Andalucia, Part 1: Granada/The Alhambra

Our trip to Andalucia (the autonomous community in southern Spain) took us through 3 cities: Granada, Sevilla (for some reason called Seville in the US) and Córdoba. It was a whirlwind trip, trying to hit these three cities in 4 nights/4.5 days, but we did it, and we saw a lot of amazing things. Anadalucia is interesting to me in two ways. First, is the fact that it is heavily influenced by Moorish history. Granted, at the height of Muslim influence, I think they had control of about 80% of Spain, but here in Catalunya at least, people have mostly shaken that off and taken back their Spanish (or Ancient Roman) pride. In southern Spain, though, old mosques and other major Muslim constructions are major tourist attractions. In fact, the Alhambra, a giant palace built for the Muslim sultans in the late 1300s, is the most visited single site in all of Spain.

That's not to say that people in Andalucia aren't Spanish. In fact, the second attribute that I was going to note about Andalucia was that it fulfilled what I think is the typical foreign perception about Spain. A lot of my friends at work from other parts of Spain feel a bit of embarrassment when we talk about how the rest of the world thinks of bulls, flamenco, sangria and siestas when they think of Spain, but in Andalucia, they kind of live that up. (That's not to say that sangria and siestas aren't enjoyed where I live, but having the bull as an image of Spain is definitely a sore point.) "Down South," though, there were bulls everywhere, giant wooden "bullboards" along the road*, ads for the bullfighting season, bull stickers on cars, etc. I guess historically speaking, Andalucia has pretty much always been a part of Spain, whereas Catalunya was essentially its own country until the expansion of the Spanish Empire under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella--the ones that sent Columbus off to India-I mean, the Americas--in the late 15th century.

[*yeah, stole that pun from my dad, so blame it on him]

Anyway, so stop #1 was Granada. We were only there for one night, with the main objective being seeing the Alhambra. The grounds of the Alhambra have lots of different gardens and buildings and are mostly open to anyone. However, there is one section, the Palacio Nazarines, that requires a special ticket for entry, with a time slot on it, and because of the popularity of the site, these tickets usually have to be booked in advanced. Our ticket was for 9:30 a.m., so we were counting on spending a few hours walking around and leaving around 1, just in time for lunch. I neglected to do my research, however, because the Alhambra covers about 142,000 sq. m, about 35 acres, in total, and in the end we were there for about 6 hours, just walking around. It was truly amazing though. It's basically the effect of size times attention to detail, because I could imagine carving something nice, and I could image building something big, but something that nice AND that big, that many years ago... dang. So... how about a tour?

An intricate archway inside one of the buildings of the Palacios Nazaries (the special ticket part).

Close up of some of the carving. Not from the same archway, but typical.

Mama and Papa Schor under an arch.
Patio de los Arrayanes. I overheard a tour group leader tell her group that this spot was the best place to take pictures from within this patio, so I did.
More cool tile close-ups.

Finally outside of the Palacio Nazaries, the Partal. It's another palace.

The ticket to the Palacio Nazaries also gave us access to the Generalife, which was another palace, I think the "summer palace." (Really? A winter and summer palace? Within 200m of each other?) These were the gardens of the Generalife.

View back at the Palacio Nazaries from the Jardines del Generalife. That's me in the foreground, in case you weren't sure.

Ok... well... that was Granada. Episode 2: Sevilla, coming up next.