Tag Archives: Granada

Alhambra: Morning, Afternoon, and Night!

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We are less than one month away from leaving for our Portugal and Spain vacation.  These last few months have gone by so quickly – and here we are, feeling unprepared (but excited!) for our trip.  We aren’t the type to plan out every single little detail, but we do love researching things to do, places to eat, and sites to see so we don’t waste time when we are there.  However, there are some sites that are so popular that we have to actually plan a bit ahead of time.  One of these is the Alhambra in Granada, and the more we research, the more we can’t wait for the experience. If you want to venture there one day, you may first have to research details like is sharelife vacations legit.

Alhambra in Granada, Spain Continue reading →

Portugal and Spain: How we are spending our time

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The Westin Palace hotel, Madrid, Spain

The Westin Palace, Madrid – our hotel for two nights.

For our upcoming trip to Portugal and Spain, we will be gone for a total of 13 nights.  While I originally wanted to stick to three or four cities, it was so hard to limit the options.  I want to share the itinerary for our two week vacation, since we’ve been sharing bits and pieces of the travel-planning process:

Lisbon, Portugal – 3 nights

  • Arriving: around 8:30am at the Lisbon Airport
  • What to Do: explore the neighboorhoods, enjoy the food and wine (and hopefully experience Fado!), visit Belém, visit Sintra (as a day trip)
  • Leaving: around 9:30 from the Lisbon Airport

Barcelona, Spain – 3 nights

  • Arriving: around 12:30 at the Barcelona airport
  • What to Do: nothing is set in stone, but we plan on visiting some of the popular sights like Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell, hanging out at the beach, exploring La Rambla, enjoying tapas
  • Leaving: around 9:30am – this ticket is already booked! Check out Ryan’s post here on direct online booking to potentially save a lot of money on train tickets. 

Sevilla, Spain – 2 nights

  • Arriving: around 2:00pm at the Sevilla train station
  • What to Do: Alcazar, Flamenco, food!
  • Leaving: We aren’t sure yet.  There are a few train options we’re looking at – one leaving around 7am, one that would leave around 9:30am and one that would leave around 12pm.

Granada, Spain – 3 nights

  • Arriving: Depends on the train we decide to take from Sevilla, but we would get in around 10:30am, 1:30pm, or 3pm at the Granada train station.
  • What to Do: the Alhambra, a possible day trip to Nerja
  • Leaving: around 9:00am from the Granada train station.  This ticket has also already been booked. 

Madrid, Spain – 2 nights

  • Arriving: around 1:30pm at the Madrid train station
  • What to Do: tapas, tapas, tapas! Ok, and the Royal Palace, Prado, and 
  • Staying: At The Westin Palace, Madrid.  This is the only hotel we haven’t written a post on, so I wanted to share the information now.  Long story short:  Starwood had a “points and cash” option for the nights we will be staying (pay partially with starpoints, partially with “cash” in USD – this is usually an awesome deal) and we couldn’t pass it up.  The location is great, so honestly, we didn’t even look at other options. 
  • Leaving: around 11:30am from the Madrid airport.

We’ll continue to do research on activities, places to eat, and things to see, but we look forward to changing our plans according to what we want to do while we’re there!

Techniques for Choosing a Hotel: Granada

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I want to start this post by mentioning, in case we haven’t already: we are not budget travelers.  Do we like to save money? Yes, of course, but at this point in our lives we can afford to spend a little extra while traveling.  This doesn’t mean that we won’t consider cheaper hotels, free activities, and less expensive dining, but we definitely do not plan our trip around spending as little as possible.

And with that, I would love to share a little about our the trip-planning process – how Ryan and I choose our hotels.  There are so many different ways to start the search, so hopefully this will help a few people!  Here is an outline of the steps we took for our Portugal and Spain trip, and Granada specifically:

  • Determine which is the best neighborhood to stay (either reading Trip Advisor forums, other online travel forums, Rick Steves – books, shows, online, etc). In some cases there isn’t necessarily an advantage to staying in one area or another, so we do not always limit our search to one area.
  • Go to spg.com and see if there are any Starwood properties in the cities.  We have the Starwood American Express and are SPG members with points in the account, so it’s good to know the options.  We won’t always want to stay in one (many of them are huge hotels, and this isn’t always alluring), but there may be a deal that’s too good to pass up! (note: there are no Starwood properties in Granada)
  • Go to Trip Advisor and search for hotels and B&Bs in each city. If there is a specific area we would like to stay (see first bullet), start search focused on that area.
  • Start going through the top hotels (especially if there are hundreds of hotels for a particular city) and look through traveler pictures. If a hotel/B&B has some nice pictures, look at the actual hotel website and start making a list of potential hotels, taking in consideration the prices, views, amenities, etc.

It’s a pretty basic process, but can take a long time for some cities. We usually find one or two hotels that we really like, and it makes it easy for us to book. However, we’ve found several with Granada and I’m actually not sure where we’ll end up. Here are the hotels we’re looking at, with a few pictures:

1. Hotel Casa 1800 Granada

I mentioned this hotel in this post. The location is great – seems like it’s exactly where we want to be. Aside from the location, they have a “snack bar” for guests and free breakfast. However, the rooms are a little expensive, especially since they don’t look like anything too special. Apparently some of the rooms have a balcony (or the hotel has a balcony for all guests), but it’s not really clear which rooms have the balconies or the views. (All pictures taken from the hotel website.)

2. Carmen la Alcubilla del Caracol

This hotel is very close to the Alhambra, and some (or all?) of the rooms have balconies with views. The rooms like basic, but nice and clean, and the price is 120-140 euros, which is within our “budget.” The outdoor areas of the hotel also look very beautiful. The hotel website doesn’t list the specific rooms or availability, but I am interested in this hotel and will email to find out if there is anything for the nights we’ll be there. (All pictures taken from the hotel website.)

3. Solar Montes Claros

I found this hotel and instantly fell in love. The room I really like was the “Persia” room. It has a nice tub and looks very comfortable and cozy. The hotel has great views and while it’s not right in town, it’s nothing that we can’t handle. I sent an email a few weeks ago asking for availability, and it turns out they are completely booked already.  So this won’t be our hotel in Granada, but I wanted to include it in this post anyway. (All pictures taken from Trip Advisor.)

4. Santa Isabel la Real

This hotel still has availability, and luckily the tower room isn’t booked yet. I’ve included a few pictures below – look at that view! The hotel also serves breakfasts and gets great reviews on Trip Advisor. It’s about $250/night, but it’s the best room in the hotel, so it just might be worth it. (All pictures taken from the hotel website.)

The decision: After spending a little more time reading reviews, we decided to book Carmen de la Alcubilla del Caracol.  In case other travelers are interested in the booking process, I emailed a request for information for the dates we would be staying.  I received an email back with the rates (120, 130, or 140 euros) and information about the rooms at each price point (FYI, all rooms have a view, but only some have a balcony).  There is also the option of adding a breakfast for each morning for 8 euros/person, which we are excited to take advantage of.  We can’t wait for Granada!

Hotel Casa 1800: Sevilla and Granada

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Right after we booked our plane tickets to Portugal and Spain, Ryan and I went crazy looking for hotels. Ryan found the Hotel Casa 1800 – one in Sevilla and one in Granada. Both have great location (we think) and Ryan was especially in love with the De Luxe room at the Sevilla location. And I don’t know if I can blame him. Here are a few pictures of the Superior Room, from the hotel wesbite: 

The best part is the terrace with the jacuzzi tub. But, this isn’t our honeymoon and, while that doesn’t mean we can’t stay in nice hotels, we are trying not to go over-the-top and spend too much money on hotel rooms. Especially since we won’t be spending much time there anyway! This room was over 200 euros a night, which isn’t horrible, but we’re trying to keep costs lower than that. As of now, we have not made a decision on Sevilla, but we’re hoping to do so in the near future.

So now to Granada. I’m not sure which hotel Ryan found first, but the hotel website provides links to both, so it was natural for us to be curious about the hotel in each city. Here are a few pictures from the hotel site:

It does look amazing. But there are so many places to stay in both Sevilla and Granada, and it seems silly to stay in the same hotel in two different cities. Especially since we don’t know what they are really like. We’ve looked at more hotels, especially in Granada, so I’ll spend some time comparing the options.