Fin de semana Granada

¡Hola chicos!

This past weekend was a whirlwind of site-seeing and traveling! On Friday I went to the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo with my interest group. The grounds of the art museum have been used as a Muslim university, a monastery and a ceramics factory in the past, so needless to say they are beautiful. There are tons of gardens, fountains and orange tree groves, in addition to a church and remnants of the chimneys of the ceramics factory, the grounds of the museum were more interesting to me than the art itself because I don't really care for modern art. However, I would have never gone there by myself so it was a good experience, and I found out that you can sit and study on the grounds for free whenever you want! CAAC is only ten minutes from my house so when it gets warm out I plan on doing a lot of studying there. One of the coolest things there was a tree that Christopher Columbus brought back from the Americas and it has been growing in the garden ever since.

Sitting on the tree roots. 

Then on Saturday I had to get up bright and early to catch the bus for the three and a half hour bus ride to Granada. The scenery on the ride to Granada was much more beautiful, there were rolling hills and lots and lots of olive groves, Andalusia the region of Spain I live in is the first in the world for olive oil production! As we approached Granada I could hardly believe my eyes, it is a little town about of fourth the size of Sevilla nestled in the hills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

The Sierra Nevadas are snow covered all year round!

Granada from above.

Soon after arriving and checking into our hotel it was time for lunch, it was a buffet complete with dessert which was a treat because many of us rarely get desserts here. Then we grabbed our warm jackets, mittens, sunglasses and cameras just in time to reunite with our guides in the lobby for a tour of La Alhambra, the most famous tourist site in Granada. La Alhambra is a Muslim word that literally means 'red fortress' because the type of stone it is made out of glows red at sunset.

La Alhambra

What I didn't know before the tour is that La Alhambra isn't just one building, it actually refers to a collection of five buildings. A fort la Alcazaba, which is what people think of then someone says Alhambra, and four palaces, two Catholic and two Muslim. The history of the Alhambra and Granada is that it was the last city to be taken over by the Reyes Católicos in 1492, ironically the same time that Cristobol Colon found the Americas.

One of the palaces in la Alhambra is that of Carlos V/I, I was so excited to visit it because, as nerdy as it is he is my favorite Spanish king. Yes you read correctly I have a favorite Spanish king. His life was just so interesting, he was the first king to rule ALL of Spain, which was previously divided into smaller provinces. He was also the Holy Roman Emperor, this meant that he had the largest and most powerful kingdom in the world, and pretty much ruled all of Europe. He decided to build his palace touching the already existing Muslim palace, as a result only two of it's four walls are sculpted and decorated.

The outside of the palace is a square. 

It's courtyard is a perfect circle.

We also toured the three Muslim palaces in la Alhambra. They were of course beautiful and incorporated many water features and ceramic designs. The particular Muslim king who ordered this collection of palaces to be built like to play mind games so he played a lot with reflections, and had his throne room be very dark. He would have his visitors wait in the bright courtyard and then have them come into his dark throne room and they would be blinded and unable to see him, it was his way of keeping control over people.

Reflecting pool looking towards throne room.

Ceiling of throne room, seven levels of stars that represent the seven levels of heaven.

Court of the lions. 

The ceilings were built to mimic the look of a cave.

After a long, but fun day of touring the Alhambra a bunch of girls and I headed down the mountain to explore the town. We did some light shopping, I bought a really pretty scarf and some postcards. Then we went back to our hotel to take a siesta and freshen up before dinner.

Roommates for the weekend :)

Then we walked back into town, where we decided to have tapas for dinner. One aspect of Granada that is really neat is that if you order a drink you get a tapa (appetizer) for free, the only catch is you don't get to choose what they bring you. We soon found out that it didn't matter what they brought us because it was all excellent. We ordered some Sangria and they brought us a plate of two types of sandwiches, tortilla (potato and egg omelet) and fried mushroom, along with some olives. It was all really nummy! Around midnight we went back to the hotel because we had to be up bright and early for our tour of one of the oldest neighborhoods in Granada.

Arch where the market was. 

Weights hanging above the arch. 

 When the Catholics took over Granada they kicked out many of the Muslims and just took over their homes. However, the Catholics were used to much larger homes than the Muslims had, to fix this problem each person would take several Muslim homes and convert them into one big house with a courtyard in the center. This style of home, very common in Granada is called a 'Carmen'.

A Carmen we walked past. 

Dried fruit being sold, smelled so good!

So much tea!

A Magdalena. 

As part of the tour we stopped at a convent and some people bought treats from the nuns. The nuns at this convent live in cloister so you can't look at them, to allow them to still sell their baked goods they have a lazy susan type thing that they put the baked goods on and spin towards you, then you put the money on and spin it back.

The final stop on our Granada tour was the Capilla Real, where the Reyes Católicos Fernando and Isabel are buried, along with their daughter Juana la Loca, her husband Felipe el Hermoso and the Infante Miguel. Another one of my favorite stories is about Juana la Loca, it is said that her husband Felipe was quite the ladies man and was always with other women, this made Juana extremely jealous. It is said that when he died she took his corpse and put it in her room so that he couldn't cheat on her in death like he had in life. Whether or not that is true, no one knows. However, it is a fact that later on in her life she was forced to live in a convent and had her ruling powers taken from her because she had been deemed insane. During her forced confinement she believed that the nuns were trying to kill her, although there is no proof that anything like that ever occurred. Doctors now believe that she may have been Schizophrenic due to centuries of inbreeding.

We got to see their sarcophagus' and there were stairs leading down below the sarcophagus' and a whole cut out of the wall where you could see their actual coffins! In the same room as the sarcophagus' there was a giant, I'm talking floor to ceiling shrine honoring the St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, it was ridiculous, very gruesome but also magnificent. There was also an entire room dedicated to the personal effects of the King and Queen, it included their robes, crowns, scepters and swords. It was all really cool but unfortunately there was no photography allowed, I though about sneaking some pictures but I don't want to get kicked out of Spain yet so I restrained myself.