Tales of the Alhambra -- Granada, Spain.

Nancy and I just got back from an incredible 4 day trip to Granada, Spain.  It was a long weekend, but I guess we should simply use ‘weekend’ since our normal weekend in Spain is usually 3-4 days – not rubbing it in, just want you to be informed.

The town of Granada is nestled (great word, I think) alongside the Sierra Nevada mountains, which creates some pretty dramatic scenery.  Learning about the small city of Granada and its often-times violent history was one of the highlights for me, I think Nancy preferred the small-town feel, endless tapas bars and cafes – something for everyone.

Overlooking the 'nestled' Granada.  Almost all of the buildings and houses are painted white to reduce the summer heat.

I was really looking forward to this “puente” weekend, since I had never visited Granada, only passing through it for a couple of hours on my way to Morocco when I studied abroad 7 years ago.  Nancy had already visited Granada, but I’m pretty sure she had a better time this weekend, since she was with me.  Back to the term “puente”… It is Spanish for "bridge".  In Spain, Tuesday was a bank holiday, and the mentality in Spain (got to admire them for this) is that instead of working on Monday, they simply give everyone the day off on Monday to create a four-day weekend.  Why work Monday when you are already have Tuesday off?  God bless them and this country, yet another reason to love Spain.

The highlight of the weekend was our visit to ‘La Alhambra’.  This is Arabic for “the red fortress”.  It is an absolutely amazing 15^th century palace/fortress/garden/government building, overlooking the city of Granada.  In all of my travels, the amazing architecture was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen and I was in awe and admired each and every room that we entered.  For anyone that is able to visit, it would be one of the top things on our list for you to do, and it would be an easy daytrip from Linares.  Granada, and most of Spain, was ruled by the Moors (Muslims from Northern Africa) for over 700 years, until the areas was completely re-conquered by the Christians in the 1492 led by Ferdinand and Isabel (the same people that granted permission and funding for Christopher Columbus to sail to the Americas).  This petition allegedly took place in the Alhambra.  Admittedly, I was so smitten with the place that I bought Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra (which was written in the 1800's) and read it within the week.

Catching the sunset from the Mirador (lookout) de San Nicolas across from La Alhambra.  Amazing.

 

Granada is a lively, vibrant college town.  The streets are crowded in a good way, the town feels historically rich and there was a lot to keep us busy over the 4 days.  We were really lucky to end up in a hotel that not only was along the uphill path to the Alhambra, but we could actually see a slice of the Alhambra from our hotel room!  We stayed in a family-run pension that has been in the same family for three generations.  We are still debating if it was the cozy feel of the hotel we liked, or the fact that they served a breakfast of eggs and bacon.  Either way, we enjoyed the hotel and meeting the family that ran it.

The terrace outside our hotel room in Granada.

Nancy pointing at our hotel from atop the Alhambra.

One final highlight of the weekend was gaining entrance to a local, members only flamenco show.  In Granada, flamenco is very famous due to the fact that it was started by gypsies dancing in the mountains outside of the city.  On the outskirts of Granada, there is an area called “Sacromonte” where gipsy families have lived and still live, for hundreds of years.  There, the spontaneous dancing in the streets, backed by Spanish guitar-playing, formed the beginning of ‘flamenco’ in the late 1700’s.  Flamenco is now a national pastime of Spain and celebrated in all corners of the country.  Finding ourselves in the birthplace of Flamenco, of course we wanted to find a show.  Unfortunately, most shows were of the 30 Euro variety, catering to tourists, that didn’t even include dinner.  Of course, I was way too cheap for this.  Instead, I made a couple calls to check out other options.  We was able to use my recently acquired “gift of the gab” (see Ireland blog post) and ask the guy I talked to, if there was any way we would be able to attend the “locals only, members only” flamenco show that was taking place that night.  I also informed him that we were both very good-looking.

To our surprised, if we agreed to have dinner at their restaurant, they would allow us to attend the show.  For the price of dinner, which included a huge plate of paella and a bottle of wine, we were able to attend a private flamenco show on the hills of the Albayzin (the hilly Moorish neighborhood, opposite the Alhambra).  We were absolutely the only tourists at this Saturday night show and we were completely underdressed (who am I kidding, Nancy ‘backpacks’ with all of her accessories and no less than 5-7 belts … she would have been prepared for a trip to the opera)!  Regardless, we were able to see an authentic flamenco show at one of the highly-acclaimed ‘top 5 places to watch a flamenco show’ in all of Spain – La Peña de la Planteria.