Alhambra I

The Alhambra is actually three or four sites, the Palacios Nazaries, the Generalife gardens, Charles V's palace, and the old fortress, the Alcazaba. The Palicios Nazaries is the main thing, the last palace of the retreating Moors, built in the 13th and 14th centuries, handed over to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. (Ferdie and Izzie were really multi-tasking that year). We spent the better part of the day seeing all this, reputedly the top site in all Spain.

They say what you get from something depends a lot on what you bring to it. I confess I do not bring a great deal of knowledge about Muslim art or religion to these sites. Rarely do they do anything but geometrical forms and calligraphy of lines from the Koran. Particularly in religious settings, there can be no copies (graven images) of nature, people, etc. Not even half way through the Nazaries, I felt myself actually yearning for a St. Sebastian, an Annunciation, a Chinese landscape, even a Picasso. How long can you stare, with interest, at a kaleidoscope?

Maybe it was the season, the lack of novelty, or something else, but I was less impressed with the Alhambra than with the Alcozaba in Seville or, especially, the Mezquita in Cordoba (apples and oranges, yes, I know). The audio-guide, with its deadening, I mean, soothing, music and voices, saturated with Washington Irving (ick!) style romance/fantasy of the Alhambra did not help. When Irving found the Alhambra in the 1820s or 1830s, it was a fair ruin. The job of rebuilding it, deliberately, as a national monument/tourist destination must be as interesting a story as anything Boabdil or Ferdinand or Isabella did here. But that story's not much told. And for the rest, you are asked to use your imagination as to what things looked like, who was there, what was going on, etc.  Personally, I have very weak imaginative powers when it comes to sultans and sultanas, ambassadors and emissaries, et al., although I do a little better with harems.

Great hall; Court of the Myrtles (?)

Courtyard

Column

A water feature outside the Comares, the

throne room, historically important because

a) that's presumably where the Moorish king

Boabdil surrendered, and b) presumably

where Columbus made his pitch to the Royals

(wasn't he already abroad, so to speak?)

Looking the other way

Entry to the court of the two sisters, or was it two cousins?

More water features; since it rained most of

the day, and was chilly, we were less

impressed by all the water features than we

might have been in, say, August; besides,

I was kaleidoscoped-out by this point;

brain-dead

Really into columns

This is the fountain of the twelve lions, or somesuch, which

in some sense told time, or season, or month...whatever; the

lions are away being reconditioned, or possibly hibernating

Artsy-fartsy attempt to amuse myself

Flamenco In Granada

We had wanted to see a flamenco performance in Seville and other places, but the transportation/logistics just never worked out. Flamenco is in the cities, where we stay in campgrounds, not risking driving into the old parts of town, and public transportation stops well before flamenco performances begin. But not so in Granada. The mini-bus picked us up at 9 and we were able to see a flamenco show in the Sacramonte barrio of Granada, the old Roma (Gypsy) part of town, where the buildings are partly caves dug into the side of the hill. The show also included a brief paseo to the San Nicolas plaza for a night-time view of the Alhambra. And we were back to the campground just a bit after midnight.

Anyone who has ever seen me (try to) dance will be surprised to learn I actually enjoy this sort of thing. The best performance of anything I have ever seen was the Ballet Folklorico in Mexico, years ago, so I at least was not surprised by my enjoyment of the flamenco. It ended all too soon for me.

In the Barrio Sacramonte

Our cast

Energy

The guitarist was very good

Wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen

The older Gypsy-looking lady was magnifico

The big dude did the heavy

stomping

Alhambra at night from Plaza San Nicolas

Almunecar



Our campsite at Almunecar; one of the best we have enjoyed

Coastline at Almunecar

Fishing off the jetty

High-rises on the other side of the street

An old tower on the cliff above us

Shipping always in view

Costa del Sol

We awoke Monday morning to the continuing auto paseo down our little street and also to unforecasted rain and clouds. Thus ended our interest in the cable-car ride to the top of Gibraltar. From Tarifa and environs we had already seen the two continents and the two seas, and who needs to see rain and clouds from 1,400 feet? We waited for the clotted cream lorry at Morrison's until we were told it would be Tuesday (Vicki was very disappointed; all those scones and no clotted cream!), and then headed on east along the coast, Spain's famous Costa del Sol. Our goal had been Nirja, but, finding no suitable camping site there, we pressed on to the beautiful little coastal town of Almunecar. Wandering down to the beach area, we found one of the better sites we have ever had, right on the water, upscale high-rise neighborhood, lots of other RVs, no prohibitions, no cost. But the rain continued, almost all night long. We are beginning to wonder whether the Mediterranean is big enough to hold all this water.

Why we didn't go to the top of Gibraltar

The Costa del Sol used to be a string of fishing villages;

none is left; they're all condo communities now

There's a beach and a sea down there somewhere

There it is

Malaga, part of it

Se hablo espanol! Some 1 million UK residents own

property in Spain, most of it in the Costa del Sol; they bring

their culture and language, but not weather; we've read that

few restaurant menus here are in anything but English

A Piece of the Rock

Sunday morning the rain stopped for a while, and we drove into Gibraltar. It is a small and very crowded place, three miles long and one mile wide, including mountain. High-rises are everywhere (the only direction to build is up) and much of it is on reclaimed land. Traffic is awful--and the Spanish aggrevate this by snarling the border--and parking non-existent, especially for 7 meter vans. Although Gibraltans drive on the "improper" side of the road (since 1920) and observe the siesta along with their large neighbor, much else is pleasantly British. We spent a couple hours in and around the Morrison's (a large UK supermarket), a trip down memory lane, reminding ourselves of all the UK foods and drinks we came to love, or at least ingest, during our stint there. There was a special on haggis in observance of Robbie Burns' birthday, but I felt the portion was a bit large. We did stock up on scones, ginger beer, all day breakfast, and a few other small delights. Alas, they were out of clotted cream, but told us there would be more by noon on Monday. Since the cable-car to the top of Gibraltar does not run on Sundays (in the winter), we had already resolved to hang around another day.

We then boldly set forth on a driving tour of Gibraltar. This does not take long. On the sea-side, by a small beach, right under the summit of The Rock, we found a large open parking place and grabbed it immediately. There were none of the usual signs that say "no over-night camping" or such. The road was a 1/4 mile dead-end, with speed-humps every 100 meters or so, fronting right on the ocean; we resolved to stay, at least until someone told us to move.

Within a few minutes it became apparent that we were not the only persons exploring this road. From this point, maybe 2 PM, until midnight, there were hardly ever fewer than 6 cars on this little road, driving to the end, turning around, driving back. Early on, most were families, apparently sightseeing. The odd thing was they all had GBZ (Gibraltar) license plates. The Spanish, especially around Algeciras and La Linea frequent Gibraltar for cheap petrol, cigarets, booze, and sugar. Sugar is heavily taxed in Spain. The convenience stores all had aisles of sacks of sugar. But all the people driving our little beach road were all Gibraltans. As the sun set, those driving the road to its short end, turning around, and driving back, were younger, teenagers, cruising. (On this road, cruising for what? Nothing but construction sites, a cement-mixer station, the airport hangars on one side, the beach on the other). We never did come to understand this phenomenon. It quieted down about midnight, as we finished watching movies, but then started right back up early the next morning.

Looking up at the summit of The Rock

Our campsite, on Eastern Beach, at 36

degrees, 08'55.88N, 5 degrees, 20'23.54W;

check it out on Google Earth

A dozen or more ships anchored outside our window

Flying dogs, no less; just a bit more of the British obsession

with dogs, upon which I have earlier commented

Moorish remains

Casemates Square, ground-zero Gibraltar; formerly Villa

Viejo, the Moorish village established in 711 but destroyed

after 13 sieges; the Moors landed here first; Gibel-Tarik,

their leader, gave his name to Gibraltar

Mechanism for depressing a gun; sort of important in a

place like Gibraltar; my questions is...how do you keep the

ball from rolling out the barrel?

Main drag

All the many walls and batteries are named, this one among

the oldest

Out our window

To Gibraltar

We got past Algeciras—it must be one of the great ports of Europe—and around to Gibraltar early afternoon, finding the aire others had pointed us to with relative ease. But we had no sooner sat down to lunch than the policia approached, cordially, and told us we could not stay. There were half a dozen other RVs nearby also getting so notified. (There is never any signage in these places). So, after I reconnoitered a bit, across the border, we moved on down the beach (now the Mediterranean)(the whole place reminds me of Florida, around Daytona Beach), then to a shopping center, then back to the La Linea area, where we skyped Rebecca and Rachel, and then settled, tentatively, for the night in a large park away from the aire and the entrance to Gibraltar. It rained hard nearly all the afternoon and evening, so we did not venture into Gibraltar nor up the Rock.

This is the somewhat famous runway one crosses, both on foot and in vehicles, 
in order to get from Spain to Gibraltar

Fine. I understand about airport priorities, and I am fully supportive of 
concerns about air safety. Who wants to fly off a runway that is not neat 
and tidy, anyhow? But I do think some sort of pedestrian-oriented 
warning is in order, too, like maybe “PS: move along and make sure you 
do not become prop-wash” or somesuch. 

I am so proud of this shot; Gibraltar is British, 
don't-you-know, and I couldn't resist placing the 
bobby and the double-decker just right, in front 
of the Rock; unfortunately, the fish and chips 
were in my left hand, out of focus...

Huge old (disused) pillbox just next to the border

My, how the world has changed; I'm loving it; well, parts

of it

We Got Us A Convoy!

So Saturday morning we decamp from our place on the

Avenida Juan Nunez and drive to the outskirts of Tarifa

to do a little provisioning at the Lidl; as we get back on

the highway, we see a police car coming at us, lights

flashing, following by a line of...motorhomes

The line goes on...I stop counting after a hundred

And, miles later, on...

More miles down the road we stop at a high turn-out for a

last look at Africa, so incredibly near

And the convoy keeps on coming

Vicki had read of an RV rally in Morocco last year--1,000 rigs together in the desert (Burning Man?)--and I guess this might have been something similar. Europeans are really into motorhoming; every license plate I saw in the convoy was Spanish, too.

Tangier, Part Four

Our tour was quite satisfactory, the same price as the ferry itself. We were the only members of the tour, so we had the driver and guide (superb English; and French, and Spanish; and Arabic) to ourselves. They couldn't depart from the "program," very much, so we still had to endure the visit to the rug showroom, the spice store, the leather store, etc. That's OK. We have learned how to enjoy even these. We did get to skip the camel ride/photo opp. And the lunch was really quite good. At least in low season like this, I'd certainly recommend it for anyone whose goals were as modest as ours...merely to set foot in Africa. Tangier itself seemed quite foreign and exotic at times...the old city...quite new and European elsewhere.

Another mosque

And tower

Old and new Morocco

Adieu, Tangier

So now I have been to Africa. OK, I did not penetrate very far into Africa, African cultures. No pyramids, no Tarzan, no lions/tigers/bears, no Lucy, no Kilimanjiro. But it's a start...