Day 2 - Valencia to Granada

The second day on tour started the regular routine: Wake-up call at 6:15am, suitcases outside your door and breakfast at 7am and on the bus at 8am. Our first your stop was just outside the City of Gaudix, known for it’s troglodyte cave dwellings. Here, we went to a cave home and living museum belonging to Paco and his family. You knew this was the real deal when Paco had to break off his talk about building and living in cave homes to stop the cat from eating the lunch cooking on the stove. The day ended up in the Sierra Nevada, the real, original Sierra Nevada mountains, in the city of Granada. It was here that Queen Isabela and King Ferdinand defeated the Moors and effectively unified their kingdoms into the country of Spain.

That evening we dined looking over the Alhambra, the last Islamic stronghold of the Iberian peninsula. We then watched the lights turn on the walls of the Alhambra as the sun set from a park full of gypsy music and hundreds of people.

Later, we walked through the gypsy Sacromonte quarter and watched their traditional Zambra dancing and singing. Zambra is a raw and primitive precursor to the better known Flamenco dancing.