Granada Day 1 -- warning: five kajillion pictures included

We piled in the car on Saturday morning and headed out for a weekend trip to Granada.  It is about three hours away and we knew we wanted to spend several hours at The Alhambra so we decided to spend the night there.  I took so so so many pictures and have trouble weeding them out because it was so amazing! Phin was car sick on the way there and I was worried he wouldn't  be able (or willing) to walk around, but he perked up after we'd been there for about 30 minutes.

::Charles said,"We could take this picture in Illinois"

 ::This hedge was incredible!  The boys wanted to stay and play here, but we had just barely started our day!

 ::The older kids abandoned us, but we kept running into them periodically

 ::Phin loves maps so much and spent quite a bit of time figuring out where we were at any given moment

 ::This was an old Moorish bath house

::There were lots of stray cats wandering around and the boys loved chasing them

::This was the Alcazaba (say that with your theta, por favor) a military fortress and towers

 ::We didn't realize right away that one could only enter the main palace at a certain time which was printed on the entrance ticket (I found this out by hunting down an English guide map after an hour of being confused), but we didn't know where the older kids were to tell them -- lo and behold, we ran into them on our way over to the palace.  They said they had been about to walk the complete opposite direction!  And they wouldn't have been able to visit that part at all later.  Charles looked at Ella, "Testimony bearing worthy?"  Definitely.

 ::Hey look!  I was there!

::The Palacio Nazaries -- So amazing!!!!  We liked it better than some of the gaudy, ornate, flamboyant, dazzlers further north (I'm looking at you Versailles), but I suppose it isn't fair to compare because they're just completely different.  This one didn't have any furniture or anything so it probably looked a lot different when people were living there.

::We were quickly abandoned once again and left with the two littles -- which is fine.  We're not quite as much of a spectacle with only two children in tow.  The boys loved looking at all of the intricate carvings and repeatedly pointed out the different patterns that they could find.

::I loved this room -- the ceiling looked like a beautiful starry night

::In this same room there were 12 little alcoves and they all had different patterned tiles

 ::In several places they had a table where kids could learn about and touch the different types of carvings

 ::There were fish in all of the pools so that was entrancing

 ::Ooh!  A siting!

 ::They were clearly getting tired of me asking them to pose!  But look at that tiny tree -- kawaii!

 ::I wanted to take a fantastic picture of this hallway with the arches' shadows, so I waited a bit for that girl to move, but she wouldn't!  I finally let it go and carried on and saw that she was standing in the Alhambra checking facebook!  I saw her later sitting on a bench doing the same thing.  It was funny.

::Hey, I was there!  Phin is perfecting his selfie- face

 ::I like taking pictures through doorways, haha!

 ::Another picture, wah wah

 ::The light was so wonderful that day!

::Look Mom!  Take my picture!

 ::If you look really closely, you can see the boys running through this maze -- they ran a lot!

::Hey, there's that knocker thing-a-ma-jig again, let's try to touch it one more time!

::Wouldn't it be fun to go up two different stairways?

::There is Phin on the opposite side!

::They wanted to stay and play here all day!!!

 ::Off to the next place!

::A garden!  Let's go play in there!

::Must touch water in every fountain

::Another palace!

::There's the last palace across the way

::He's practicing winking!

::This fountain had water coming out of monster mouths, hilarious!

::Looking at the map whilst descending stairs -- talented!

::Another maze!

::Running pose

::The last picture and then my phone died.  Matthew very sarcastically remarked that he couldn't imagine how that could've happened...

::And then we had an uproarious adventure finding some food for dinner, our hotel for the night (on an extremely narrow street), then finding a parking garage and almost getting stuck between two columns (I failed to get a picture of that because it was so stressful!  And we didn't think we'd ever get the van out), but then we made it after a 600 point turn and it doesn't look too bad at all, does it?

Tune in for day two!!!