You can drive there comfortably in under 2 hours as it's less than 100 miles from Benalmadena. We visited the Alhambra last April (without pre-booking), arriving at 11 a.m. It cost €10 to get in and we also hired an electronic guide for €3 (€50 returnable deposit required) which was well worth the money. We then spent a leisurely 5 hours there looking round the beautiful palaces and Generalife gardens and enjoying the panaramic views over Granada but you could probably do a complete tour in about 3 hours if you really wanted to.

You need to present your tickets to get into the Alcazaba, Generalife gardens and Nasrid Palaces. We were allocated a 30 minute time slot in which to enter the Nasrid Palaces as they only allow a maximum of 400 visitors every half hour in these. If you pre-book you can choose the time that suits you. Make sure you don't miss the time slot though or you will be refused entry as the assigned time is shown on your ticket.

I believe it depends on what time you select to visit the Nasrid Palaces when you pre-book that determines whether you end up with a morning or afternoon ticket. Select a time before 2pm and it's a morning ticket, 2pm or later is an afternoon ticket. The difference is that with a morning ticket you can enter the Alhambra as soon as it opens (and stay until it closes if you want) but with an afternoon ticket you can't enter the Alhambra until 2 pm. That's why most people choose a morning ticket. Once in, nobody will ask you to leave.

Our visit was definitely the highlight of our holiday and well worth the journey to get there in my opinion.

You can book tickets for the palace at most branches of the BBV bank.

Have a read at http://www.alhambradegranada.org for further information on times/ price etc.

** Edit to activate broken link. luci HT Mod **

Thanks very much for all the useful information. We'll take your advice and try to book morning tickets. I'm sure we will enjoy it as much as you.

For info, even when there are no tickets available on a specific day when you try and pre-book, it doesn't mean you can't get in to the Nasrid Palaces as there are 2,000 tickets reserved every day for people who just turn up at the Alhambra ticket office. Obviously, in the summer and Easter holidays you would have to turn up pretty early to guarantee getting a ticket so it's always better to pre-book if you can especially if you are travelling a long way to get there. Even if you turn up and can't get a ticket for the Nasrid palaces, you can still buy a €5 ticket for the gardens and Alcazaba as there is no limit on these.

In November we pre-booked on the web for 10am (entrance to Nasrid Palace) and the only queue was to collect pre-booked tickets. We arrived for 9.15 as I was told there was a 10 minute walk to the palace from the gate and it was good advice, what I hadn't allowed for was time to pick up the information handsets and probably missed out on some facts. We spent around 4 hours in the Alhambra and Generalife Gardens but could easily have stayed longer, it was worth every penny, amazing.