Granada: To and Fro

One of my fears when deciding to study abroad in Granada was that it was going to be too difficult to travel from because Granada’s airport is small and expensive and the nearest big one is a two hour ride away. Making sure that I was able to travel to other countries throughout the program was a priority for me, so this was a constantly-nagging worry. Now, however, that I have both travelled from Granada and had someone visit me here, I feel comfortable saying that traveling absolutely is possible and is not that hard. To help relieve some of the worries of any future Granada-studiers, I’m here to share my experience and a few tips and tricks.

The first place that I travelled to from Granada was London during my third weekend here to visit my friend studying abroad there. I bought the tickets only two days before for a fairly cheap price which proves how magical studying abroad is. When else would I get to impulse-buy tickets to London for that weekend and not make a huge dent in my wallet? The tickets I bought had me flying out of Malaga at around six in the evening on Thursday and into London Stansted.

Malaga is a two-hour bus ride away from Granada so I took the bus from the Granada bus station to the Malaga Airport at two in the afternoon on Thursday, after my classes for the day were done. The bus drops you off right in front of the airport so there is no need to stress about finding your way around in Malaga. My flight ended up being an hour delayed but I got to London that evening safe and sound and had a great weekend with my friend exploring the city, eating fish and chips (and, of course, the chocolate-covered strawberries from Borough Market), visiting Richmond to see the Ted Lasso sites, and experiencing the fall season that Granada had most definitely not arrived at yet. On the way home, I flew from London Luton to Malaga on Sunday and took the bus back to Granada. My flight was, again, delayed about an hour but all of the travel was easy and I managed to get some homework done during the delays.

Now, for some tips and tricks that I learned from this trip. First, even though Granada is a closer airport, flying out of Malaga is the way to go for any out-of-country trips. Malaga is significantly cheaper and has many more direct flights. The extra two hours on the bus is annoying but totally doable and worth it. Second, I don’t have classes after 12:30 on Thursdays and I find that to work extremely well for traveling. Since traveling from Granada takes longer than traveling from most other cities, getting to leave on Thursday and having enough time for traveling ensures that I will have a full weekend to experience a new city. I don’t recommend choosing your classes based on the times they meet, but if ending earlier on Thursday works with the classes you want to take, it can be helpful for travel. Third, I can’t say this is advice because it is not always true, but in my experience so far, I have not needed to get to the airport more than an hour and a half to two hours before my flight takes off.

For someone traveling to Granada from another country, I have only my boyfriend’s experience of traveling to Granada to visit me from Amsterdam to share. He had class until late on Thursday, so he ended up taking a flight at six in the morning on Friday out of Amsterdam and into Seville. For some reason, that weekend, flights were much cheaper flying into Seville than into Malaga. Seville is farther than Malaga so his bus ride to Granada ended up being about three hours. Still, we had most of the day Friday to explore Granada, all of Saturday, and most of Sunday. He ended up taking the bus out of Granada at 3:45 on Sunday afternoon and taking an evening flight to Amsterdam that didn’t get in until quite late. You’d have to ask him, but I think he’d say the travel time was worth it.

The moral of the story is that traveling to and from Granada can be a bit more complicated than some of the other big cities, but it is so worth it and not at all as bad as I was worried it might be. Travel is still easy and cheap, and can be done on an impulse! There are many different airports to fly out of to make sure you’re getting the cheapest flights, and the Granada buses work great (and are always on time in my experience) for getting you to your chosen airport. In the next three weeks, I have trips planned to Amsterdam and Barcelona (and another city for a solo trip that I’ve yet to choose). I can’t wait to see more of Europe and promise that any future Granada-goers will get to travel to their heart’s desire.