Tour booked for midday, I woke, showered successfully with the new sleeve and set off for breakfast. The hotel does provide a buffet but you have to book it the day before and I hadn’t.
I walk down the slope towards a small square and what do I see? Cafe Futbol – how could I not? In the well-heated exterior area were lots of people doing churros y chocolate but for me it was the more modest orange juice, cafe solo doble and a croissant. Great start to the day.
I then decided to stroll down the Street of the Virgin towards a tree- lined Paseo alongside the river Genil. This was a recce, but a stroll along here is probably on the cards for Christmas Day. As I returned up the nearby and strangely named Acero del Darro – the Darro river is on the other side of the Alhambra and this road leads to the Genil. Ah well. I am drawn, as so often, into El Corte Ingles the big department store chain as it has loos and the opportunity to replace a falling apart credit card wallet. Back to the hotel to pick up my ticket for the tour and set off up the street to catch the 30 bus to the Alhambra – I’m encouraged to be there 15 minutes early. Nearing the bus stop I realise I left my phone in the room so it’s a quick dash back to retrieve that I make the next bus and the ride up to the Alhambra is crowded but I get there in time to meet Laura, our guide for the next several hours.
We start just outside the entrance to the Parador which brings back a dash of nostalgia and some very happy memories. It was such a delight to walk from breakfast on the terrace straight into the Generalife Gardens.
The said Generalife is where the tour leads us first. Laura points out to the non-Spanish speakers, that it is not an insurance company (!) but the sultan’s summer palace. It gives us great views of the whole complex, a look down on the gardens which grow vegetables and fruit for the palace and we stroll through the summer palace itself noting the areas that are still essentially moorish and those which the conquering Christians decided to convert to more northerly tastes. This theme repeats throughout the tour since the Moors held Spain from 711 until 1492 when Philip and Isabella finally managed to drive them out. So there’s a lot of Arabic influence to overturn. And a lot of mis-translation of Arabic names into Spanish as in this one:
Bib-al-hambra was thought to be the original name which means red gate to the Alhambra but was confused by the incomers with Bib-al-jambra which would have been wine gate. Since Muslims don’t do alcohol it seems that red gate is the most likely but the name Puerta de Vino is on all the signboards.
As we leave the Generalife and move to the fortress and palaces of the Alhambra, Laura gives us some history and context of the astounding engineering capabilities of the Arabs and the ongoing archaeology that is uncovering more of the plebeian areas of the site. To support the sultans and their courts there would have had to be hundreds if not thousands of ordinary folk who baked, spun, made leather, did carpentry, built palaces and castles. They lived in the Medina which has been partially uncovered in recent years.
The most impressive feat of the period of Mohammed I in the 13th century was to make water flow uphill and to capture the river Darro six kilometres away and through water wheels and aqueducts supply his new hilltop city with all the water it needed. There was an interesting BBC report a couple of years back that explains it all and here is part of the original aqueduct that gave the complex the water it needed for drinking, bathing, for fountains and for flushing loos.
The tour takes us next to the alcazaba, the military part of the city. It’s impressive in size and scale and that it is constructed from local compacted earth and not from quarried stone. It also affords great views over Granada and of the sow-topped Sierra Nevada some 40 km to the south east.
My recollection of the amazing decoration, elegant architecture and layout of the Nasrid Palaces was more the reinforced on a second viewing. When Dee and I had been here before we were able to wander at will but now with many vying tour groups – 9000 visitors on a busy day! – it was all a bit more regimented but still with time to admire the craftsmanship in wood, plaster, marble and tiles that make the palaces worth anyone’s time to visit. In my loft at home I have negs and contact sheets of the black and white shots I took on our previous visit – must dig them out when I’m back. Here’s a flavour of today’s visit – in colour.
Laura had been a brilliant guide giving us a short break during which she could smoke a couple of cigarettes – her theory is that smoke numbs the throat and gives her the ability to talk in a foreign language non-stop for three and a half hours. We didn’t discuss the other side effects! On the way out there was either a wedding or a magazine photoshoot in the centre of the very ugly palace that the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor and Charles V of Spain plonked in the midst of all this elegance to make his mark. I had hoped after being on my feet for five hours to get the bus back into town but it was so crowded that I gave up and walked – blissfully down – back to the centre. It was a pleasant stroll through the Gomerez forest and passing the ruins of the Bibalrambla Gate which was one of the original entries to the Arabic city from the 11th century until 1492 and is commemorated in the name of the main square.
Much needed respite came in the way of beer and a plate of freshly sliced Iberian ham and the discovery that I was only about 10 minutes form the hotel, where I went to put my feet up for a bit and write up yesterday.
I then made an evening tapas crawl and finished up in a quite posh restaurant where I was able to have another favourite dish carilleras de cerdo (pigs cheeks) served with half a baked apple and caramelised onions – a new take on traditional pork with apple sauce. They just overdid the Christmas thing with my coffee.
Then it was back via another spectacular lights display – a circle round the Puerta Real and when I got back even Navas Street was showing its Christmas spirit.
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