Guadalest and on to Granada

First, I have a response to an email comment I got. When I talked about the arches in the attic in Gaudi's Casa Mila I didn't actually picture any of these arches. They are called catenary arches (forgot that term when I first wrote the post), and here is a picture of several of them in the attic (stolen from someone else; for some reason I didn't take any pictures in the attic).OK, the rest of this post is about Tuesday, April 14, 2009. We stayed in Benidorm last night, which is a coastal resort town that doesn’t exactly have the best reputation according to many people I talked to in the UK. Think Cancun maybe. Anyway, it afforded gorgeous views of the Mediterranean if nothing else, and we got an early start out of there. We took a small detour to a cool little town called Guadalest, and then drove to Granada in our rented Seat Altea (quite a cool car IMHO).

Person:

When we finally arrived in Granada (in torrential rain and through the impossible-to-navigate streets of the city) we checked in to Hotel Anicapri. The lady at the front desk was an American expatriot of 24 years named Cathy. As much as I am enjoying speaking Spanish, it was nice to talk to another American, and Cathy was great. She told us about some local spots to eat away from the tourist crowds and gave us some advice about seeing the Alhabra tomorrow. Thanks Cathy!Place:

Before leaving Benidorm, we went to the beach so that Laurie could put her feet in the Mediterranean (I had already done so in Barcelona). Despite the old sunburned British guy with socks up to his knees and not much else on and the startling realization that this was a “European” beach (and not in a good way), this was actually a really fun experience. The weather was gorgeous, as was the scenery (when you faced the ocean, at least).Food:

On the way out of Guadalest, we stopped at a restaurant called Casa Paco for lunch. At the end of our meal, Paco served us some locally made raisin liqueur for free. We loved it so much that I bought a bottle (only 4 Euros!). As I write this two days later on the train to Madrid, you can see we’ve enjoyed it a lot. Notice that there is no label at all.