Touring Granada

January 15, 2008

As promised I’m gonna tell about our tours. We have been on three so far: we saw the big Cathedral in the middle of the city, the Albyzin district, and the Alhambra.

We saw 2 churches. One was more of a museum with art and King Ferdinand’s sword and Queen Isabella’s crown. They are buried there under the church along with some other smaller coffins. I can’t remember who the little ones are – maybe their kids? They also had examples of clothing that the king and queen would have worn. That was pretty cool.

The Cathedral was really big. It reminded me of the cathedrals we saw in Austria. (Salzburg?) The building was huge and freezing. It must have been cold back in the day sitting in church during the winter. (Maybe that is why Catholics stand up and sit down so much… just kidding). The one thing that I thought was incredible was the pipe organ. The size of that thing is like nothing I’ve ever seen! I can’t explain it well but some of the pipes fan out and look really cool. I don’t know if it can still be played – it is probably out of tune. I don’t know if services are still held there.

I can’t decide if the Albyzin district was my favorite or the Alhambra. Both tours took us very high up in the city. For the tour of Albyzin we started in Granada and walked up and up and up through tiny, winding, one-way streets. The district is made up of a bunch of houses on the side of the mountain all squashed together with tiny little cobblestone streets. It was a pretty good hike up there, but the view is incredible. You can see the entire city and the Alhambra on the other side. I bet it would be amazing at sunset. There is a plaza at the top where people are always hanging out and playing music. There was a woman selling castanets and a guy playing a guitar and others clapping along with the beat and another singing. There are people all through the streets of Granada playing music for money: guitars and accordions mostly. It is really fun walking to class and hearing live music coming down an alley or the old man on my street who plays his accordion and sings and smiles at the people going by. (I’m pretty sure he is the only one smiling on my entire walk to class. Europeans are not as friendly as us South Carolinians… surprise) Anyway, I got off topic. The Albyzin district is amazing.

Next we went to the Alhambra which used to be an old military fort back in the day. (I’m not sure which day but the moors used to have control of it and then the Christians took over it and then let it go to ruin… until… Washington Irving came and lived there for a year, wrote a book or short stories about it, and made it famous again. Thanks Irv) I could go on and on about how incredible the architecture is and how long it must have taken to build everything because of the size of the entire fort and the intricate detail on every wall of all three palaces, but I won’t. You’re welcome.
Also, the gardens are pretty cool. All of the bushes/trees are carved into shapes, and one area reminds me of a big maze from a movie or a book and I’m pretty sure I might have gotten lost had I been on my own in there.
The view from the tower of the Alhambra is indescribable. It was breathtaking. I didn’t even want to take pictures of it because it could not be captured. It wouldn’t have done it justice. The view was so vast – seeing the entire city at your feet and the huge mountains covered in snow so close to the city… I can’t describe it.


As soon as I can figure out how to put pictures in here I will put up some of the better ones.

I miss you all! But I am having a wonderful time. Granada is a really neat city and I like it more every day I’m here.