Internet is sparse on a cruise ship, so updates may become quite sporadic for the next two weeks.

The check in process for this cruise was quite a bit less streamlined than American cruise lines, which worries me about what is to come. However, our oceanview cabin was quite a bit larger than what we are used to.

Our cruise tickets come with a “WATERUSA” package that entitles us to unlimited glasses of mineral water in the dining room. This is quite a relief as the crew in the boarding area strongly suggested that we shouldn’t drink the water from the tap in our cabin. (One even [jokingly?] suggested that it could cause ebola.) I guess Americans just expect free potable water with dinner.

We’re left Spain for Italy. Perhaps I’m just jaded, but everything seems more expensive and the train system is much worse. After our flight to Rome, we took a train to Civitavecchia, which houses the Port of Rome.

After arriving, we walked about a mile to an English gastropub, which served some excellent and affordable Italian food and wine.

Tomorrow, we are starting a cruise of Turkey and Greece aboard the Costa Deliziosa. We are worried that life aboard a Costa ship will not be as good as aboard an American cruise line (mostly because the primary language will be Italian).

For our last day in Madrid, we treated ourselves to a fancy lunch at El Club Allard. The meal consisted of 9 courses with lots of molecular gastronomy tricks (foam, food that looks like other food, food that looks like non-food, etc.). It was quite delicious and definitely the most affordable 2 Michelin star restaurant we’ve dined at, but we were slightly disappointed. The food is Spain is quite good and cheap, so we expected expensive food to be even better, and it was, just not as much as we hoped for.

Most of the rest of the day was spent shopping for a new camera. Our relatively new Fujifilm camera broke in Granada, so we switched to our underwater camera as a backup. However, the underwater camera takes terrible overwater pictures, so we went shopping for a new point and shoot at several stores in the Madrid area. We finally found a not terrible deal for a Sony compact camera at FNAC near Plaza del Sol.

In the evening, we visited the Reina Sofia museum. It has a lot of art, including a collection of paintings by Dali, but its most famous piece is Picasso’s Guernica. I don’t appreciate fine art very much (especially impressionism and most everything that followed it), but Valerie tells me that the painting is quite large and impassioned.

Today, we took a 4.5 hour train ride back to Madrid. Sadly, there is no high speed train service between the two cities. (This may change as Renfe was advertising a future high speed line between Antequerra and Granada, the slowest part of the journey.) We picked up some more sandwiches and drinks from Greens & Berries in the morning before boarding the bus to the train station. We couldn’t figure out how to refund our Urban Transport of Granada bus card, so if anyone wants it, it claims to be valid until the 2030s.

Today we visited the Alhambra of Granada. Our reservation allowed us general access from 2pm until 8pm with access to the Palacios Nazaries at 5:30pm. Before heading up to the Alhambra, we picked up some sandwiches and drinks for lunch from Greens & Berries in Plaza Nueva.

We started our tour in the Generalife Gardens. As we were walking up the hill to the gardens, we noticed that water was flowing down man-made streams/gutters along the side of the road. Once we entered the gardens and started reading the Rick Steves guide, we discovered the flowing water plays a big role in the Alhambra. You can see fountains and streams everywhere. The gardens were fairly pretty and are a modern take on an ancient Moorish garden.

We continued our tour to the old Alcazaba, which doesn’t have much of historical interest in it, but does offer great views of the Albayzin and Sacramonte area. Next up was Charles V’s palace which is interesting because it is square on the outside, but has a large circular courtyard in the middle. There were a few couples taking wedding photos in the courtyard.

The most heavily trafficked location in the Alhambra is the Palacios Nazaries, which was used by both Moorish sultans and Spanish kings. Its claim to fame is as the location where the Moors surrendered to the Spanish in the 15th century. In my opinion, the most spectacular part of the palace is the recently reconstructed lion fountain (fountain mounted on top of several lion statues), which really highlights how majestic this building once was.

After a long day of walking, we treated ourselves to a fancy dinner at Damasqueros. The service and food were spectacular and the prices were reasonable for the quality. I would definitely recommend it. If you make a reservation at 8:30pm, you will have the whole restaurant to yourself, as Spaniards don’t seem to eat dinner until at least 9:30pm.

Our reservations for the Alhambra are not until tomorrow, so today we are doing all of the other sightseeing in Granada. After eating an early lunch at a tapas restaurant, we followed Rick Steves’s advice and took a public bus that circled the Sacramonte area. At some point along the route, the bus driver suggested that we get off and see the Sacramonte Caves Museum. The walk up to the museum was long and hot. What we found was a quaint open air folk museum of the gypsy population that previously inhabited the caves. After a refreshing beverage break, we trudged back down the hill and boarded the bus back to Plaza Nueva.

After a quick siesta, we walked around the Royal Chapel connected to the local cathedral. Its claim to fame are the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel of Spain. Later in the evening, we took a bus to the crowded Saint Nicolas square where we attempted to watch the sunset and then took a Rick Steves walking tour of the area.