uptempodemonplumsauce: "Catedral...catedral...CAHH-TEHH-DRAHHL..."

...said a woman to me because she wanted directions and my slow Spanish didn't understand her fast Spanish. "Ah, catedral!!" I replied.

From Alcazaba, that's my neighborhood behind me!

Sept 10, Sunday

I wake up and I feel terrible. I blow my nose to discover the bloody lemon lime-colored news that I have a sinus infection. (If you didn't know I wrote horror stories before, you do now.) I don't take the news too seriously, assuming I'll feel better when I get moving. I'm traveling after all! Taking a day off on vacation is impossible! Starving children in Africa don't get to visit Granada! I have to go, go, go!

I walk across town to Cafe Fútbol, the reported BEST PLACE for churros and chocolate. As the warm, rich, thick chocolate and the hot, hard yet tender, churro crunch explodes most of my pleasure centers, I realize: Pleasure centers aside, I feel worse. I wanna go home.

Coffee + Chocolate + Chorros = happy face

I treat myself with saline nasal rinses, sleep, and ten episodes of The Originals. (Seriously, thank you Julie Plec.) Thank God I went to the store yesterday. I don't have much of an appetite and I make it through the day on cheese, olives, an apple and wine. It sounds nicer than it was. By nighttime, I'm restless enough to get some ice cream from Los Italianos, an Italian family owned shop that is a short walk away. I order one of their specialties, a cassetta. It's a thick slice of an ice cream block which features layers of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and fruit and nut loaf. I'm happy I tried it, but next time I'm getting gelato.

Sept 11, Monday

I feel a little better, not amazing, but today is Alhambra day and I have a 1:30 appointment for my Palace entry.

Inside Alcazaba

The Alhambra is a Moorish Palace and fortress that is an example of Moorish civilization before the end of the Christian Reconquista in 1492. The whole Alhambra experience consists of Palacios Nazaríes

(the Moorish palace), Charles V's Palace, Generalife Gardens, and Alcazaba (the fortress). Highlights and tidbits from my visit:

Inside the palace: Courtyard of the Myrtles

-Charles V Palace is pretty cool. It's a ruin, I appreciate it, and after I take a panorama of the inside, I'm good to go.

-Alcazaba is the most ruined of the ruins, as this fort defended the city of 2,000 Spanish Muslims within Alhambra's walls. Napoleon also did a lot of damage, having stationed his army here in the 1700s.

-From Alcazaba you can see San Nicolás scenic point where everyone takes their pictures of Alhambra. It tickles me to think about Alhambra tourists taking pics of San Nicolás tourists & vice versa. We're all in each other's pictures somewhere.

-There are kittens here!

-Bomb sniffing dogs go through our belongings before they let us into the Palacios Nazaríes.

-The palace blows me away. I probably would have gotten more out of Charles' Palace and the Alcazaba if I'd done the audio tour because I love all the details and stories that give ruins context, but I just wasn't feeling well enough to do more than wander through. I'm happy the Palace exceeded my expectations.

-Somewhere in Palacios Nazaríes I stop taking pictures. Nothing can capture the feeling of standing in these rooms surrounded by such lush artistry of design. You just have to come to Alhambra and see if for yourself.

-My favorite, favorite thing about being in the Palace is the hands-on display. Oils & dirt from even the cleanest hands ruins the wood, tile and plaster so they put interactive displays where you manhandle actual slabs from the room you're in. The wood is smooth and warmer than the tile. The tile is cooler than the plaster, and the plaster almost feels like velvet. The hands-on display really hits my sweet spot.

-There's a point in the palace where the Christians added on in the 16th century. The style is a giant yawn compared to the Moorish portion.

-Generalife Gardens make me gasp and smile over and over. I love gardens, and these are beautiful.

-One garden has a labyrinth feel and reminds me of The Shining! It is, of course, my favorite.

Inside Charles V's Palace

By the time I’m done, I’m starving. I want something different and NOT TAPAS, so I find a tetería, tea shop, on the Arabic style stretch in my neighborhood. I get falafel and a stew I can’t remember the name of. It’s delicious but also hot on a hot day, so after I hit Los Italianos again for a glass of horchata. With that, I’m all better!

View from lunch

I need food for the house since I ate all my snacks yesterday, but I don’t want to shop anyplace I’ve already been because I like to make life difficult. This isn’t true, but it feels true as I walk and walk and walk and can’t find any place that sells anything I need. As I walk by the Cathedral for the millionth time since I’ve been in Granada, I swing inside to check it out on a whim.

When I tried to make my Alhambra reservations last week everything was sold out for the month (they recommend reservations three months in advance FYI). I was able to score my last minute reservation by buying a Granada Card, a tourist card for the city that gets you entry into most of Granada’s top sites. So, the Cathedral, it is. Highlights:

Guess what this is...

-WOWZA!!!! was my first thought.

-Gold, gold, gold.

-The Cathedral is a touchdown dance made manifest, hence it’s in-your-face everything about it. It is literally built on top of a destroyed mosque. Exactly where the people of Granada had worshipped before as Muslims, they would now worship as Christians.

-They worship Mary almost as much as they worship Jesus. I approve.

-The audio tour is pretty dry, but they describe Adam and Eve as “our first set of parents to die from sin” which makes me smile.

Experiencing textbook examples of Catholic (Renaissance) art and Islamic art in the same day is a mind whiplash. From Islamic art, which features beauty in functional objects but rarely statues or pictures of people, because the Islamic doctrine upheld that only God could create living beings, to the ostentatious gold and realistic statues, not only of Jesus, but Mary, Adam, Eve, bishops, evangelists, Isabel and Ferdinand, the list goes on.

Imagine having to live through a shift of perspective like that. How do you force someone to worship an entirely different doctrine? I wonder how many Muslims kept up their own prayers in their heads, and I wonder how long you could do that before you surrender or flee.