The Road Goes Ever On

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Sierra Nevada

We have crossed the California Sierra Nevada mountain range many times, even climbed Mt. Whitney way back in 1972. They are much higher, larger, more rugged than their namesake, The Sierra Nevada here in Spain. In winter especially, the Sierra Nevada are an impressive brilliant white backdrop for Granada, and seeing them we decided to risk crossing them en route back to the coast near Almeria. It was a gorgeous drive, superb highway, not all that much snow really, and none on the road. The terrain east of the mountains was equally interesting.

Sierra Nevada from Granada

Higher up on the west side

At the pass, about 4,000 feet

Looking back from the east, still up high

In the high valley east of the mountains

Ditto

We cross a hill, see a flash in the distance,

and then this large fire; never did find out

what it was about

Castle in the valley foothills

Forest of windmills encroaching another white town

Iberian Insights, #1

If El Greco had been a flamenco dancer, he would have held the castanet like this:

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Granada

After the Alhambra, we bussed back to the

old town (Alhambra's up on a big hill) and
took in a few more sights; in the Isabella

Catolico Plaza, the famous sculpture of

Columbus making his pitch

Over by the cathedral, which we skipped, is the Royal

Chapel, where Ferdinand and Isabella and their immediate

progeny are buried

Famous painting depicting Boabdil's surrender to F and Y

In the chapel, the altar, dedicated to John the Baptist and

John the Evangelist; the beheading scene is unusually

gruesome...

Tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella

Actual coffins of F and Y

Alhambra III

View from Alhambra back to Plaza San Nicolas, the

previous evening's view

The old fortress; the only reason to visit it, it is said, is for

the views, which were no doubt diminished on this rainy cloudy

foggy day

Side door entrance to Charles V Palace; the palace is a
humongous square edifice, Renaissance, plopped down in
the middle of the Alhambra complex (well, at least the
conquering Christians didn't destroy it entirely), with a
large round columned open area in the middle; Charles
didn't live long enough to see it roofed; his son, Philip II,
built El Escorial instead; anyhow, it was under Charles V
that the newly united Spain and the older, humongous
Hapsburg (Holy Roman) Empire were united, via marriage;
thus "Imperator Caesar Karlos V" on the door; biggest
empire since the Romans; it was also Chuck 5, as I recall,
who quipped that he spoke French to his courtiers, Spanish
to his priests, Italian to the ladies, and German to his horse

Inside the Charles V courtyard; the echo in this large space

is incredible

"Testing...uno...dos...tres..."

We walked over to see the Generalife, the

separate gardens, notable for being largely

unchanged over five centuries; this, I promise,
is the last water feature, in the summer palace

Alhambra II

In the Washington Irving suite of rooms; Irving's Tales of

the Alhambra renewed interest in the place; he was later

US ambassdor to Spain; born of a very wealthy NY family,

a genuine Romantic and Grand Tourist; there is a huge

exhibition about him going on here; as we saw in Ecija,

the Ruta Washington Irving is a major Spanish trek

View from Irving's rooms

View out his other window

In the orange garden

Another water feature

And another; water has a special place in Islamic notions of

heaven, I understand; nothing anthropomorphic going on there,

I suppose

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

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

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.