Greetings from Granada

Our guidebook informed us that if we were to see any city in Spain that it should be Granada.  Situated in the south of Spain, Granada is absolutely lovely.  Occupied by the Moors of North Africa for much of its history, the city has a tangible Muslim influence.  After getting off of our night train, we headed to find our hotel, Hostal Atenas.  It was situated very close to the center of town, which was very convenient!  We dropped off our bags and got to exploring.  We found the tourist office to get some information (there wasn't much), but did find some possibilities for flamenco music and dancing, one of the things high on our list of things to see.  Then we just wandered around.  The streets of Granada are narrow, cobblestoned, and uneven (Granada is situated in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range).  There were lots of stairs connecting streets and houses, which made it very easy to get lost!  We made it to the top of the street and happened upon a beautiful lookout point, overlooking the Alhambra (read more about that later), the mountains, and the city of Granada.  It was absolutely lovely!  We hung out there for a bit, Jon took pictures, and we enjoyed listening to a woman playing castanets for the crowd.

A view of the Alhambra from our viewing area

We then headed back down to the street that our hotel was on.  We walked to the cathedral and the burial tomb of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.  As we approached this area, we were "greeted" by lots of women trying to put rosemary sprigs in our hands.  This not being our first rodeo, we knew not to accept anything and to just ignore it.  Later on we learned that these women use their rosemary to give you a fortune.  They whisper sweet nothings in your ear and tell you nice things will happen to you, and then demand outrageous amounts of money for their unwanted "services."  If you refuse to pay up, they will put a curse on you! 

We continued wandering and looked through a few shops.  Then we stopped at our first tapas bar.  One of the things I loved about Granada was that we ate nothing but tapas there, besides a quick breakfast when we first arrived!  Tapas are delicious little snacks served with drinks.  In Granada, most of the tapas restaurant offer a free tapa with any drink.  The tapas here mostly consisted of some combination of bread and ham, but we got a few delightful and colorful salads and sometimes some cheese or french fries.  The origin of the word "tapas" is quite interesting.  In Spanish, "tapa" means a cover or lid.  In the past, restaurant owners would top their drinks with small plates to keep out dust and bugs.  Then they started putting a small amount of food on the plates, which is where tapas were born.  For me, the continual snacker, tapas are a fantastic way to eat!  You get a drink at one bar, eat the tapa, linger, then move onto the next bar or order another round (most restaurants offer a different tapa for each round of drinks).  By the end of the night, you've had your fill and you're ready for some late-night ice cream! Yummo. 

Enjoying a tapa

After our first tapas experience, it was time for our appointed time to use our tickets to the Alhambra, which is a complex of buildings, gardens, and ruins used by the Moors when they occupied Granada.  It is the most visited site in Spain.  We climbed up the seemingly neverending hill to the top where the Alhambra was built so as to be a good lookout.  We visited the Alcazaba, which is a town in ruins.  We saw the city walls, main streets, dungeons, bathrooms, and the bell tower, which offered a stunning view.  Then we visited the  palaces, which were the homes to the Sultans ruling over the area.  The palaces were quite stunning, a marvel in Moorish art and architecture.  Beautiful archways, tile mosaics, and fountains filled every room.  Washington Irving lived at the Alhambra in the early 1900s for one summer and wrote about his experiences in his book, "Cuentos de la Alhambra," or "Stories of the Alhambra."  After the palaces, we visited some more fountains and ruined palaces, and then found our way to the Generalife, which houses the main gardens and the summer residence of the Sultan.  It offered a beautiful view of this "white city," known as such because many of the buildings are whitewashed.  Lovely!  After about 3 hours of walking around the grounds, we were tired and quite hungry, so we headed out and trekked back down the seemingly neverending hill (much easier this time of course).

The view of Granada from the Alhambra

An interior garden in the palaces

We found a few more tapas bars to snack at, and I found the drink I'd be enjoying for the rest of our time in Spain.  It's called a "tinto verano," which is red wine mixed with a lightly carbonated lemon soda.  It is the most refreshing and delicious thing.  I could not get enough!  Later that evening, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up for our flamenco evening.  We'd made reservations at a small place that offered an intimate setting in which to enjoy the traditional flamenco music and dance, which originated with the gypsies in the caves in which they lived.  The music and dance was originally meant to express the pain and suffering that the gypsies endured, but became a staple in the culture of Southern Spain.  We arrived early and were able to get front row seats to the show.  There were probably about 10 people there total.  The music was provided by a keyboardist, Spanish guitarist, percussionist (who played the strangest kinds of drum), and 2 singers, a male who sang in a very Arabic tone, and an older lady who had the huskiest smoker's voice I've ever heard.  The dancing was lovely.  I would watch her feet and just get lost in the rhythm and movement.  After the show, we headed out for a nightcap of tea and chocolate crepe (nowhere near as good as France's!).  Then it was off to bed!

 The next day, Jon tried to organize a biking tour in the mountains, but it was difficult without having a phone readily available.  We kept having to find a pay phone or internet service to get in contact with people, and finally he decided that mountain biking in the Sierra Nevada wasn't meant to be (at least not on this trip).  We were quite lazy, and simply wandered around town a bit.  One of the interesting things we saw in Granada were the tea sellers.  They would set up tables with lots of baskets filled with tea leaves. Each basket was labeled with the type of tea and the ailments it would cure.  Mint, for example, could cure upset stomach, and star anise could cure "wind."  It was quite an impressive display! 



Later in the day, we headed out for our last round of tapas.  We went to about 4 different tapas bars, and were quite pleased that we felt among locals.  The tapas, drinks, and company were all a highlight of our brief stay in Granada.  Francisco Alarcon de Icaza once wrote "there could be nothing more painful in life than to be blind in Granada," and I think we would have to agree.