Spain According to us and Jorge

Here's one I wrote earlier about our 'visit' to the Alhambra in Granada (The Big Pomegranate)

View from the Alhambra to the Albaicin

The Andalucian city of Granada is justifiably proud of, and famous for, the beautiful Alhambra palace, which started life a thousand years ago as an Arab fortress, once housed Ferdinand and Isabella, the first Christian rulers of all Spain, and is now a major tourist attraction.
In fact so many tourists want to visit this immense palace that a system of rationing has been introduced - only 7700 visitors are admitted on any one day. Astonishingly, in the land of non-organisation that Spain is, would be visitors are able to reserve tickets, which clearly state the day and time, in advance, and more astonishingly this scheme is administered by my bank! Anyway, Jaki, who is my personal planner, strongly advised that I reserve tickets for our visit in order to ensure that we gained access.
However being the ultimate procrastinator I totally ignored her command, and chose instead to fly by the seat of my pants, imagining that in the middle of August there would only be a trickle of tourists and we would stroll through the entrance gates within minutes of arriving.
My plan failed. There was already a queue of about 8000 people which snaked all around the outer gardens to an unseen destination when we arrived bright and early at the crack of noon. Jaki was quite philosophical about it all as she entertained the massed throng with a series of expletives, pointing gestures aimed in my general direction, and wide sweeping movements of her arms indicating the length of the queue (just in case I hadn't seen it). I swear there was a ripple of applause from the female sections of the crowd when she finished!
All however was not lost, as a hastily formulated plan B was put into action. Posing as normal tourists we would make our way to the ticket office on the pretext of wanting information, and sneak into the orderly line (or melee as it is called in Spanish) and obtain entry thus. Unfortunately I was not clad in my regulation "explorer" shorts, a khaki affair with more pockets than a snooker table, and must have appeared like a zebra in a field full of wildebeest to the security guards who, hunting as a pack, picked us off and instructed us to go to the end of the "fila".
Plan C was to beg for forgiveness and promise to bring Jaki again at a less busy time and with tickets securely in hand. This seemed to work and I taxied her off to the Albaicin, the oldest surviving Moorish quarter in all Spain, a maze of narrow, winding, whitewashed streets, and home to the "best" Flamenco artist in Andalucia. Fortunately we neither saw, nor heard him!
To cut a long story short, that very evening, I was able to sample the best Granada has to offer in the form of Alhambra Special Brew, after which the palace takes its name - El Palacio Special Brew that is!