I purchased tickets online for Granada's Alhambra following instructions and expecting to be able to print the tickets at machines inside the Corral Del Carbon in Granada, as described in Rick Steves Spain 2018. Instead the confirmation said I must print tickets at home (unable to find any place to print on A4 paper in Sacramento), or go to the main entrance of Alhambra, which adds significantly to time required. I am partially disabled, and really want to be able to enter at the Justice Gate shortcut.
I called the phone number at 9:00 am PST (6:00 pm in Spain) given on page 585 of the guide and chose option 2 for English, but all i get is a message in Spanish and then a hang up. Can anyone give me advice? Is that phone line not open until midnight at described? What is the message in Spanish?
If I take a flash drive with the tickets in PDF form to a hotel in Spain, is it possible they can print the tickets for me? Has anyone tried this?
Have you tried printing with your usual "letter' size paper? There is very little difference between letter and A4.
Just print out on letter-size paper. Isn't that much of a difference in size and all you need is the bar code on the ticket so the workers can scan it.
If you look on the printer options you should see an option for A4 paper. But you don't have to do that either. The size different is something like .5 inch narrow and .5 inch longer. Since you are not printing margin to margin and top to bottom, makes no difference.
Print from home is not literal. It can also be from your hotel in Europe. That worked for me since I had a friendly hotel desk person who allowed me to use their computer and print a small number of pages. Make sure you have access to your email when you are not at home through some sort of web site. Yes, taking them as a PDF on a flash drive should work too as long as the computer you are using in Spain allows flash drives. Many computers in those environments don't allow flash drives any more due to the possibility of viruses.
The document could probably be printed on regular letter paper at home as well. Most PDF files can be scaled to fit whatever paper you have without loss of usability of the final results. (I wouldn't print on a post card and expect it to work, but letter and A4 are almost the same size.)
I've printed countless "European" tickets on my home printer without any changes--it works fine.
Connie,
Back in October 2017, there were some changes about buying and printing Alhambra tickets, so if your book was printed prior to that date, it may not
show those changes.
You may want to read about other Spain Guidebook Updates when planning your trip.
Have a wonderful trip!