Fear not, loyal readers, after three months’ worth of blogposts (all backdated) we are nearing the end of our Spanish adventure. Not our honeymoon adventure! But our Spanish adventure. Our last full day in Granada was our last full day in Spain. And we spent a large chunk of it shopping.

The first thing we bought was donuts. Actually now that I am thinking about it we might have ducked into a little cute random shop we saw and gotten like a pomegranate thing? I don’t recall, which leaves the first memorable thing we bought being donuts. The place we went was called Odeimos and appeared to be run by a couple and they made fantastic somewhat elaborate donuts. I say “somewhat” because they were elaborate but not gimmicky. Back in New Haven we used to go to Donut Crazy, which was good, but gimmicky. These were not that. Nothing is ever as good as the donut shack in your home town of course, but for Granada I recommend Odeimos. I got cheesecake donut and a lemon meringue donut and a coffee to boot. But enough about donuts (there’s never enough donuts). We were fueled up so shopping we went! My super amazing wife got a scarf for her mom and we got a big colorful tile for a trivet and then my super amazing wife also got some tea. Later in the day I got the print I told you about last time.

Okay I mean I titled this “shop til you drop” but we had to have interludes and the first of those was the Casa de los Tiros museum! The museum is named that because it has guns sticking out the top because it used to belong to some army dude. I suppose I admire a particular decorating theme. Inside is a bunch of different Andalusia stuff. It was actually pretty cool. They got a nice little courtyard and when we went there was a whole special exhibit on Washington Irving. Upstairs they had popular art and then some fine art and conveniently a picture of the chapel that I wasn’t able to show you in our first post on Granada:

The next part of our whirlwind final full day was to get a full belly via lunch (for shopping, on our way we popped into another gallery of shops and bought some jamón). Granada is a city of tea and while others are extremely good (I am referencing our first day again, when we went to the Teteria del Bañuelo), none of the tea houses we went to were as soaring in their achievement as Abaco Té. The joke I am making here is that it was way up the hill and we had to hike up there. Also there are like three stories to the place and we had lunch way up in the tippy top with just amazing vistas of the city as it sprawled out below with the mountains in the background and the Cathedral as the solid counterpoint to the domineering Alhambra. Plus the food and tea was really good.

Plus plus they had a super cute and super friendly grey cat snoozing comfortably atop a cushion:

After hiking up a hill and then getting very full on a rather large lunch actually my next suggestion was even more hiking. We went out to the absolutely fantastic Museo Cuevas del Sacromonte. Sacromonte is the neighborhood on the eastern edge of Granada and used to be where a variety of marginalized communities lived. A unique part of the neighborhood out there is that many people constructed homes by digging caves out of the hill. These days some people still live in caves but not so many, so the museum is there to document and preserve some of that way of life. I suppose you can take the bus or a taxi but we hiked out there and then hiked up the hill to the museum but once we got there it was all worth it. It was really cool! Neither of us really knew what to expect (despite the fact that I suggested it), but along the way the views were gorgeous and the dwellings were super cool. They had various caves set up for various functions, including a bedroom and a barn and a ceramics studio and even a blacksmith shop with an elaborate chimney. My super amazing wife would have been satisfied with just the ceramics but they also had a whole textiles cave so she was just in heaven. It’s a real gem of Granada so if you’re in town you gotta make a beeline for it.

We were shopping, museum, shopping, museum, and so now back to shopping. And another hill. Like I just said my super amazing wife loves ceramics so another thing I spotted in the guidebook is that there was a ceramics place that had been in business since 1640. We were hesitant to go at first because it is on top of another hill but it was a cool walk there by and through the old city walls and the views and the shops and the streets remained very pretty so why not take the walk. The place is called Fajalauza and they have a factory somewhere but the place we went into is “just” the shop but they have tons of cool ceramics stuff. I got a tiny little ceramic pitcher thing and some small tiles and my super amazing wife got a mug stamped “since 1640” on the bottom which is just neat.

By this time we were really actually starting to lose steam. Good thing we were at the top of the hill so it was downhill all the way back to the hotel. We just had one final task which was to pick up some convent cookies. In addition to the tapas, this is another thing you can do in Granada (and elsewhere), which is support a convent by buying some of their sweets. The Convento de Santa Catalina de Zafra was right near our hotel and we had tried on our first day to buy some stuff from them but no one answered the bell when we rang. But we gave it another go this day. I know this sounds lame but the thing about these convent treats is so the nuns don’t have to look at your ugly mug you do the whole transaction via this rotating door thing, where you put money down and then the nuns spin you around some treats. We got tea pastries, which were really good, and a lifesaver the next day when we didn’t have an opportunity for lunch. Neat to buy some cookies in a unique way and they were pretty delicious to boot! And that, besides dinner, wrapped up our final full day in Granada and Spain. A nice country! I recommend visiting.