May 26 –
June 1
GRANADA
Adios,
Sebastian, as we head out to the train station. We have a pleasant journey
north, away from the coast and into the mountains. Granada is a well-kept, vibrant, elegant
city. We walk along a busy main avenue to our neighborhood, where our very
enthusiastic and friendly host brings us to the apartment. It’s on the fourth
floor, very clean and modern, with white marble tiles and a purple couch. We
are well located for walking everywhere, with parklike plazas, cafes and
shops all around us.
Everyone
comes to Granada, every tourist, that is, to see
the fabled Alhambra,
the 11th century castle of the Moorish king Mohammed ben Al-Ahmar. We’ve booked tickets
ahead, and not a day too soon because the only time open was for 6:30pm Sunday,
just before we have to leave. So the highlight of the week will be our last
event, leaving us free to explore the rest of the city until then.
Granada has a mix of urban, medieval,
modern and historical. There’s a major university near the city center, a
cathedral surrounded by a lively market, a Jewish quarter from the 6th century,
and a historical district in the shadow of the Alhambra. What we didn’t expect, though, was
a colony of troglodytes, with cave homes still in use. We found this area while
walking along the small river that flows below the Alhambra, a neighborhood of old stone walls
and historically quaint boutique hotels. The streets are lined
with souvenir shops and clogged with slow-moving tourists, but it's still very
pretty. We followed the street to the hillside opposite the Alhambra
and walked to the crest of that hill to find the Cultural Museum
and Troglodyte homes. The museum is beautifully set, with a wildflower garden
path to a small arrangement of traditional cave homes showing scenes of life in
the last century, where basket-making and ironwork were common. The caves are
small, clean and appealing. The views across the gorge to the Alhambra and the plains beyond the city are
stunning.
The
Cathedral in Granada
is tucked into the city blocks, not set on a grand plaza as in most cities
we’ve visited. We find our way there by working through the shopping district
and then through the Mercado section, both full of people shopping with great
enthusiasm. The Cathedral is grand, enormous, and notable for its collection of
medieval folios, of which more than a dozen are displayed in the corridors
behind the altar. They are massive books of heavy vellum, illustrated with gold
and red ink, meticulous script and intricate drawings.
Just
outside the cathedral is a 14th century Madrassa, now part of the University of Granada. Before we enter, we stop to
listen to a street musician playing a beautiful melody on a hang, a recently invented instrument
similar to a Jamaican steel drum. The Madrassa is a small building, and a
wonderful opportunity to see the traditional Islamic plasterwork decoration
very close up, accompanied by the explanations from a university student guide.
Our entry
ticket to the madrassa includes a visit to the Rodriguez-Acosta estate, a
great, modern villa located on the hill nearby. This is an unexpected treat.
Rodriguez-Acosta was the son of a wealthy banking family who became an artist.
He built this estate for himself as a source of inspiration and as a center for
his salons, gatherings of
intellectuals and high society types. Rodriguez-Acosta drove his architects
crazy getting every detail, nuance and element just right, his own Hertz
Castle. Now it is a
cultural center, artist retreat and visitor attraction. His
studio is still there, in use by his son, not available for tourists to see.
There are tiers of formal gardens, reflecting pools, groomed hedges, and
beneath the building, a maze of ancient cave passageways, not even fully
explored to this date. There is a small museum attached, built from a donated
private collection of Greek, Roman and Medieval pieces. Interestingly, none of
Rodriguez-Acosta’s own work is exhibited here at all.
Another
site worth seeing in Granada is the Science Park. We walk to it through the campus
of the University
of Granada, parklike but
overall unremarkable. The Science
Park occupies several
blocks just on the outskirts of the city. There’s a very large atrium leading
to exhibition spaces, auditoriums and an Imax theater, and outdoor exhibit
spaces as well. We see an unusual exhibition on a Spanish puppet theater group,
with some huge puppets, puppet making and performance techniques. We walk around the grounds to see some
displays on water behavior, olive making, raptors and satellites. It’s designed
for children, but the park is still interesting for adults.
Our
long-awaited visit to the Alhambra
comes on a very rainy Sunday. We arrive at the entry, where dozens of people
are waiting in line to buy tickets, just as a great downpour begins. No one
wants to lose their place, so they huddle under little travel umbrellas and
pray for it to stop. We have tickets, so we take refuge under the canopy of the
entry. After nearly and hour in the heavy rain, it slows and then stops so that
we can move out to the beautiful gardens of the Alhambra. The tree-lined paths weave along
the hilltop, showing off gorgeous views of the valley around us, along formal
rose gardens and terraced plantings. A second downpour blows through, forcing
us to take shelter in a very non-descript rest room café building, basically a
hall with vending machines. Then, finally, the rain is done and its time for
our entry to the actual Alhambra
castle.
The
elegant rooms are just beautiful. The palace is covered with delicate
plasterwork, carvings, painted tiles, with reflecting pools and columned
courtyards. It’s worth the wait to come to see this, one of the great sites of Spain. We
wonder, though, how much of Granada the other tourists have missed, coming here
to see the highlights and then moving on to the next city.
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