July 20, 2009, afternoon

Writing this from a park bench in the Alhambra Palace, in sleepy, tiny, provincial Granada, where low rainclouds have come in, cooling us with a welcome breeze. It was so hot earlier -- this city is hot and arid in July, and there is no cooling ocean nearby, as in Barcelona. I think the only sort of crop that can grow here is olives (we passed rows and rows of perfectly aligned olive trees while in the train early this morning). This weather makes me understand the necessity of the siesta, which can run from about 11 am to 2 pm. We napped on this bench, in the shade of this rose garden, for a bit.

In the Nazaries Palace, which is the most intricate, and I think the oldest, part of the complex, we walked through interconnected chambers with intricately carved arched doorways and cool little courtyards filled with fountains. 

[insert pics here]

Unfortunately, the famous lion-encircled fountain is currently under reconstruction. I am glad for this work, for the sake of future visitors to the palace, but I was still slightly disappointed. I am not sure if I should have picked Cordoba, with its narrow, multitudinous white-and-ochre Moorish arches, instead of Granada.       

Little rivers of water from indoor and outdoor fountains pass through the palace rooms, into pools of koi, and beyond out to the gardens, which are filled with roses, peonies, gladioli, daisies, snapdragons, jacarandas, magnolias (and many other flowers that I don't know the names of). The man-made rivulets remind me of those in the Taj Mahal and other Mughal palaces in Agra and Fatehpur-Sikri. 

There were dozens of small rooms with huge arched windows on three sides, where I imagine ladies of the court (or harem?) could look out of over the beautiful hills and ragged mountains of southern Spain. There were also terraces that overlook the cypress, palm, and pine trees that surround Granada's white, angular stucco homes. I wonder what the ladies -- and I am guessing from the number of rooms in the palace, that there were LOTS of them -- spent their days doing. Perhaps they wandered, or paced, the gardens because they could not go beyond the fortress walls?

Down below, there were underground rooms and tunnels that the servants must have worked in and used. These were plentiful; I wonder what it might have been like to work in them. How busy was it? Did the palace have resident artisans, painters, and sculptors to ensure the upkeep of the beautiful archways?     

The fortress part of the palace, which I believe was built later on, is typical of pretty much every other type of fortress I have seen. Thick walls branch out from the fortress, marking the fields and far-off hills of what was once Moorish territory. They remind me of the Rajput fortress walls in Jaipur and Udaipur. There are paths along the high sides of the blockading walls, where I imagine arrows and cannons could be shot from (there is a small pile of ancient, whitened cannons on display, in a nook in one wall). The paths down to the dungeons and holding cells are blocked off, but marked with polite little signs explaining what is below.

[insert pics]

There are other, more recent structures that were built after the Moors had lost control of the complex: a Neoclassical building honoring Charles V, a convent that is still in use today, the Generalissimo.

Of these, the Generalissimo is my favorite. It is a small structure on a hill that overlooks the rest of the Alhambra palace and fortress. It is otherwise unremarkable, but its surrounding gardens are magnificent. There are low fountains that burble into long narrow pools, which contain white and pale yellow waterlillies, and sometimes even neon-orange koi. The pools are surrounded by tall, immaculately trimmed hedges and benches. At path intersections, the dark green hedges have been sculpted into simple, elegant archways. There are hanging grapevines and orange trees laden with fruit. I tried to get Greddy to jump up for the plump oranges, but the remaining fruit was too high up, and we were too afraid of the guards to climb up the knobby trunks. Besides the roses, daisies, peonies, snapdragons, jacarandas, begonias, magnolias, etc. that I mentioned before, there are many types of flowers I have never seen before: white butterfly-shaped flowers, and purple and gray-brown flowers in the shape of Queen Anne's lace, that grow inexplicably out of stone walls. As in Malloca and Ibiza, Spanish cicadas drone unrelentingly in the afternoon, as if they have just awoken from a refreshing siesta.      
 
As we went on the way to the exit, the Salidas, we passed through a long archway that had been constructed by training two rows of some tall, pink-blossomed, bittersweet-smelling plant. In the afternoon sunlight and after a light rain, it was stunning and fresh and vibrant. 

[insert pic]