a taste of fall in granada

Everyone knows that an 8-hour bus ride no matter what your destination is isn't very fun, so I'm just going to skip over that aspect of my Granada adventure- it will be a much more pleasant story that way.  


Fun Fact #1- Granada is the Spanish word for pomegranate, which I thought was fun because I love anything pomegranate flavored from custard to chap-stick, and now I know how to say it in Spanish. 

view from our hostel

Anyway, our hostel in Granada was called the Rambutan Guesthouse and it was the coolest hostel I have ever stayed at and definitely made the other hostels I have been to seem awful.  The staff were incredibly friendly and welcoming, the first thing they asked us was if we wanted some coffee or tea.  The people running it didn't seem to be much older than us, probably in their late 20's, and from Australia and Ireland.  It was a very "hippie-esque" place, they just seemed really mellow and they had music playing the whole time as well in the main room.  It was quite a hike to get there, but totally worth it in the end.  It is literally built into the side of a huge hill and when we got to it we had the most perfect view of the Alhambra.  To anyone going to Granada, I would highly recommend this place.  


Fun Fact #2- most Spanish (and English) words that begin with the letters "AL" have roots from the Arabic language (ex: alcohol, algebra, alchemy, Alhambra). 

The Alhambra (or "red fortress") has a long history that I would have to research thoroughly to fully understand, but in a nutshell it is a palace/fortress that started to be constructed in 1237 by the Moorish rulers of Granada.  The Nasrid dynasty completed the majority of the Alhambra, but additional palaces and alterations were added by Queen Isabella, King Ferdinand, and Charles V in the 1500s.  Boabdil was the last Nasrid Sultan to control the Alhambra before it was surrendered to the Catholics in 1492.  

The Arabic engineers and designers of the Alhambra were geniuses to say the least.  All of the water and fountains in this palace were gravity-powered using aqueducts that were built straight through the mountains.  There is a river somewhere that the aqueduct picks up water from, and with a slight downhill gradient it carries the water to the Alhambra.  I don't know how those gravity powered fountains work, but there was so much water running down the hill on the walk up to the Alhambra and countless other fountains inside of it.  The sound of water everywhere was amazing to listen to, and the woods surrounding the palace were very pretty as well with their fall colors and falling leaves. I missed the fall season in Valencia, everything here is still pretty much green. 

I absolutely loved every wall that I saw inside the palaces.  I want to just take one of them and put them in my future home, they were so intricately detailed- I can't imagine how much time it took to create every inch of wall space in these palaces.  I also would like to know how the designers made all of these designs work, where do you start when carving something to be a castle wall? And they were all perfect, no room for error when working with stone. If something wasn't carved, it was tiled.  There were beautiful tile designs everywhere including the floors and ceilings.  


We also learned about the Arabic baths when we were here.  They were rather ahead of their time in terms of personal hygiene, and there were buildings devoted to bathing that included 1 hot water room, 1 warm water room, and 1 cold water room.  There was some kind of process for this bathing, but it basically turned into a huge steam-room that still is standing today.

we couldn't take pictures of the real thing

Something really neat that they are doing at the Alhambra is restoring a famous fountain called Fountain of the Lions, which has come to be one of the main symbols of Granada.  It's a circle of 12 lions with a fountain in the middle, and water also comes out of the lion's mouths.  So far they have restored the lions, but the fountain isn't put together yet.  

After our Alhambra adventure, we treated ourselves to a very nutritious dinner consisting of a mountain of churros with cups of "hot chocolate," which was more like hot chocolate pudding for dunking the churros into.  It was like heaven on a plate, and it's a good thing these places don't exist in Wisconsin for obvious reasons.  

Our second day in Granada started off with a tour of the Albaicín area of the city given by one of the guys who works at our hostel.  He was from England and was the most entertaining, knowledgeable and theatrical tour guide I have ever had.  As he was telling us the history of Granada he would assign characters to different people in our group, so it was easier to remember names and the history seemed more real.  He was funny and kept throwing in random pieces of information about Granada like stories about the nuns who sell cookies or the nuns who sell wine, and about the old men who like inviting foreign girls to look at their gardens, and how people killed each other in the 1300s by crushing glass and putting it into food.  We didn't walk up to the caves that people actually live in because apparently he thinks they are a little too weird to show tourists- but he did tell us that there is an IKEA cave and everything inside is from IKEA. 

We did a lot of touristy shopping that second day- most of the little streets have the exact same types of stores.  There is a lot of Arabic influence in the kind of things they sell, but they are all targeted towards tourists.  


I probably have to mention the fact that I was forced to be part of a clown routine while passing through a plaza with an open-air market.  I was just standing there and this clown comes over and drags me into the middle of the circle, gives me a ridiculous hat and giant sunglasses to wear, and somehow gets me on top of his shoulders.  I thought this was the worst of it (I also had a sweet bicycle horn in my hand), until I realized he was holding his unicycle, asking the crowd of people surrounding us if he should get on it.  As they are all yelling "sí! sí!" I'm yelling "no!" Clearly I am helpless, and of course he gets on that unicycle with me on his shoulders.  I was just holding on for dear life, it was one of the most confusing 10 minutes of my life- he didn't feel the need to speak ever, just used hand gestures.  My spanish probably would have failed me at that point anyway. Thankfully, I survived and will be sure to keep a safer distance away from clowns from this point on.  Chelsea was very amused by all of this and I will be sure to get some of the pictures she took.