Travels to Spain - Cordoba, Granada and Malaga

e-mail: recepcion@hotel-zeus.com
website: www.hotel-zeus.com

To complete my tour of Andalucia, this year I decided to start my vacation with Malaga. By the time we flew to the city, found our luggage (which, as a matter of fact, showed on the wrong carrousel), and rented a car, it was past 1pm. We decided that we might want to leave our things in the hotel first, but couldn’t find it quickly, so went to see the city first.

We found a spot near Mercado Central, managed to get into the market through the puddles of water that smelled like fish, and got some food right before the market was closing. Then we went to visit the cathedral, Museo Picasso, Alcazaba, Ayuntamiento and followed Semana Santa procession (this was the eve of the Easter).

Then we finally went to find the hotel. I asked for directions a couple of times, and finally we saw the sign "Hotel Zeus". The hotel is in the modern building, has an elevator and the lobby locks at night. You can park your car on the street for free or in the underground garage of the building across the street for 6 euros/night.

A triple room with three single beds and full bath is 77 euros including taxes. The hotel has a nice location it is located very close to the train station and bus station, as well as the city center and main sightseeing places the city has to offer.

A triple room has three beds, which are quite nice and comfortable. There is a table and two chairs, a small closet with chest with drawers in it, and a TV. The room also has an air conditioner and a window with blinds that can be opened to let some air in. The bathroom is rather large with bathtub, toilet, bidet, sink and a hair dryer.

The receptionist in the lobby speaks some English and he is very helpful with maps and directions. I made reservations by e-mail and didn’t regret it. During Semana Santa weekend, the prices are high in Andalucia, so I thought it was a good deal, especially considering that in Seville that same day would have cost me twice as much.

e-mail: hsierraaracena@terra.es

As usual, I made reservations by e-mail that I got from the brochures published by Spanish tourist office.

From Malaga, we drove to Seville since last year we didn’t get to see the inside of the Seville cathedral (no thanks to its mayor). This year we managed to see it. On Easter Sunday, it was open! We also managed to see a couple of churches, Museo de Bellas Artes and huge crowds in front of Plaza de Toros waiting for the bullfight. It seemed the whole city came for that entertainment. Traffic on Paseo de Colon was terrible. I couldn’t believe how many people were coming to see it.

We decided not to stay in Seville and drove to Aracena to be at least 100km closer to Portugal which is where we were going next. We stayed at Hotel Sierra de Aracena. The hotel is located in the center of the town and owned by people who also manage another hotel in the area named "Finca Valbono". I had to ask a couple of times for directions but eventually we found the hotel. The façade is in neo-Mudejar style and has 42 rooms, most of which are double rooms. The lobby is decorated with the tiles that are so typical of the south of Spain.

I stayed in a triple room with three single beds decorated in green with flowers covers and drapes and green wallpaper on the walls. The room also had a bed table, TV, desk, two chairs, a closet with a couple of hangers and a window facing the white wall of the house across the narrow street. I tried getting a room with the view of the castle but there was no triple room available with that view. There is also a full bathroom with a bathtub, toilet, bidet and a sink.

You can get breakfast in cafeteria near the large reception area in the lobby. A triple room is 67 euros including taxes. Nearby are the castle, caves, the nature park and of course Sierra de Aracena – the mountains of Aracena that gave the name to the hotel.

We stayed one night in Granada, and I did an extensive research of cheap accommodations in Granada beforehand. In general, hostels are cheaper than hotels, so I was looking for a cheap hostel with a good location (in the city center near the Alhambra). I checked out the graffiti wall at Rick Steves’ website for recommendations, but all the hotels that people stayed at were more expensive than I was willing to pay, and I needed a triple room. I always need a triple room with a full bathroom, but I wanted to pay under $70, including tax.

I found several websites that had listings of hostels in Granada, and then I selected the ones that had emails and emailed them for availability. When they responded (and only very few responded), I could pick which one fit the best both by price and location. Hostal Atenas was one of the two hotels that responded to my emails. The hostel can be reserved online, and you can get 10% discount if you make reservations online. A triple room with a full bath costs €67, and with the discount, the price comes down to €61.30.

The hostel is located on Gran Via de Colon, which is a main street in every Spanish city. Colon (kol’on) is Spanish for Columbus. This hostel was listed on several websites, including hostels.com. I sent an email in two languages to make sure that the owners understood me. I don’t know much of Spanish, but altavista.com was very helpful in translating from English into Spanish and then back again.

Bus no. 3 takes you from the bus station to the corner of Gran Via, and then you have to walk about two blocks to the hostel. The bus ticket costs $0.85 cents. If you have a lot of luggage, I would recommend taking a taxi from the bus station. The hostel has an elevator and the rooms are on several floors. Rooms are small, and a triple room had three beds, a small wardrobe, and a tiny table with one chair. The third bed had to be put in at an angle to fit in the room. The mattresses were rather old, with springs sticking into your spine here and there. The bathroom, however, was pretty large with a toilet, bathtub, and sink, and a window that could be opened into the yard. Easter weekend is not a good time to travel since hotels are full of college students and since it was rather noisy well into the night with people coming and going.

The location is really very good: Capilla Real and the cathedral are 2 blocks away, and Plaza Nueva is 2 more blocks away, where you can take a bus to Alhambra. There are lots of grocery stores in this area and also a market, which is by far the best place to buy souvenirs.

Phone: 957 47 05 12
Open: April-June, Mon-Sat 10am-7:30pm, July-Oct, Mon-Sat 10am-5pm. During Semana Santa, it has interesting hours: 9-10:45am and 2-6pm.
Prices: 6.50 euros for adults and students; no student discounts, and the only discounts are 50% off for children under 14.

Cordoba, birthplace of Seneca and Maimonides, was the most educated and cultured city in 10th century Europe. Now, this is a city where the old city was declared by the UNESCO a World Heritage Site, and you know why that is as soon as you enter it – you feel like you are a time traveler who just overcame several centuries of civilization and transferred from the modern-day, rectangular, twin apartment buildings to the times when Jews and Arabs lived peacefully next to each other and the city was full of poets, philosophers, doctors, and mystics.

The most amazing site in Cordoba is the Mezquita, an enormous mosque that was converted into a Christian cathedral. The mosque was built in the 8th century on the site of a Visigoth cathedral and kept getting enlarged over the course of the next two centuries. This is the first thing that you see when you enter the old city and the last thing you see when leaving it. The mosque occupies a very large block of the city. From the outside, the building looks like a brick-walled fortress with mudejar horseshoe patterns on the walls. If you enter through the Bell Tower, you will see a huge difference in the appearance of the Bell Tower from the rest – it’s pure baroque, as the tower was built in the 16th-17th centuries, with gorgeous ornaments on the inside of the ceiling. The mosque/church is probably the most amazing combination of eight centuries of architecture you would ever see. Here are the elements of the mudejar style alongside the Hispano-Flemish, Renaissance, and baroque features. The first things that makes this place stand out from any other church are the marble columns, connected with each other by semi-circular arches with white and red vertical stripes. The most important part of the old mosque is the mihrab, dating back from the 10th century, built during the last and largest expansions of the mosque. It is a large wall now behind the iron gates, decorated with mudejar horseshoe shape stucco, mosaics and plaster. Mihrab holds a sacred stone.

We woke up in Seville and decided that we would really regret it if we didn’t visit Cordoba and Granada. So we looked at the clock, put our things in the bags, threw the keys to the receptionist, and were in a taxi heading towards the train station. Five minutes and eight euros later, we were in front of the Santa Justa station building.

If you are traveling by train, to find train schedules, go to the website, switch to English, and on the left side of the screen when it loads, you will see the tab showing schedules and prices. You can plan your itinerary from home since it will tell you which train runs at what time on which day and how much you will pay. It may be a good idea to study the Spanish version of the website to learn basic vocabulary for your trip.

I went inside to get the tickets (the cheapest train is Andalusia Express, 6.95 euros per person) and asked the cashier if I could pay with the credit card (the conversation was obviously in broken Spanish on my part). Usually, there is a 9:15am train to Cordoba and our concierge verified the schedule; however, that day was my lucky day because the train was leaving at 9am, so I had no time to waste. At 8:56am, we were literally rolling down the escalator to the train ready to leave any minute. Of course, the zipper broke on one of the backpacks, but thankfully, we had a huge bag to put it in. That notwithstanding, we made it to the train and at 9am on the spot, we were on our way to an amazing journey to the Arabic and Jewish heritage of Spain.

Andalusia Express trains leave every day at 9:15am and 1:20pm; if you take any other train to Cordoba, it will cost 17 to 19 euros.