press pass with visit granada

Using a Granada Card in Granada, what monuments you can visit and is it worth the purchase?

How is the best way to see a city? Seeing the highlights of it, of course. The Granada Card made that so easy for us to do. Visiting all of its monuments and tourist attractions is a great way to get a feel for the city and give a direction of where to plan to go.

Sometimes, you arrive at a city and there are all of these recommendations on Google, but where’s worth visiting and where isn’t? You receive a list of attractions with the most recommend at the top with the list descending. It’s a great tool for planning your days.

Tourist cards have become hugely popular, these days, almost every city has implemented their own city tourist card.

Is buying a tourist card worth it? This depends on the city, the inclusions of the card and how you want to visit the city. If you’re wanting to spend the time outside cafe’s relaxing, then probably not. But, if you want to get a real feel for the city and see the places its most proud of, then it’s worth looking into.

If you are planning to visit Granada, Spain like we did with ALSA, then the Granada Card is one of the best options for exploring the best of the city. This Andalusian town will really surprise you, with beautiful monuments and gorgeous views at every turn.

We used the Granada Card and I can highly recommend it. Not only was it easy to use, but it opened doors, excuse the pun, to plenty of stunning locations that we wouldn’t have even thought of visiting.

There are different cards available and prices start as low as 34,50€. You can also get a Granada Card which includes entrance to The Alhambra for 40,00€, which is the one we’d have opted for if it wasn’t out of stock. The Alhambra sells out very quickly — we were sad that on our second visit to Granada, we were still unable to visit — the sights we did see, made up for it though.

What our Granada Card included:

The Granada main monuments (excluding The Alhambra): The Cathedral, Royal Chapel, Cartuja Monastery, San Jerónimo Monastery, Science Park Museum, Zafra’s House, Cuarto Real, Sacromonte Abbey, Casa de los Tiros Museum, Corral del Carbón, Bañuelo, Casa Horno de Oro, Palacio de Dar al-Horra and Casa del Chapiz.

Bolded are the ones we visited.

It also included nine trips on the local bus network and one trip on the Granada City Tour Bus but unfortunately we didn’t have time to use these.

The Granada Card will save you money

When you add up how much it would have been to enter all of the monuments, it is such a saving. The Granada Card is an all-inclusive one price card for the whole city. It includes monuments, museums and public transport within the city.

This was great for budgeting. Trips and entrances to monuments can get so costly, so it was great to know that a big chunk was already covered. It means no surprises when you’re away!

You can discover places you’d never have thought of

When you open Google, they’ll be a long list of places to see and it can be a mission trying to work out what is worth a visit and what’s a must-see.

Some tourist cards will give a long stream of monuments and museums just because they can. It leaves you in the same dilemma of what is essential to see.

The Granada Card has a comprehensive list of the best, unmissable spots in the city. We found grouping the spots together saved time and walking, even though we still did over 37,000 steps. We tried to follow the list in order as they were on the Granada Card.

The Granada Card has a good amount of monuments included. We were able to visit most of them in the 12 hours we had in Granada, so it made us feel like we had made the most of our time there. If we had an extra day in Granada, we’d have been able to tick them all off.

The Granada Card is easy to use

Some cities make it a mission to buy your pass. Some places you have to attend the ticket office to validate your card. Or, head to each monument for a set time. It becomes a headache.

The Granada Card was ready to use straight the way. We arrived at Granada at 9:00 and straight after breakfast we were able to start ticking off monuments. The first place we visited was the Capilla Real, The Royal Chapel.

The Granada Card can be scanned from your phone with the scan reader, or printed off. There was no need to wait around for tourist offices to open or collect individual tickets. As long as the monument was open, we could use it!

You get to skip lines

With some monuments, there will be people lining the streets waiting to buy a ticket. With the Granada Card, we were able to skip straight past and head in.

Nothing wastes time like standing in a queue, especially in the 40-degree heat, so it was great to be able to head straight in and make the full use of our time.

Planning ahead saves problems

The Granada Card would be a perfect purchase if you are travelling with people with mental health, autism or Asperger’s. Travelling to a new destination can cause uncertainty and for people who like to have a solid plan, the Granada Card is perfect for this.

You can highlight the places you’ll be visiting, Google street view them and prepare your party. Of course, this can’t guarantee to eliminate all uncertainties and meltdowns, but it can help reduce them.

Granada was a beautiful city and I loved that we were able to go back and explore it in further detail. We would have liked to have visited the Alhambra and Sacromonte Abbey, if you want to visit Sacromonte Abbey you’ll need to ring to confirm times as it’s a tour. The Cathedral was stunning and a real collision of gothic and Spanish Renaissance art. Another highlight for me was Zafra’s House, which we really enjoyed.

There are plenty of beautiful Andalusian houses that will really enrich you in the culture and the history of Granada.

You can book your official Granada Card pass, in English, by following this link – https://www.clorian.com/site/GranadaTur/?lang=en

Hasta luego,

 

Thank you to Granada Tourism for providing us with two Granada Cards to test out. All views remain my own.