May 16-Day 6 Travel to Granada

Day 6 was mainly a travel day. We had a 7 1/2 hour drive southwest from Madrid to Granada. We drove from the Madrid Province (similar to our counties) through La Mancha (province) to the Andalusian province, where Granada is located. The La Mancha province consists of mostly a plateau, so it was not very scenic. We did, however, take a pit stop in a small village in La Mancha (our bus driver's home province). This gave us our first two pics.

The first is a pic of our bus driver Bartolo and our tour guide Lucia. Both were great for our entire trip in Spain. Drivers in Spain can be aggressive at best, wreckless at worst, and Bartolo was very skilled at keeping us out of trouble. We did have a small incident (contact was made but not really a fender bender) in Segovia on day 3, but otherwise a very safe journey. Lucia is Italian, and speaks 3 fluent languages (Italian, Spanish, English) and two others (German, French) fairly well. It was fascinating sitting next to her and hearing talk in Italian on her cell phone, hang-up and speak to Barotlo in Spanish (he spoke a little English but not much) and then turn around and ask me a question in English. She could jump languages without skipping a beat. I was very impressed with not only her language skills but also her guiding skills.

The second pic is of a statue of Don Quixote. This is of course from the book by Cervantes, Spain's famous author, of the same title. This book (I am currently reading this-June) is a epic tale of the "famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight errant, Don Quixote de La Mancha, and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sexteenth-century Spain." Now that I have been there, I recognize locations and geography as I read. It is pretty cool. The novel is quite long, but I hope to finish it by Labor Day.

On the border of the La Mancha and Andalusian provinces is the Sierra Morena mountain range (pic 3). This was a nice chance to stretch our legs and take in some scenery. Then it was back on the bus and on to Granada. "The city of Granada is placed at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, Beiro, Darro and Genil." Pic 4 shows you the mountains and Granada. If you didn't know better you would think that was a view of Denver and the Rocky Mountains, a very similar situation, excpt for the elevation (and the lack of sky scrapers). Though the Sierra Nevada's are just as tall as the Rockies, Granada sits much closer to sea level than does Denver. This of course makes the Sierra Nevada's ("snowy range"), look much bigger, even though they are not. After checking into the hotel, we had some time to explore Granada on our own in the evening.