Hot town summer in the city
Trip Start
May 05, 2008
1
15
97
Trip End
May 09, 2009
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Granada,
Andalusia,
Spain and Canary Islands
Friday, June 27, 2008
The town otherwise is quite charming, with remnants of the city´s former glory visible everywhere. For about 250 years from the middle of the 13th century to 1492, Granada was the center of a Moorish kingdom, the last in Spain. We visited the old Arab town of Albaycin, which is now a neighborhood of cramped white-washed houses perched on top of a hill, which bears a striking resemblance to Chefchaouen in Morocco. From there we could see Granada´s most famous attraction, a drawcard which attracts tourists from the world over: the Alhambra. It is a beautiful castle on top of another hill next to the city, which owes its name in Arabic ( the Red one), to the reddish stones from which it is built. We got tickets to visit it on Saturday night, because reservations had to be made a long time ago.
Aside from its Moorish past, Granada enjoys the benefits of some later history as well. Yesterday we visited the Capilla Real, which houses the mausoleum of arguably the most important figures in Spainsh history, and soem of the most important in world history.
The Alhambra
That would be the tombs of Queen Isabella of Castille and King Ferdinand of Aragon (known in Spain as the reyes catholics: the catholic kings as if their other kings weren´t quite catholic!). Among their achievements, aside from the conquest of Granada (and hence the finishing of the reconquest of Spain from the Moorish domination), one can also include the sponsorship of the voyages of Columbus and the beginning of the colonization of the Americas. Nowadays, Granada is a very lively and intersting city. It is a mish-mash of the Moorish neighborhoods perched on the hills overlookig the city, 16th and 17th Baroque architecture in the city´s core, 19th century Parisian style architecture in between, and somewhat ugly 1970s apartment buildings dotting its periphery. The general vibe here is very bohemian, more so than any city we´ve visited in Europe so far, with lots of people with tatoos, dreadlocks and new age clothing mixing in with the more traditional locals. Everywhere one turns, one sees cafes, tapas bars, itinerant musicans and new age stores.
Speakign of tapas bars, we went to a few, and we´ve had one of the more interesting culturaL moments of our trip through Spain so far, when we mingled with the locals and watched Spain defeat Russia 3-0 in the semifinal of the European Football Championship. We got to yell out Goooooooooool! with them, groaned at missed opportunities and walked the streets during the hours afterwards, when the residential buildings emptied themselves of teenagers who were waving around Spanish flags, honked their cars and scooters and had water fights to cool off (it was 32c at 11:30 at night!).
We will post some more pictures once we visited the Alhambra. For now, though, here are some of our experiences so far!
