Off to Granada today. We got to the bus station and boarded the bus. It left at 9 am and gets there three and a half hours later. Hope Emma’s going to be OK.
Still, its air-conditioned and comfortable with Radio Malaga playing UK and American hits as we cruise along the Spanish motorways. Hotel California comes on and I just know the DJ will talk over the best two minutes of the record and, yes, here he comes waffling away just as the two minute end guitar solo gets underway, bastard. It seems every day I have to add another name to my list of people who piss me off.
We arrived at the central bus station in Granada at 12.45 pm. Throughout the journey Emma wasn’t feeling that wonderful but at least she wasn’t actually sick. When we got off the bus all she wanted to do was sit down again. She didn’t want to walk or do anything so we went across the road from the bus station to a bar for something to eat and drink in the hope that it might do the trick and make her feel better. It did and we started to think about making our way to the hotel. We had the address but really only knew that it was somewhere very close to the Alhambra. While finishing our meal we decided to ask the barman if he could tell us where we were now on a map in relation to the Alhambra. I tried to communicate in broken Spanish when he suddenly interrupted me and said, “It’s OK, I speak some English.”
He didn’t stop me until I’d got in a right old muddle though, just so he could have a good laugh at my expense probably. He continued in perfect English, “If you go across the road and get the No 6 bus, ask the driver for El Alhambra, he will, if he’s nice, tell you when you get there. The bus stops in the city and you will have to walk from there to El Alhambra, its about half a mile away. The bus will only cost three to four hundred pesetas and will be much better than getting a taxi.”
“Thanks”, we said. I was still miffed at being left to struggle with my Spanish while all the time he could speak English. “I bet that’s the only bit of English he knows,” I said to Pauline, “I bet he can’t say anything else.”
The bus driver was nice. He told us when to get off and pointed in the general direction we had to walk. The barman was right, it was about half a mile away. What he didn’t tell us was that we had to walk most of the way up a one in three incline in the boiling heat of the midday sun with me carrying a heavy overnight bag for the three of us while tourist mini-buses cruised past us as I stumbled, swore and sweated my way up the steep mountain road to where we assumed our hotel was.
“It’s not bloody up here,” I kept saying to Pauline.
“Yes it will be,” she kept saying back.
“The air’s getting thinner”, I said taking my T-shirt off and ringing the sweat out, “Where did you put the oxygen pack and the salt tablets?”
‘Look, there’s the hotel,” said Emma as we rounded a bend. The sign in the distance said ‘ OTEL ASHINGTO ‘. Yes, that’s the Hotel Washington all right, I thought, “You two go on ahead and check us in, l’ll catch up. Just make sure my ropes are tight and leave me with enough crampons to get me to the top.”
Emma and Pauline were in the hotel foyer checking in when I came crashing through the double doors. T-shirt tied round my forehead, shorts wet with sweat and hanging down at the back below buttock level. Re-bounding against the furniture I made my way up to where they were standing, finally dropping to my knees and crawling the final few feet leaving a snail’s trail of sweat behind me on the carpet.
“Sanctuary”, I croaked, knowing that now everything was going to be all right. Our problems were over.
The receptionist said something to Pauline I didn’t quite catch. ‘What did she say?” I asked.
“She said we’re on the fifteenth floor and the lifts are broke.”
The doctor said I’d be OK, there’d just been some sort of explosion in my head that’s all.
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