Granada! Oh, and we hit a car.

Lured with warm chocolate croissants and the promise of coffee, we woke up to Joan's stirring at the ungodly hour of 6am. We were, however, on our way to a very celestial palace: the Alhambra.

The Alhambra is the most magnificent example of Islamic architecture. It's a Muslim fortress/castle that became a Christian palace, dilapidated over the years, housed Washington Irving (who, unfortunately, wrote a chronicle of his time there which, annoyingly, is the narration of the audio guide), became to captivate tourists and historians, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Spain's top tourist destinations. This is evidenced in the fact that at 9am on a very hot Thursday in August, there was a line winding and winding and winding through the grounds, full of visitors who seemed to be more than willing to wait for hours to get into the palace.

But it's absolutely worth it. I think pictures will suffice...

Additionally, we hit a car today. Whilst looking in vain for street signs, searching for friendly pedestrians, attempting to locate ourselves on our awful maps, fighting, being confused, suffering from the lack of air conditioning in the back of the car (that was just Cate and me, everyone else seemed to get a nice breeze), and basically just being utterly LOST, we ran into a government car. There were no ramifications, literally or metaphorically.