Guadix, the City of Cave Houses - Marci

Kürsat, Hanna and I headed out to Guadix two weeks ago. Guadix is a city about an hour bus ride away from Granada. It is a very unique place, because there is an entire neighborhood of cave houses built inside the sandstone formations that are scattered across the landscape! It is absolutely surreal, and while I have visited before, it still blows my mind every time. It’s just so unique, it feels almost like a big settlement on Tatooine from Star Wars.

We started off the day with the worst coffee I’ve ever had in Andalusia… And trust me, I’ve had plenty of bad coffees around Andalusia, so I don’t say this lightly. Seriously, I’d give it a 1/10. Side note: now I’m spoiled because I’ve found all the good places in Granada, like Minuit, La Finca and Noat Coffee, so bad coffee tastes even worse. But back to Guadix! We walked around the ‘regular’ town center, exploring the winding little streets, looking around and observing a really cool mix of Moorish and Christian architecture. Unfortunately, the Alcazaba (the castle) was not open and we are not really sure if we’ve even managed to find where the entrance would normally be if it was open. Still, it looks really impressive from the outside, especially when you look at it from a further-away viewpoint.

The cathedral is amazing on the outside, but it’s debatable if the 5 Euro entry fee is worth it. But we could tick that one off the list. From there, we moved on to the cave house district! Yup, that’s the most exciting part of the whole visit. It’s really hard to describe how these houses look and how the neighborhood feels, so just check out the photos, and go visit it yourself if you are convinced!

These houses are awesome, because they keep an almost constant temperature year-round. They don’t get really cold in the winter and they stay amazingly cool in the summer! It is essentially an old-school. passive house. Slap some solar panels on top, and you have a super eco-friendly home! While some of these cave houses are opened up as mini-museums for tourists, we also got very lucky, because we bumped into a random guy in a small side street who just invited us into his house, simply to show us around because he liked us. That was a really good, genuine experience!

After wandering into town for some food, we decided to head back to cave house district to watch sunset from one of the viewpoints. For a while we were worried that it will just be hazy, but then the clouds put on the most magical show in all shades of orange, red, purple and pink! It was one of the best sunsets I’ve seen lately!

The whole trip was fantastic, and I really enjoyed visiting this unique place. I wrote a bit more in-depth blogpost about Guadix on my own blog, so if you are interested in reading more about the place, check it out HERE!