Granada; Saturday, 14 March, 2009

After a quick breakfast I grabbed my things and headed to the bus station to go to Jaén for the day. I got to the bus station and had a choice (with just 25 minutes to go before the bus was due to leave). The very long queue to the desks, when I would have to stammer through my non existant Spanish, or the automated ticket machine, which had a much shorter queue, but was also service in Spanish only.

In the end I decided to try my luck at the self-service ticket machine, and with some judicious “That looks like return” pressing of buttons, and quite a bit of luck, I had a day return ticket to Jaén in my possession. My only error was to select a confirmed bus for the journey back, rather than selecting an open return (which I kind of worked out just as I stuck my Credit Card in the machine, by which point it was far too late to do anything about it.)

10 minutes later I found myself on the bus, my ticket having been checked and confirmed to be correct, and we headed off North towards Jaén, taking in some stunning scenery. It is clear to see from the journey how important Olives are to the economy of Andalucía. Virtually every spare inch of land is planted with olive trees, mile after mile of plantations stretching up the sides of hills and into the distance.

Ninety minutes late we arrived in Jaén and I quickly wandered to the tourist office to find out the opening times of some of the attractions I wanted to visit (all my guide books, a couple of years out of date, all gave completely different times for everything, which wasn’t really helpful). With a set of times, a very good map and some suggestions for things to do in hand I headed out of the office to explore the city.

The first thing I did was get in a Taxi and leave the city! Albeit to go up to the Castle at the top of the hill. I already had an inkling that the walk would be quite steep and long (and on the way back down this was confirmed, so much easier to deal with a 4KM hill descent rather than an unknown distance assent up a track that at times was close to 45 degrees.

I had a look around the castle, and the views from the surrounding hillside, before walking back into town, just in time for lunch. After a stop for lunch I wandered down to the Palacio de Villadompardo where there were three sights to see, a Gallery, an Ethnographic museum, and the star attraction, the largest and most complete Arabic Baths in Spain.

By the time I had finished looking around the Palacio and I had wandered back to the Cathedral, it had opened for it’s evening session, so I had a look around that, before wandering down just past the bus station to the Museo Provincial for the Archaeological exhibits and the city art gallery.

When I had got my ticket out of the machine in the morning, I had been concerned, once I had failed to get an open return, that I would end up having to hang around the bus station or the city centre for a couple of hours. In the end I had to rush through the end of the Art gallery so that I could get back to the station in time to catch the bus back to Granada.

I caught the bus with about 10 minutes to spare, and collapsed, exhausted into my seat. Thankfully, I had had quite a large lunch and really wasn’t feeling hungry, so when I got back to Granada, I just went back to the hotel and to my welcoming bed.

Weather

Sunny Sunny
AM PM
Hot (20-30C, 68-86F)
29ºC/84ºF