La Fortaleza Roja

Granada is incredible.

Maria tired at every step. We tempted her with Arabian arches and pools flushed with colourful fish but she was having none of it. Her Italian blood seeked a siesta in the shade of the benevolent ficus trees and refused to move. Clara and I ate paté sandwiches philosophically while Nicolas tempted stray cats with stale bread from the bottom of his rucksack. The sun had already bleached all the tiny spaces in the courtyard white and it had hadn’t even hit 11 am.

I had luckily heeded my house mates advice from Madrid and headed to La Alhambra straight off the night bus. There were around 30 people already camped out at the entrance when I arrived, blank-faced, white-washed and bleary-eyed. I inwardly thanked the hotel porter who’d directed me from the city centre and joined the queue.

An impromptu history lesson, two coffees and an hour and a half later we paid our rite of passage and climbed the hose-dampened tarmac in search of gorgeous architecture and culture. I love the fact that you can rock up alone somewhere with a backpack and soon almagamate friends like dust. 'I' becomes 'we', and you take it from there. I never carry a camera so this is a very useful aspect of solo travel – the age of digital and email exchange allow bonds to be forged for as long as it takes to download the day trip snaps.

La Alhambra – The Red Fortress – was originally built by the invading Arab tribes who conquered most of Spain for centuries until the disparate aristocratic families got their acts together, intermarried, and pushed against the tide. Consequent buildings were added to the fortress until it became what it is today: the best place EVER to have a party – if you can afford it!

Carlos VI couldn’t have cared too much for architecture as the join between his round bull fighting arena obscures part of the most beautiful interior walls I have ever seen. How can you mess with a wall that has the Koran painstakingly inscribed into its surface?

Don’t get me wrong – Charlie’s palace is impressive if you’re into acoustics or blood sports. What really hit me in the gut more was the jasmine gardens to the north-west of the estate. They ‘breem’ with life. Long boulevards paved in ancient stone, spurting fountains that shoot arcs over the succulent surface plant life. Clara obsessed over certain camera angles and I mooched in an alvcove, wondering what people in the facing hill of Albaicín were doing that morning.

We finally left the palace gardens at around 2, over 6 hours after we arrived.

This is a full-on day trip. Pack water, food and energy to sustain a whole day in paradise. This place rocks!