Granada

Last weekend, our program took an excursion to Granada, which is a city nestled in between mountains southeast of Sevilla. Granada has a population of about 400,000 people but has the feel of a much bigger city because it houses numerous universities and lots of tourists almost year-round, which come to see the monuments, but also to enjoy a city that’s less than an hour away from both ski mountains and the beach.

Nonetheless, I really loved Granada because if you get out of the tourist areas and look into the old neighborhoods, it’s exactly what I think a nice little Iberian town should be.

Granada has a very rich aesthetic appeal based on Arabic architecture, design, and art, and this is because it was a city built up by Muslims from north Africa around the year 500, and was the last city to be conquered by the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel, and in the momentous year of 1492.

Despite it’s richness, you can immediately see the rule most Muslim designed cities follow; the beauty of any dwelling should be on the inside, and the outside is largely meant to be uniform, with white serving as the only exterior paint color (It also helps with the summer heat).

Granada is full of hippies, with hookah bars, live music everywhere, and lots of people trying to sell you trinkets, and everything there urges you to stop and relax with everyone. At the oldest barrio in town, Al-Almacyn, which sits on the side of a mountain, there is a breathtaking view of the whole city, and the palace fortress La Alhambra, which is the most visited place in all of Spain.

Here’s the same view at night time…

After checking out the barrio, we headed to a tea bar on this street…

…and then found out that the tea is really interesting…

I’m pretty sure the recipe calls for you to stuff as many herbs and spices into a little teapot as you can, but I know for a fact that the result is a good one.

Although the hotel we stayed in was nothing special, it did have amazing all-you-can-eat food, and it became apparent by looking around the dining room that this was something all of us Americans had dearly been missing. The meals we ate were so big they could be classified as debilitating, and my dear friend Mark couldn’t help but let it get the best of him:

That night we decided to go out and mingle with all that Granada youth, and it was a really good time. An odd thing about Granada is that with every drink comes a free tapas, which is just a small appetizer type deal if I haven’t clarified before. This is a really novel idea, but after our king-sized dinner, we were wishing we couldn’t just paid a little less for the beer. But like I said, it was a great time. The Sevilla FC soccer squad was on the tube playing Atletica so the bar was packed and everything was really exciting. Mark and I, being the ladies men we are, went with two girls from Miami of Ohio, one girl from George Washington, and one from Harvard, so clearly we were over-matched mentally. What we were lacking in that department we made up for with just being friendly. In fact, at one point a bunch of guys came up and decided to give Mark some pretty forceful hugs, and of course the whole time he’s just laughing and saying, “Hey you guys, que pasa?” while I’m telling Mark he might as well give them his wallet. Say what you will about the midwest but don’t say it’s not full of nice people.

After the soccer bar, we headed to a couple others to check out the scene, and then decided to strike out on our own as our group had at that point combined with a few others and before we knew it we were in a completely immobile American blob, totally incapable of making timely decisions. Mark and I decided to head towards what was described to us as, “A discoteca in a cave, but with a great view of the sunrise”, but along the way we met a guy from Ecuador named Juan who advised us to come with him to a better discoteca. We were hesitant to follow him but decided it was safe as he was about half our size. Maybe there’s some Mayan in him? What we found at this other discoteca was the most European place you could ever imagine. Take every European stereotype (euro mullet, black jeans, lots of dark leather, big sunglasses, pursed lips, etc.), and throw it together, and you have this discoteca. The strobe lights were constant and the music was like something out of a movie right before the naïve Americans get snatched…just kidding Mom. Epileptics would not last long in there, that’s for sure.

I can tell that after this semester of mine I will be ready to never step foot in a discoteca again, but as of now I’m still enjoying the occasional visit, and this night was just too European to not be great. I ended up meeting a girl named Celia and her friends and hanging out with them while Mark spent about 50 euros on Juan, and we left the place at the ripe hour of 7am, headed up the mountain, watched a cloudy sunrise over Granada, and headed into the hotel to gorge ourselves on coffee and eggs. I usually place a higher value on my sleep than I do on any sort of human interaction but I figure this is the time to stay up all night if there ever is one.

The coffee at the hotel was strong enough to get me going, and at about 10am, we headed for La Alhambra, the crown jewel of the region of Andalusia. I took about a million photos, but this is another place that’s just too big to even come close to capturing it. The palace was built by the Moors, Muslims who inhabited Spain before Ferdinand and Isabel knocked them back to Africa (…and if you’re feeling any pride in that, believe me when I say the Spanish inquisition is not something to be proud of), and is built on a mountain to separate the rulers from their subjects.

First we went to Generalife, which was the summer home of the kings, and just doesn’t have the same spectactular views…

Inside La Alhambra, we wandered the gardens,

went inside the palace of King Philippe, which was built as his honeymoon venue,

climbed up the main tower to look out over all of Granada,

looked back down on the old army encampment,

and then headed inside the grand palace. Everything was beyond words, but the royal palace is the most difficult to do justice. Every square inch of every wall is engraved with Arabic poems from the Koran and pictures of Arab kings, and there are rooms upon rooms of high ceilings and intricate masonry.

It is absolutely impossible to take everything in, and the feeling of being overwhelmed was strong despite us only seeing maybe 1/3^rd of the palace. You could easily wander this place for days just gazing at walls and wishing you knew Arabic, but because we had class on Monday, we left after only a few hours, and headed back to sweet Sevilla. Needless to say, I fell asleep on the bus within the first few minutes, and I can only say it’s a great thing to have Mark to sit next to because I know he won’t judge my excessive head bobs and drool.

Side note: Here’s a picture I took from the tower of a hillside of caves that is still to this day inhabited by gypsies. I don’t know enough about it yet but I know that gypsy is not a derogatory term here, but rather an ethnic term used to describe a sector of society far more marginal than anything we see in America. They spend their days among everyone else, but I’ve been told they rarely live outside small communities so autonomous that police seldom ever go there. Advice I’ve been given is that if you get pick-pocketed by a gypsy, it’s lost and gone forever because the groups are just that separate.