Granada and the Alhambra

 Street scenes in the old part of Granada.

 The Alhambra as seen from the opposite hill.

 The Generalife, or gardens.

The Palace of Carlos V, outside...

and inside.

The palaces of the Nazrid including the Fountains of the Twelve Lions.

Sunday, September 10^th.

I was up by five to get organized for my trip to Granada today to visit the Alhambra. I visited there back in 1979 and remembered it as being amazing, so I wanted to return. When I went to buy a ticket, from London, there were no individual ones left, only group tours and the ones for the tour from Malaga, which is closer were all booked up. That is why I am in Seville which is further east from Granada than Malaga. Anyway, good to revisit Seville as well.

As I left, Maxim and Roberto came home from their night of bar hopping! I walked through the quiet dark streets of the inner city and managed to find the meeting place without getting lost. I was early and the only other person there was a young American from New York, named Andrew. We talked until the rest of the people and our guide, Pablo, arrived. He led us on a short walk to the coach. The drive there was about two and a half hours. Along the way we passed small white towns and orchards and orchards of olive, fig and date trees. There seems to be no wild areas or forest left, it is all farmed.

We stopped at one very modern tourist service station with shops selling all sorts of food to be consumed there or packages of food stuff like olives, dates, figs and other crops from the area. This a very popular tourist area and there were already six coaches in the lot.

When we arrived in Granada we had a short walking tour of the old part of the city including a viewpoint from the opposite hill where we could see the entire Alhambra complex. It is a walled city within the city of Granada. It consists of three main sections: the Alcazaba or fortress, the Nazrid Palaces of the Moors which includes the Generalife Gardens and the Carlos V Palace, which was built later. We then had an hour lunch stop at a restaurant where I had a torilla Espanol, or Spanish omelette. It was large, round and really thick and full of potatoes and onions; good and filling.

The Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain. It was originally constructed as a small fortress in AD 889 by the invading Moors from North Africa, on the remains of Roman fortifications, and then largely ignored until its ruins were renovated and rebuilt in the mid-13th century by the Moorish emir Mohammed ben al-Ahmar of the Emirate of Granada, who built its current palace and walls. It was converted into a royal palace in 1333 by Yusuf I, Sultan of Granada. After the conclusion of the Christian Reconquista in 1492 when the king and queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, finally defeated the last of the Moors and and reclaimed the area of Andalucia for Spain. (Three months later they gave royal endorsement to Christopher Columbus for his expedition). In 1526 Charles V commissioned a new Renaissance palace better befitting the Holy Roman Emperor, but which was ultimately never completed. It is built in a geometric shape, the outside is square, but the inside is a perfect circle.

We spent three hours wandering through the vast complex with a guide listening to the complicated history and admiring the architecture and intricate carvings on the palaces. They we drove back to Seville and arrived about 8:30. I walked around the central area admiring the night lighting of the cathedral before walking home. I got lost twice and had to re-orientate myself. The second time I ran into the mother of my hostess who was going out for dinner with her daughter, Natalia at ten o'clock! This is the first time I met her. I managed to find my way from there.