, we hit the showers and the sack. It was around half past midnight.