Piccolina

Hi there - has anyone ever purchased the daytime Garden tickets for the Alhambra? If so, is it pretty much the same as the regular day time ticket except it doesn't offer entrance to the Nasrid Palace?

We have tickets for 17:00 entry to Nasrid palace which was much later than I would like (blame it on procrastination!). Instead of rushing from points to points, I wouldn't mind buying the garden ticket for the morning as it seems like it provides entrance to Alcazaba and Generalife (but not Nasrid). That way, we can do these two parts in the morning, take a leisurely lunch and then go back to see the Nasrid palace at 17:00.

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The description of the Garden ticket is as follows :

Garden visit
This ticket provides only the access to the main gardens of the monument during the daytime visit. It is also possible to visit those places that have been designated as "area of the month", as long as these areas are included within the itineraries allowed by this ticket.
Visitors may access to the following gardens:
Alhambra: Walk of the Cypresses (Paseo de los Cipreses), Unirrigated Land (Secano), Saint Francis´Gardens (Jardines de San Francisco.)
Alcazaba: Garden of the Ramparts (Jardines de los Adarves.)
The Partal: Portico of the Palace, Gardens and Walks, Rauda, Palace of Yusuff III, Tower Walk.
Generalife: Lower Gardens and High Gardens.
These places have not got a specific time to access, so visitors may visit it during the morning or afternoon turn indicated in the ticket.
The visit times are:
Morning Ticket (Monday to Sunday): 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Afternoon Ticket (Monday to Sunday), October 15th through March 14th: 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Afternoon Ticket (From Monday to Sunday), March 15th through October 14th: 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
IMPORTANT: The Daytime visit includes all the areas of the Garden visit. The Garden Visit only includes part of the public areas.

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Thank you!

kja

"is it pretty much the same as the regular day time ticket except it doesn't offer entrance to the Nasrid Palace?"

I could easily be wrong, but that's not how I read it -- it sounds like the garden ticket would not allow the Nasrid Palace <b>or other buildings</b>, just the gardens.

With a 17:00 entry for the Nasrid Palace, that means you can enter the grounds at 14:00, right? So it might make sense to do the gardens in the morning... it all depends on what your interests are.

Alec

You should have enough time to do the Generalife Gardens and Alcazaba between 2 pm (when you can enter the ticketed areas other than Nasrid Palaces) and 5 pm. Carlos V Palace isn't ticketed and is open to all, so you can do that before 2 pm. The excellent Alhambra Museum is free to enter and open every day except Monday.

kja

"You should have enough time to do the Generalife Gardens and Alcazaba between 2 pm (when you can enter the ticketed areas other than Nasrid Palaces) and 5 pm."

That would not have been enough time for me. YMMV.

annhig

same here, kJ.

for me the gardens, particularly the Generalife, were the absolute highlight, and i would have been very cross if I'd had to hurry through them at all. We had morning tickets but managed to get into the Generalife before 2pm so we had the whole afternoon too .

as that's not possible for the OP, i think the idea s/he has come up with is a very good alternative.

Piccolina

Thanks everyone. I ended up buying the morning day ticket to tour the gardens and possibly the Alcazaba if the ticket permits. Then we'll take a much needed break with a long lunch at the Parador Granada and then return back later in the afternoon for Nasrid Palace.

Will post back to let everyone know how the Garden ticket work!

annhig

Great plan, Piccolina.

please come back and tell us how you got on.

EYWandBTV

We are using the same approach for our visit to the Alhambra in October, but with the sequence reversed. We bought tickets for the morning entry, with the Nasrid palace time scheduled for 10:00 a.m. But since we are museum hounds and often slow-pokes, we also bought afternoon tickets for the Generalife beginning at 2:00 pm.

This way we can have a slow lunch at the parador or the Hotel America and then walk to the Generalife whenever we feel like it, instead of facing the deadline of getting into the Generalife before the end of the morning segment (which I believe is 2:00 pm). We have also booked tickets for the evening palace tour the night before, so by the end of our Granada visit we should be well and truly Alhambra'd!

Piccolina, it will be interesting for us to compare notes, via Trip Reports, when we return to see how this all turned out.

Nelson

We are in a similar boat: three Alhambra tickets in two days! We are staying up in the Hotel Guadalupe, which was suggested by annhig. I hope to do at least a captioned photo TR after we return.

Speaking of Alhambra photos:
http://www.metalocus.es/content/es/b...fernando-manso

The top group is from a modern Spanish photographer named Fernando Manso. He has several Spanish photo books, and yesterday I decided to purchase his "The Gardens on the Alhambra Hill", (online from Target, of all places. It didn't show up on amazon).

The bottom photos are by Jean Laurent, a 19th-century French photographer.

Beautiful work by both men.