Hola to all of our followers! We are currently in Granada waiting for the tapas bars to open so we can go for drinks and free food.

We weren’t so keen for yesterday because we thought it was going to be just a travel day where we would have to eat dinner at a service station and get to our hotel after 10pm. We woke up, had the usual hotel breakfast and left the hotel at 8:30am to Botafoch (lol) port where we were catching a ferry to Denia (mainland Spain). Although we weren’t keen for the big travel day we were not so sad to say goodbye to Ibiza.

Our ferry wasn’t departing until 11am and at this time we thought the journey time was 4 hours on the ferry. We did a lot of waiting around and queuing and we finally were getting on the ferry. Ronnie was imagining a ferry like the ones that take you to Manly in Sydney but it was actually comfortable and spacious. We also found out it was a 2 hour ferry, not four hours! It departed perfectly on time and got to the port where our bus was waiting for us.

The bus ride from Denia to Granada was about 5 hours so we had to make a stop at services along the way. Thank god we didn’t need to stop here for dinner because Ronnie got a sandwich and it was stale. On our second leg of the bus ride Zach spoke for about an hour on the topic of Spanish history. He didn’t have notes during that entire time. He knows so much about it. Particularly about Isabelle and Ferdinand – fascinating stuff.

We got to Granada at about 7:30pm and headed off for dinner not long after. Our first impressions of Granada is that is a beautiful city. Ronnie was expecting the south of Spain to be like the south of Italy – still beautiful but a little rougher around the edges. It’s not like that. There’s beautiful squares and churches. We sat on the steps of a church listening to a guy play the violin and sing opera. It was so lovely.

We were hungry after a bit of a wander. The best thing about Granada is that when you order a drink in a bar you get a plate of free food. Granada is pretty close to Morocco therefore there is a lot of Moroccan cuisine and we wanted to try it. We found a Moroccan tapas bar and ordered a drink each.

We ended up with Cigares, which was like a spring roll but there was cheese and herbs inside. It was delicious.

We ordered another drink and got a Moroccan pot which when we opened it had lamb meatballs inside in a rich sauce and bread to soak it up. This was a highlight – so yummy.

We also ordered the tapas special which was a bit of a mystery. It was a plate of crispy breads with different spreads on them and in the middle was sweet rice, potato and falafel. The falafel was amazing! We were so full before we even started on this plate. We found you don’t need to order off the menu to get full. You will get full on the free tapas.

Zach told us there was pretty good Italian gelateria in town that everybody loves. We decided to head up and check it out – we of course got our favourite flavour – pistachio. The gelato was good but not as good as gelato in Italy and it made us miss gelato there a lot. It’s never going to be the same.

Once we got our gelato we walked back through the city centre towards our hotel where we saw a parade of big puppets accompanied by heavy drum beats and high pitched violin. It was random but cool.

We then got back to our room and settled in for the night.

Itemised Spending:

• Servo food/snacks – €20
• Moroccan tapas dinner – €31
• Gelato – €3

Total: €53

Our cheapest day yet. Most of that was travelling though and dinner was great!

Stay tuned for our full day in Granada.

Ronnie and Aimee