Granada to the coast

The Alhambra of Granada

This last week we’ve been in the south of Spain. We visited Granada first – the city famous for it’s palace the Alhambra – built by the Moors in the 13th and 14th century. The Moors overran Spain within 2 or 3 years back in the 700’s and there are still many buildings, place names and decorative features that have remained and have become a part of Spanish culture.

The city of Granada is huge and we were lucky enough to find a park about 20 mins walk the first afternoon we went into the city center but the next day we had to walk much further. It can be so stressful driving in the city! So many one way streets and roundabouts with many lanes and traffic lights. People in the cities here in Spain love to bheir car horn too if they were irritated (or so we assume)  so we found that a bit disconcerting. I felt we were always in someone’s way!

Beautiful graffiti we saw on the way through the city. Granada was filled with professional graffiti style art.

Our main aims were to see the palace (known as the most elegant in Europe), and to see and hear some Flamenco music and dancing. The palace was a good walk up a steep hill (the hilly part of the city was a bit like Wellington actually) and through a garden surrounding the palace walls where we saw our first gypsy fortune teller. She was insisting her sprig of rosemary on women and telling their fortunes whether they liked it or not. She was pretty forceful about it and even shouted at a man who was encouraging his partner to come away. Later on, we saw a policeman telling her to stop harassing people.

Outside the Alhambra palace

The Alhambra was pretty well preserved despite it’s colourful history although the outside walls weren’t much to look at. We didn’t go inside as it was too expensive for us all, but there was a big renaissance building adjacent to the palace which currently houses a museum that we enjoyed looking through. Inside that building was a colosseum style covered arena which was very grand and it looked like they still used it as a performance venue. The museum had many exhibitions displaying the unique decorative style of the palace. The Moors were renown for having an attitude of enjoying life, beauty and vitality instead of worrying about death, and this showed in their very colourfully tiled rooms and ornate furniture and house hold items. The palace is very well known for it’s amazingly colourful geometric tiles which cover the floors, walls and ceilings of the palace. Everything was fancy – from the earthenware to the intricately carved wooden mantles and cellar doors, the fountains crafted out of pure creamy marble and chess boards made of shell and tile.

A  sample of some of the famous geometric tiles the Alhambra has decorating the palace.

We always take our lunch with us whenever we are out for the day and Josh prepared our usual fare – bread with salad fillings and fruit. This one particular spot was just up from the palace and near the monastery – in the cooler shade of some lovely trees. We could hear the turtle doves cooing peacefully when they were interrupted by a scream from Esmae who had been given a kind little gift from the dove – a huge greeny white poo right on top of her head. There was much moaning and exclaiming much to the annoyance of the other tourists as Phoebe tried to wipe the mess out of her hair. Oh well, poor girl, there’s a first time for everything! I’m not sure that she needed to come all the way to Spain for the experience though…

Josh preparing lunch. Sorry - I didn't catch a picture of Esmae's moment of horror!

Later on that day we walked to the other side of the city and up many, many small narrow streets filled with baking dog poo to try and locate some music. Someone on the internet had said that locals often played in a plaza over looking the Alhambra – so that’s where we headed. The streets were relatively quite till we reached our destination – a small square on the hillside among the residential zone – but it was busy with people, all sitting around the wall listening to some buskers and venders selling small bits and bobs on little squares of cloth or foldable tables. Most venders had little dogs who were good at getting a pat or two from the tourists. The music was great and felt nicely authentic with people clapping along in the Spanish way. There were two men playing guitar and singing in the style of the Gypsy Kings and they even busted out a few of their songs which was very cool. They were great at asking for a donation after every few songs too, one of them turning his guitar onto it’s back, with a euro balanced on top displaying it for people to add to it.

 Unfortunately, we didn’t see any flamenco dancing but what we did see happen all of a sudden as we were watching the buskers and enjoying the atmosphere of the little market was quite funny and then we knew we weren’t in Takaka for sure! Someone must have been keeping a look out from the corner for police as in an instant the vendors were up on their feet bustling their items for sale away in bags or folding up the little display cloths, and were hurriedly on their feet, scurrying off in the opposite direction to the police car that we could see coming around the corner. The police sat in the cars for a bit and then once they left out came the people with their little bits of jewelry to sell again, only having hid around the corner!
We wandered up the hillside further to see the caves where the gypsies had lived back in the time when they weren’t allowed in the city. (Jews and gypsies often had their own separate quarters in old cities we have found.) The caves have now been turned into houses but are still occupied by poorer people. We did manage to hear a bit of traditional singing by chance as we stopped to sit on a wall, eat a biscuit and have a drink while overlooking the valley of cave housing. But I think they were actually making a movie in there by the looks. It still felt like it counted though.