Alhambra Confusion
 

Has anyone bought advance tickets to see the Alhambra? I'm having trouble figuring out what time slot to choose. If I choose a 12:30 ticket in the morning category am i prevented from entering any of main areas e.g. Generalife, Alcazaba after the morning time period ends at 14:00? Let me know if you understand how the timing works? Thanks.

Rick Steves' site offers some good overview information:

http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/desti...n/alhambra.htm

I bought the 9:00 a.m. slot (the earliest being 8:30 a.m.) for the Nasrid Palaces. This gave us plenty of time to walk to the entry.

As I recall, the timed ticket is for entry to only one building. You are free to roam all over the properties throughout the half-day during which you have the ticket for the palace.

Kayd has it exactly right. The timing part is mainly for the Nasrid Palace.

You can stay on as long as you like if you have a morning ticket. We chose a late morning slot for the palace and arrived about an hour before to give us time to collect our tickets, find the palace and get our bearings. By the way, make sure you are in the queue for the palace in good time as it can be quite busy. Once you are in the palace, you can take as long as you like it, is the start time that is the most important.

I understand that if you get a ticket for an afternoon slot you will not be allowed into the grounds until the pm period begins. For that reason, it seemed to us, it made sense to get an am slot and have the full day there if we wanted to.

It is a wonderful place; enjoy!

Barbara P has got it right. If you've got a morning ticket, you can enter at any time before 2pm [i think] and visit the rest of the site when you like, so long as you enter the Nasrid Palaces during your 30 minute slot. [and once you are in there, you can stay as long as you like too]. Don't forget you can have lunch at the parador or the other hotel in the grounds, or buy a snack while you're in there.
If you've got an afternoon slot, you can't enter until 2pm [i think] so you will be more restricted.
Don't ignore the idea of a night-time visit as well as the day-time one. THey allow a very limited number of people into the Nasrid palaces, which are illuminated and quite magical. It is not the same as the day-time and well worth doing as well. We did both on the same day and were really glad we did so, as the impressions at night are completely different.

We visited Alhambra in 2000, we took tickets for 12:00, we came at 10:00 and we left Alhambra at 19:00 if I remember.

In fact, we were allowed to get out for lunch time, and we came back after that.