Malaga to The Alhambra

Port excursions are a topic where www.cruisecritic.com may be useful. The fact that a tour includes a reserved Alhambra entrance time is valuable, since tickets do sell out and the online ordering process can be frustrating for individuals. Public bus travel time by www.alsa.es is about 2 hours each way, so maybe the ship's excursion is not spending too much longer.

I agree with Laura. The bus is two hours long each way and then you have to factor in getting to and from the bus stations. So I could see the public bus option taking between 5 and 6 hours total from the ship and back. The bus station in Granada is some distance from the Alhambra so I would estimate that a taxi to the Alhambra from the bus station could be 20 minutes or more. I am not a big fan of ship excursion since we avoid most of them but there are times when it is the only good option regardless of price. The Alhambra is massive and can easily consume two thirds of a day. With the excursion I am estimating you would have about four hours at the Alhambra at the most. Barely enough time to get through the palace. And the final issue is availability of tickets and the entry times. You only have a 30 minutes (or was it 45?) winder to enter the palace. Miss it by a minute and they will not let you in.

Check w/ Emily at South Ole Spain Tours, and you can check her company's ratings on Trip Advisor, too. She may have a tour to help you, or you could also hire a private driver through her to take you there, etc.

We used her company for a day trip from Granada thru Ronda, to Gibraltar (where she arranged a detailed guided tour for us that was fabulous), then on to Marbella (for a drop-off for our overnight). Her driver was wonderful, and her price reasonable.

But, her company also offers options to go on group tours. Her web site has all the details/prices, so you can compare what she offers vs. the ship's options.

She is an American, who fell in love with Spain, so her English is perfect. She is excellent re: responding quickly and she will follow-up to insure everything goes well and that you are happy.

I am booked on a cruise that stops in Malaga next year. I am booked on a tour to the Alhambra with Spaindaytours. They were suggested by people on my Cruise Critic Roll Call. Some of them had done prior tours with them. I see they also get great reviews online.

I would be fretting it with anything but the ship's tour.
If you want to give Granada and the Alhambra the justice it deserves, something which never gets a mention (and I do not know the first thing about these cruises) - where is the next port of call or the previous one?

Thank you all so much. There's some good, sound advice here and I appreciate the time you all took.

From where I sit...

The ship's tour is most reliable in terms of not missing the boat, and this is a truth not to be taken lightly. Making onward arrangements to the next port to catch up with my ship isn't an experience I want to have.

I've contacted the tour operators mentioned and have received interesting responses; a car and driver/guide is actually priced less than I expected and is on par with Blue Badge Guides we hired for Edinburgh and Glasgow a few years ago. On both those occasions we found the money to be very well spent and we filed the experience under the heading, "Expensive, but very much worth it".

Could I ask one more question? The tour operators sent me back prices for a party of two for the day, but also some group prices starting with a minimum group of ten and running up to a maximum group of sixteen. Does this mean that if I put together of group of ten or more the group rate applies, or does this mean signing up for a group tour that the tour operator would be assembling and charging appropriately? I apologize if there's an obvious answer that everybody (except me) already knows.

My thanks again for your recommendations so far.

Neil, interesting thought. The port before Malaga is Cartagena, and the one after is Cadiz, which would be a two and half hour drive. It's something to think about, and I wonder how the cruise line would handle someone wanting to spend a night ashore and catch up the next port.... Hmmmmm!

What ticket do you recommend buying? I was looking at the options and it seems like we want the Alhambra Gardens, Generalife and the Alcazaba ticket? Does that give you access to the most areas? Thanks!

Re: the immediately above.
You buy a morning or afternoon ticket with a timed entry to the Nasrid Palaces, this gives access to all ticketed areas.