Saturday, October 18

Granada is about 4 hours south of Madrid. It is in the midst of Olive and Almond trees. The countryside looks like patchwork quilts of different shades of green. The groves were very well groomed. The reason to go to Granada is the Alhambra. This is the last Moorish Palace built in Spain before the Spanish Catholic Invasion. This King built the Palacio Nazaries (palace), the Alcazaba (Military Post), and the Generalife (gardens) according to his interpretation of heaven on earth. They only allow 8000 people in a day, and even with those huge numbers, you have to order your tickets in advance. We had ours for Sunday, so we had a leisure time headed to Granada.

The drive was a fun one!!! The sky looked like we were driving into tornado land with huge amounts of rain. I kept everyone entertained with reading “Pollyanna”. Jocelyn kept yelling at me for looking out the window and not reading!!!

We saw lots of Toros on the side of the road. By Toros, I mean three story tall all black billboard cut outs of a bull. This is the advertising for the El Toro Winery. It is very effective and I just love them. In reading about Spain, Doug and Amber told me that the winery commissioned an artist to design the Toros. He did it, and regrets it, because his most famous piece is commercial.

We stopped at a wonderful café for lunch. The roadside diners here have linen tablecloths and servers with suits on. We thought we paid for the wine and the water, so when we didn’t finish them, we took them to go. Actually it is the table wine and you pay for an unlimited glass. Oops!!! A Walmart move by us!!!

We made it to the Alhambra and our hotel was directly across the street. Our hotel was the Guadalupe and it was very nice. We got situated, picked up our tickets for the morning, and then found the city bus to get to the center of Granada. The bus was standing room only and it took us up and down hairpin turns. The good thing was that the ride was quick, so no time to get sick.

We were dropped off at the Christopher Columbus statue. This one was amazing in that it was iron, with Queen Isabelle holding Colon’s (how they pronounce/spell his name in Spain) globe and maps. The statue was surrounded with fountains. The entrance to the statue was towers of flowers. Since we were there just after Columbus Day, there was a wreath at the base. In fact, all of the Colon Statues in Spain had wreaths at them during the month of October. Very dramatic and priceless.

We walked the city looking for a place to eat. The greatest part was the little men at the cross walks. Here, the man is red when you can’t cross or green when you do cross. In Granada and some of the other tourist places, the green guy is animated when it is time to cross the street. And he starts to walk really fast when the time is running out. I stood in the middle of the street and photographed the hombre verde for about two or three light changes!!!

The city reminded me a lot of Valencia, and as I am touring Spain, the little villages are very similar in a “Spanish” kind of way. We gave up on finding dinner, but found a pasteria – bakery for chocolate y cervezas. We decided we would get fancied up and eat dinner at the hotel. As we were headed back to the bus stop, there was a huge group of young men on the other side of the street. They looked like they were a futbol team that had just finished practice. There were about 50 of them. We followed them along as they chanted. Next thing we know, they all stormed the Colon Statue and were jumping in the fountain!! Very entertaining.

We got ready and had a lovely, fancy dinner at the hotel. The girls were very nicely behaved. There was an older woman sitting alone behind us. She was laughing at the girls every time I looked back. When she left, she made a point of saying, “Thank you for an enjoyable evening!”

We got up early and headed to the Alhambra. The gates opened at 8, and we had our appointment for the palace at 9:15. You can only enter the palace during the 1/2 hour of your time. You can stay as long as you would like. You only can tour the Alhambra areas from 8-2 or from 2-8 every day. We immediately got our audio tour and started towards the palace.

The Alhambra. I can easily equate it to heaven. It was amazing to realize that the construction of this heavenly Moorish palace began at about 1000. When the Catholics invaded (1490’s), they took over the Alhambra and input their touches, which weren’t so great and almost insulting. The palace had marble floors, alabaster carvings all over the place, ceilings that were inlaid with these alabaster carvings. It was difficult to comprehend how they were able to construct such a thing. The Moors used all of the available light for heating, cooling, and visuals. They were firm believers of water being an avenue to peace and tranquility. I think I’m going to install fountains or a garden hose in every room of my AZ house. The detail was indescribable and the experience was exquisite.

After our brains hurt from all of the beautiful stimuli, we headed to the Alcazar. Any word starting with Al is a Moor word. Alcazar translates to the Armory or Artillery section of the Palace. This was constructed before the Palace. The exterior walls of most of the facility were still in place. You could see the bath houses for the soldiers, the irrigation system for transporting water through the palace gardens, and the military walls of protection. At one point, I looked up to the bell tower (the highest point in Granada) and saw my child hanging over the wall. Apparently she purposely separated from her Daddy. I ran up those steps as fast as my legs would carry me. I was too tired to yell at her once I found her!!!

Once we were done with the Alcazar we had enough. We didn’t even make it to the “Official Gardens – Generalife Area.” There were gardens throughout the property and again, it was incredible!!!

We checked out of the hotel and headed down the road. We found another quaint restaurant for our road stop. Here we were able to watch one of the last races for the Formula One Championship. Hamilton from the UK basically clenched the points needed while we watched during lunch. Another pretty cool European culture item checked off of the list.