Semana Santa in Granada

Because we were in Granada during Semana Santa, we got to see a processional.  We were late arriving to the route that we knew it would be on, so I worried that we wouldn't get to see it.  However, these things move so slowly that I had no reason to worry.  But it was pretty cool.

Several men carry these large and heavy statues of Mary and Jesus.  The move slowly but sometimes go very quickly in time to the music.

We finally stopped watching and went to dinner.  The processional was still in progress when we were done - at least 6 hours after it had started!

 

Granada - Alhambra

It was rainy and cold the morning we tourned the Alhambra.  We had signed up for the tour about women's roles in Muslim Spain, and we were excited for the tour.  Our guide had a thick accent and was not as easy to understand as our previous guide (when Hollis and I went to Granada last year).  He was very knowledgeable, but got distracted by his knowledge that he actually failed to let us know about women's roles in Muslim Spain.  (I still learned a lot, but his tour assumed that you were already familiar with the Alhambra's history, so he wasn't the best guide.)

We learned that every living room in the Alhambra had a reflection pool, but the royalty had a key-shaped fountain that flowed into the pool.  The key symbolizes one of the keys to heaven (there are seven heavens and each requires a key, so the key/keyhole reappears continually in the architecture of the Alhambra).  I don't have any pictures of the key entrances, but this is one of the prettier reflection pools.

Another cool decorative motif is the tree of life.  I can't quite remember the story in Islam, but the symbolism was very similar to the Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life.

 

We also got to tour the winter quarters of Carlos V (or Carlos I of Spain).  The winter areas of the Alhambra are much smaller so that they can be heated.

The balcony, with Jason and Neoma.

The center of Carlos V's palace has several pillars.  They are all made from conglomerate rock, which is one of my favorite rocks.  It looks like man-made cement, but it is naturally occurring.  I think it is a beautiful rock.

 

Also, though most of the Alhambra is white, it originally was painted in many vivid colors.  Remnants of these colors are barely visible today.  I can only imagine how beautiful it would have been.  Below is a photo of some colors in a section of architecture that represents the cave where Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her that she would give birth to Christ.  The appearance of this ceiling design is the same as an Annuciation painting.

This is the Courtyard of the Lions.  It's been under restoration since I first visited in 2007.  The lions were removed and Hollis and I got to see them up close when we went last year, but now they are put back in the courtyard! They are almost done with the renovation! 

They installed a completely separate water system so they could prevent the lions from further corrosion.  The fountain used to be powered by gravity and rainwater.  The lions used to be a clock as well; the number of lions that had water flowing from their mouths corresponded to the hour.  However, after conquering the Alhambra, Spaniards pulled the fountain apart to see how it worked and couldn't put it back together properly.

But still!  I am so excited that I got to see the lions IN THEIR PATIO.

And i just really thought this tree was beautiful.

 

Jason and I are standing in front of the rather smallish people door in the Gates of Justice (the people door is small, the gates are huge).  This was the only entrance to the Alhambra when it was a fortress city.

 

Granada

I love Granada.  There is a lot to see.  This is some of the things that we did.

We ate dinner one night in our favorite Kebap restaurant.  It has low tables and cuishioned chairs/benches that you sit on.  The ambiance is pretty cool.  This time we were sitting across from people smoking a hookah that the restaurant provides.  Neoma really wanted to take a picture of it, and they were totally okay with it.  (For the record the herbs they were smoking did not include marijuana.)

We hiked up to a famous viewpoint to see the Alhambra at night.  I was SO tired after all that uphill walking that I could barely stand for our photo (hee hee).

 

There was this awesome graffiti that Hollis was able to mimic quite well.  It's as if he inspried it.

There were some nifty stairs up to our top-level apartment that we rented for the time we were there, so we had to get a picture up the stairwell (I rode the elevator up so I'm at the top).

We also went to the Royal Chapel and the old Silk Market, but I talked about those in my last post on Granada.

Alhambra: The unconquerable city

When Hollis and I went to Granada, we booked a tour of the Alhambra. Because it was a holiday weekend, all of the general admission tickets were sold out (General admission is 13€). But I found an English tour of the Alhambra and parts of Granada for 25€. We got to go into many parts of the Alhambra, some of which are parts not open for public wandering. And it was awesome to learn so much background about Charles V, grandson of Ferdinand and Isabel.

We learned that Washington Irving is pretty much the Hero of the Alhambra (okay, so they just call him "hijo de la Alhambra" or "son of the Alhambra"). He lived here for about a year, collecting stories about what happened there. Before he arrived, Napolean's army had destroyed much of the city of the Alhambra, but several beautiful structures remained. He published Tales of the Alhambra in the 1830s. Many Americans thought that it sounded wonderful, so they came to see this Alhambra. This tourism is what helped preserve what is left of the Alhambra to the present day.

Here is Hollis with Washington Irving.

The only remaining original entrance to the Alhambra is pictured below:

I think it's called the Door of Justice. This lower door leads to an S-shaped interior that used to have 5 doors (one at each bend) that you had to pass through to reach the upper door that has access to the city of Alhambra. If an army used a battering ram to break through the first door, they would have to leave it behind and simply hack at the second door (located at a 90 degree angle from the first one). The invaders would have to chop through all five doors while being killed by defenders above to breach the city. It never happened. The Alhambra was never conquered.

In this picture you can see the aquaduct that provides all the water for the Alhambra:

This was a very vunerable point because if an invading army could block this water supply, no more water would be entering the Alhambra. However, there was enough water stored inside the city walls to support the entire city of 2,000 people for nine months. This is about how long Ferdinand and Isabel laid seige to the city of Granada in 1491 before the city of Alhambra surrendered on 2 Jan 1492. Thus, the Alhambra is a city that was never conquered. It was given up. :)

The Alhambra is on the top of a hill and overlooks the city of Granada. This is a picture of the historic Albaicín.

Charles the V spent his honeymoon in Granada. Because of a sickness in the North, he ended up staying at the Alhambra for six months, and so some special rooms had to be built for winter residence. This small room was built to be warm. I got a kick out of the size of the doorways.

Yep. Hollis would have been a Giant in the 1500s.

The Alhambra is a very beautiful place to visit. Especially on a temperate sunny day. Hollis and I plan to go back again to have a general visit so we can spend more time looking at the many details.

Granada

I had a 4-day weekend this last week, so Hollis and I took the opportunity to travel. We took the bus to Granada, a city in the South of Spain.

The cathedral is one of the first things you see in historic downtown because it is so big.

Hollis is the shadow on the right. This cathedral is actually Baroque in architecture. If you are familiar with Baroque, it usually is completely overdone. However, in Granada, the cathedral was finished with very little money, so it is simple Baroque. Or (prepare yourselves) broke Baroque.

In the streets near the cathedral, they have rebuilt the merchant's district with the streets as narrow as they were historically.

Now it is completely full of gift shops. Over-priced, naturally, but not so much that you really feel like you are getting ripped off.

Our first night there, Hollis and I went for a walk to try and get a view of the Alhambra at night. I didn't know where the best view was, but I knew we needed to walk up. The streets were quite narrow and steep.

This is the part of town known as the Albaicín, the oldest part of Granada. Historic downtown is mostly rebuilt because it burned down in the early 1900s.

In our hunt for the best viewing spot, we found some crazy streets. Like this staircase in the middle of the road:

If you happened to be driving a car, you would have to go back and try another way.

Hollis was able to take this amazing panoramic shot of the Alhambra:

We did finally find the park: the viewpoint of some saint.

We really enjoyed Granada. We even discovered a new flavor of ice cream:

Yep. Chocolate hot pepper. And no, we didn't try it.