Lost in Granada

A boring fountain in the more modern part of Granada, before we got lost.

In one corner stood the challengers, Ben and I, who consider ourselves pretty intrepid travelers. We have our fair share of experience, open minds, and a decent bit of know-how. In the other corner stood the champion, Granada is known for its small cobblestone streets in the center of town, as well as many hills. And in this case, the city maintained its title, for the city won.

We did not get lost just once in Granada, nor twice. We got lost four times. Four different cases of utter befuddlement, where maps offered no help, and oftentimes the locals we asked had no idea how to help us. Each incidence had its own flavor, however, so let's look a little closer:

The First Time (Or, how we finally found our aptly named hostel): First is the worst, or so it was for us. We still had hope, we still had the idyllic vision of a perfect trip in our hearts, and more importantly, we still had our bags on.
The hostel wasn't on the map, and neither was the street it was on, Calle de Mirador Rolando. But Gmapping it suggested a general location, and we figured once we got close, we could ask somebody or stumble upon it ourselves.

Ben pulls out the map. This happens to be about 5 minutes away from our hostel as the stray cat walks, 2 hours as the travelers search.

So after a little map consulting and a checking of our gut instincts, we marched through an arch and up a hill. We climbed carefully, listening as other tourists in earshot talked about how this reminded them of "Old Europe." Then, in a touristy plaza near the top of a hill, in the middle of siesta, we started to ask for help.
I still speak minimal Spanish, and understand about as much. Still, from what Ben told me and from what I could piece together, the general exchange went like this:
Ben: "Excuse me, could you tell me where calle de Mirador Rolando is?"
Granada Citizen: "What? Never heard of it. What are you looking for?"
Ben: "A hostel, El Clandestino."
GC: "Hmm. Nope. Maybe they made it up. You should take a left here, go up a hill, and ask somebody at the next plaza."
And so on.

We ran into some interesting people while we hunted. One mother with two little girls had no idea where the street was, but was eager to talk with us and wish us luck. Another woman, a little older, gave us detailed directions which were confirmed by an even older gentleman on a rooftop. At one point we got tired and stopped on a plaza that had a little park and a small platform. Therein we got to witness a girl practicing a little flamenco. That was fun.

Ben filming the flamenco dancer. Meta.

None of this helped us find our hostel, however, and after two or so hours of tramping around with our bags, most of that time unclear of where we were going (we did successfully buy train tickets to get to Sevilla). We took the last woman's advice and went out to a major road, then after marking our territory in case we got lost, we went down Cuesta San Antonio. Ben recognized the street from his Gmapping, so we had some hope. As we proceeded down the hill, we saw a tattoo parlor, and agreed that must be a good sign. Still, we found nothing, and were back at the arch where Ben first pulled out the map.
We were and still are intrepid travelers. Maybe life is easier for the traveler these days, with internet access abundant, a more globalized understanding prevalent everywhere, and the ability to plan out a trip better than ever. But at that point we were stumped, tired, and weary. Smiles still hung on our faces, though not out of joy. Rather, at some point we smiled at the absurdity of our dilemma, and then became too tired to wipe that smile off our faces.
There was no recourse but to continue our efforts, anyway. (I thought we might throw ourselves at the feet of the flamenco dancer and her friend, in hopes they might take pity on us and let us crash on their floor, but that was just a suggestion). Ben went into a motorcycle shop on the incline to that first plaza atop a hill. He stayed in there for a few minutes, so that I got concerned and went back to check on him. There he stood, looking at a map with three other guys. As it turns out, the owner was sure where the place was, and it was indeed not on the map. And we had walked right by it.
So we went back out towards that main road, the one where we had so conveniently marked our territory. We approached the same Cuesta San Antonio, this time with a desperate hope, not knowing what would happen if we failed this time. We espied the tattoo parlor at the bottom of the hill again, our omen of possibility, and as we spotted it, Ben looked to his right, where indeed a stairway off the street led up. We went up, and so it was, calle de Mirador Rolando! A stairway that led to a tiny circle of a street, where indeed El Clandestino lived up to its name. And we, exhausted after 3+ hours of tromping around with our bags, retired to a nice terrace to recover before our nighttime efforts.


View from ol' El Clandestino. It's nice, eh? Maybe not quite worth the effort, but still.

Number 2, or how we couldn't find the hostel again: So after resting up a little bit and generally setting into our hostel, which was very nice, we went out to see what the Granada night had in store for us. Spanish nightlife is largely based around the art of the tapas, where you hop from bar to bar eating small plates of various delicacies, many involving ham, while drinking beverages. But I doubt that anywhere can match Granada in one respect: there you don't pay for the tapas. Order a drink, get free tapas. And drinks are not especially expensive: we didn't pay more than 2 euros (these days, roughly $145) for a drink, and usually a little less.
So we went to one place, squeezed ourselves into a corner right before the rush began, and enjoyed a couple o' drinks. Ben had cañas (little beers) while I usually went to tinto de veranos (red wine with lemon seltzer water). We had a couple of nice tapas plates, one featuring ham, one pork, and some girls from Andalucia talked to us for a bit. Then we headed to another place where we watched Madrid suburbian football team Getafe steal a tie from Bayern Munich in the UEFA Cup Quarterfinals, as well as learning about Zenit St. Petersburg's dominant away win. We had Morcilla (blood sausage, though it was served like chili on a piece of bread) and tortilla (eggs and potatoes, also on bread). Somewhere along the way we had a tuna paste on bread as well. A lot of bread.
Anyway, somewhere near midnight, which is still quite early in the night for Spain, we decided to trek back to the hostel. We planned to wake up at 7 or so the next morning to get out to the Alhambra and buy tickets, so a decent rest was in order. Things were going fine as we walked back to the main drag. We took a turn and wandered into somewhat unfamiliar territory, but we weren't too concerned. While we had seen just about all of Granada when we got lost earlier, we figured that it must look different at night. So we went on. And on. And on.
15 minutes later we saw a sign saying "Centro" and pointing in the direction we came from. Another turn around, another extra adventure. At least we got back without special problems.

This was the next day at the Alhambra. No one is lost, we're just upside down.

The Third Time (Or how we struggled to find our 2nd hostel): So our main man Manuel at El Clandestino warned us that Hostelworld lied, and that he had no availability for Friday night. But also he told us not to worry, because he had rebooked us in another hostel with a private room which was cheaper and even closer to the center.
Friday morning we went to the Alhambra (without getting lost! though we did buy one ticket too many...), and afterwards returned to EC for our bags and directions to our next place, Maktub. Manuel told us where to go and said there would be "plenty of signs."
Maktub is an Arabic word, and the hostel was appropriately located in one of the most Arabic regions of Granada. Granada has strongest Arabic heritage in Spain, as evidenced by the Arabic region and the Alhambra. So as we looked for our hostel, we found plenty of market stalls where one could by handheld drums or incense or clothing.
We didn't find Maktub, of course. We walked right around where it should have been two or three times, again clueless. We asked a couple people, who gave us directions that were less than precise, which left us no better off than before.
The resolution to this episode was quicker and easier, however: A waitress in a nearby bar told Ben to look for the big wooden door, and after we knocked on a couple, we came to the right one. There an Austrian dude let us in, and we witnessed an Israeli and an Australian with huge blond dreads and a Velvet Underground and Nico t-shirt have an argument about whether or not all the food in the fridge was up for grabs. They came to some conclusion, and after an interlude of silence, the following exchange was heard:
Aussie: What are you making now?
Israeli: Pizza. (Pause) You want some?
Aussie: No, I'm good.

No further blood or angst shed, we retired to the terrace for a little break before setting off on our last adventure, which of course led to...

This is actually still at the Alhambra. I'm not lost, but it sure looks like it.

The Fourth Time (Or where we got lost in a good way): We wanted to go to the Sacramonte, a neighborhood with many caves on the other high ground of Granada, North of the Alhambra. We took a bus to the Alhambra, but this time we decided we could scale the hill one way or another.
First we scaled the streets, where we found Mirador San Nicolas. One of Ben's students told him people played flamenco and the cool kids hung out there, so we did as such also, watching various hippie riff-raff selling necklaces and the like while a guy played a pretty mean flamenco tune or two. Impromptu dancing ensued and all was quite merry around us and in our hearts as we set back on our journey to the top of the hill*.
At a juncture below the wall we intended to reach, we saw a sign that pointed to the Sacramonte neighborhood to our right. The wall was clearly in front of us. So we decided to eschew following the sign and proceeded forwards. Why at this point we would spurn help and guidance so clearly offered is a question best left unanswered.
We went up some stairs, came upon sleeping dogs, a rooster, and a goose underneath a car in a street's span, and then we decided to take it off road. Climbing more or less easily marked paths, we got all the way up to the wall we spotted from below. That wall was actually still below the caves, and one of our EC friends told us that the hippie riff-raff hang out there as well. We saw a few such people as we walked around the wall and came to the other side. In front of us were open fields, with barely traces of civilization upon them. To the right was the Alhambra on its hill, actually slightly below us. A grand opportunity stretched out before us, and we took it.
Avoiding a few skinny stray dogs, we took off in the direction of a building we saw from afar that we thought might be the cave museum. Going on and off the paths, up and down hills, we came to a bluff that overlooked the Sacramonte neighborhood, no doubting it. But there was a fence somewhere down there, which put the question of accessing the neighborhood on the table. Still, we carried on, picking our way down the cactus-girded path and past a few caves that looked quite inhabited. We came to within 50 feet of the museum height wise, and it seemed sure that we'd make it.
Alas, a man below spotted me. "Are you trying to make a visit to the museum?" he cried out in English, likely hearing Ben and I speak before.
"No, we'd just like to get down to the streets," I answered.
"You have to go around," he said, and he gestured to my right. "You can't get down that way."
"Can't I just hop the fence?" I asked.
"No!" He laughed. "Where are you from?"
"Moscow," I said.
"Moscow? Well, you have to go around!"

So the shortcut plans were foiled. Ben was still a little higher up on the trail, so I backtracked to him and we went around to a path that led us to the street. On the way we slid by two ravenous dogs (I was armed with a rock, just in case) and then calmed another angry dog, though a chihuahua. At last we came to the streets of Sacramonte, by which point we wanted to do nothing more than return to the main part of the city. As usual, it's the journey, not the destination that counts.

Leaving Granada at last. We earned it.


*I read about 240 pages of Don Quixote over the trip span, so if my prose is a little grandiloquent, that's probably the inspiration.