Awake next morning thinking I was in Luxor and anticipated a meagre breakfast but no, the picture in the lift indicated otherwise, a banquet it was, platters of cold meats and pates, bowls of tinned and fresh fruit, fruit juices, cereals, desserts. It would have made a fabulous lunch but for breakfast, too much. Focussed on increasing my Spanish, rather than my weight, since the Spanish people we’ve met so far speak little or no English.
Back onto the coach with a City Guide, Manuel. “Grenada is a big city, it’s very hot in summer and freezing cold in winter.” We pass an odd sight, a wide, dried out river bed being cemented over and repaired in readiness to catch the winter rains which gush down from the Sierras. Tourism seems to be the main industry, there's little evidence of any thing else however, the roads remain narrow. They’re going to be jam-packed when the Olympics arrive.
Pass children, all looking very clean and well-dressed in T-shirts, boys in tracksuit trousers, girls in skirts, heading to school all bearing rucksacks of homework.
Ah, new tunnels appearing under the hills, a new autovia for the Games. Hope they finish that new bridge on time.
As the coach drives up the hillside we have a bird’s eye view of Grenada in the plain below, with mountains rising in the haze behind. The coach pulled in unexpectedly at a field with a horse, a waiting space for those too early for their closely timed entry to the Alhambra. The tourists ahead of us were having a photo opportunity with the horse, no doubt for a price
Later, post siesta, time to reflect on the morning’s visit.
The Alhambra must be the jewel of Spanish Moorish culture and, since it’s so popular, rather like the English crown jewels, it must be visited at speed to allow the many tourists to enter.
Coaches roll up outside the entrance and unload, four hundred people are allowed inside the red walls of the citadel every half hour. The walls continue around the base of the rocky fortress with watch towers built like cardboard crenelated cutouts standing out at intervals.
We entered the fortress through an archway bearing a raised hand, the symbol of Islam. The thumb represents Allah (God) and the fingers represent Prayer, Fasting, Penitence and the Prayed For Visit To Mecca at least once in a lifetime. Had a strange feeling passing into the passage way zig zag entrance thinking of those who had gone before, Sultans, Kings and friend Lynne with her family a year ago.
The guided tour began in the Sultan’s Palace, a return to the exquisite Islamic carving I’ve always loved in other Moslem countries I’ve visited. As I expect you know, figurative images are avoided and it’s forbidden to create a representation of any important Islamic figure. The lower parts of the walls were decorated with geometric tile patterns, the upper part was totally covered with more intricate patterns apparently carved out of stone but no! The patterns were first carved into cedar wood and then a plaster mixture was poured into this mould. When dry the finished pieces were stuck onto the walls. What a job! There were more slightly less intricate carvings on the ceiling and stone floors. Quite breathtaking.
After this first room my concentration diverted through a window to beautiful views of the surrounding hillsides. It became a labour of love to try and capture vistas of more exquisite carving, fountains playing into ponds filled with goldfish, ancient cedar trees all featuring in the history of the Alhambra given by Miguel our guide. Kept losing and finding him and the Cosmos group amidst the masses of other groups with photographers vying for the best shots.
Most of the groups came from France and Germany. The Japanese come in winter. The British tend to linger on the beach.
In one garden noticed that marble columns had metal rings around them. Shock absorbers, this is an earthquake zone.
Wandered on to a more modern palace built of giant blocks of stone unlike the Sultan’s Palace which was built of slim bricks. This palace was square on the outside with a round interior courtyard lined on the first level with Doric columns, on the second with Ionic columns and the third level with Corinthian columns. It was never finished. Now it’s just a municipal building.
Beyond this was a wonderful garden ‘The General Life’. No not an Insurance Company though its aim was rather similar, ‘a Paradise Garden with shade-giving trees and bright green bushes cut into square-edged shapes of different sizes, fountains, roses, creeping honeysuckle, jasmine and more wonderful views.
One hillside opposite was scattered with black holes, cave entrances once the homes of gypsies. Now they’ve moved into whitewashed houses at a lower level.
In a garden noticed a Parador, a state run hotel. Apparently they’re found in picturesque locations all over Spain. I’d love to return and spend more time wandering around here at leisure. On certain nights the whole citadel is illuminated between 10.00 and 12.00pm. Maybe one day.
Drove back down into Grenada and got stuck in the midday ‘Going home to Siesta’ traffic jams. Time to observe the passers by. Older women, like the Italians, must spend a lot of time in the hairdressers. They wear short, chic sculpted skits with tailored tops. Men wear their hair short with shirts, ties not too prevalent, it’s hot, and there are no loud voices and hand gestures. First impressions indicate the Andalusian Spanish are less effervescent than the Italians.
Although Italian and Spanish are both Latin languages, the latter have a ‘coughing’ consonant ‘j’ and they roll their ’r’s like an express train, and lisp regularly with their tongues with a letter not yet identified.
After the visit I decided to take a picnic lunch in a park near the hotel and found it awash with uniformed schoolgirls, and enlivened by a splattering of beautiful young flamenco dancers wearing the traditional frilly dresses in glorious colours with matching necklaces and flashing earrings.
Fell into conversation with one flamenco group, or rather a monologue of 'First lesson in English as a Foreign Language.' “Are you English? I am Spanish. What is your name? My name is…” The six reeled off their names, then the going got difficult. It seemed there had been a party, hence the dresses. They had no school this week. Later discovered it was the Festival of Corpus Christi all week hence most of the shops were closed.
These beautiful flamenco dresses are often worn by little girls as young as two. I saw some for six year olds in a dress shop window, three rows of frills forming the skirt, and more frills for the sleeves, a scoop neck back and front, on older wearers revealing a hint of the shapely bosoms evident everywhere in modern tight T-shirts worn above slim legged jeans.
Returned to the hotel for a shower and a long siesta to avoid the heat, it was 90 degrees in Grenada yesterday, before strolling back into town. The roads seem to be constantly busy with cars and noisy little scooters weaving in and out of them. These are mostly driven by young people but no sign of them transporting whole families as in Italy. The shops all seem to be small and family run. today hidden behind security bars because of the holiday.
Came across a chapel holding the tombs of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, with rather a mini Westminster Abbey atmosphere. There were ornate carvings of the King and Queen in stone with dragons, cherubs, portraits of Saints, Mary and Jesus, with twirlings based on plant designs. A total Christian antithesis of the Islamic Alhambra Palace. But I did like their two simple black coffins lying in the small stone chapel beneath this splendour.
The history of Spain still escapes me. I haven’t retained all the details given by the guides and no time to read my own guide book, too busy looking, taking photographs and writing1
The small garden, home to a few pot plants, did not prepare me for entry into the cathedral. It was absolutely VAST, like a warehouse held up with giant stone pillars, small side chapels housing blackened oil paintings. There were huge golden altars bearing statues from top to bottom, even more ornate than my memories of the same in Italy.
Even the chairs for worshippers, just a few laid out in rows in the main aisle, seemed like wood shavings on the floor the ceiling was so high above. I felt very ill at ease and left calmed only by the vestry. A large room, its walls lined with large wooden chests of drawers, portraits of Saints and giant mirrors of gold slanted downwards to enable the priests to ensure that their finery was in place whilst their eyes, no doubt, were on the two tall grandfather clocks placed at the entry towards the altar.
Enough, the heat was getting to me so at seven o’clock headed back to ‘my’ shop to buy two more litres of water direct from springs in the Sierra Nevada and a glass of hot lemon tea. This is the strolling hour of beautifully dressed toddlers, pregnant women and the meeting time for old men to chat.
Raymond our guide enlightened me on the Spanish diet.“ They eat just about everything with enjoyment. Often they have no breakfast but at 10.00 they'll stop in a bar for coffee and tapas (delicatessen-like snacks). They have a cooked lunch, then about 7.00 pm wine and more tapas, and a large cooked meal about 8.30pm .” So how do they all stay so slim??
At the Hotel Rallye evening meal I loved the sparkling silver service on peach tablecloths. I ate with an English husband and his Spanish/French wife. Her theory on the Spanish staying slim lay in an improved knowledge of food hence more salads, more dairy products which led to longer better-formed legs! Yet at the moment there are no Spanish dancers in the Folies Bergere, they are nearly all English and American.
Breakfasted with the Scottish members of the group who’d spent the departure night at Glasgow airport and arrived in Torremolinos an hour before the Cosmos coach departed. We’ve all lifted our free combs and toothbrushes as souvenir of our four star detour.
En route to Cordoba and guide Raymond is revising the trip so far, no doubt for the benefit of those not fully awake earlier. He then detoured into Spanish fiestas, eighteen of these are held annually, and geographical details of Spain.
We’re driving across the plain again, fields of onions, potatoes, tall slim trees, the scenery broken occasionally by farmsteads, buildings within high white walls. Drove on past corn, maize and wheat fields, no sign of any animals probably too hot. Vines are growing on the approaching hillsides.
Raymond must have been in Spain for some time, he’s speaking of the ‘countries’ ie the towns , we will be visiting, and the Mediterranean ‘Ocean’. He’s now trying to sell us a ‘pollo’/chicken lunch when we arrive in Cordoba, good value at about £8 but too much for the heat of the day. The bus erupts into culinary discussion.
Olive groves meet us as we climb above the golden wheat fields. Apparently the olives are harvested by hand, must be quite something to watch. White villas are dotted about in beauty spots valleys apart. People must lead a very isolated existence.
Raymond is now detailing the life of an olive tree. It needs twenty years growth before it can produce olives but can live for one hundred and forty years. I guess some villages keep records. At harvest time a net is placed around the base of the tree which is then shaken, beaten to dislodge the ripe olives. These are collected and taken to make olive oil.
Bright red poppies scattered across a cornfield bring back memories of a Renoir painting. Two old men in hats walk waist high through golden corn. A magpie flutters on a rock.
Raymond now focuses on the Spanish language. The ‘purest’ form comes from the central region around Castile whilst the Andalusian dialect is closely linked to the gypsy language and culture.
Peach groves and almond trees appear Apparently, almond liquor is a popular after dinner drink, there is also a popular nutty nougat sweet which sounds rather like the Italian ‘torrone’. Figs and cherries are also in season.
More fields full of poppies, a reminder too of the D Day memorial celebrations taking place further north, war, peace and different memorials.
Raymond apologies for our rather slow speed, just 100kmph on a good national road. The tachograph of the coach details everything and if the traffic police find evidence of speeding our trip could stop and there’d be a hefty fine to pay. Speed limits are 80 km in small towns, 40 km in villages, 120km on a motorway. Petrol costs £2.30 a gallon and road tax is £50 per annum.
There’s a beautiful alcazar (castle) on a hillside, there are walls all around a Christian church and a Moorish tower on an opposite hillside, very short and dumpy unlike Roman towers which were tall and thin. The Roman walls were made of stone, Arab walls were made of stone then plastered over, stucco had been brought to Spain by the Arabs from Morocco. A busy modern town bustled below the alcazar, with tiled patterns over windows and doorways . The women looked dumpier than those in Grenada, their hair less well groomed.
As we drove higher into the hills it felt as though we were flying over the view below, lower level hills across a broad valley laced with tracks presumably for donkeys, and unexpected patches of blue in the trees, men in overalls with buckets picking cherries.
The soil beneath the olive groves gradually changed from cream to rose pink to terracotta to light brown. I don’t know whether this affects the flavour of the olives . The contours of the skyline are very pleasing. Wish I had my sketchbook and time to draw.
We reach another small town. Groups of middle aged and older men were very much in evidence with the shorter legs and pot bellies of mountain people. I’m just wondering how you exist if you don’t own trees in these parts, maybe work for those who do, or make and sell nets for olive harvesting?
Have just seen a cemetery on a promontory of land overlooking a wide valley, the first in one and a half hours. It’s surrounded by a low white wall and filled with deep green cypress trees. It looks rather like a punk haircut.
I wonder what would happen if the olive crop failed? We’ve seen nothing but olive trees for miles but now the road begins to descend and olives make way for bright green bushy vines. “These grapes are used in Mantilla and Tio Pepe,” details Raymond.
We reach a white walled town glued to the steep hillside, famous for making large drums. We find a bar and ask for a drink. The response is given in Spanish (coffee, tea, beer, coke) relatively close to English so understandable, and ask for a toilet (Servicio – useful word to remember). Spain appears to be rather low on public toilets.
We all headed for the main square, large, surrounded by cafes each with chairs and tables outside. As we sat drinking we heard a sudden rattle of chains, like a flag being pulled up a mast, and noticed an awning being pulled over our tourist heads. Each café has its own system for arranging more or less shade for its clients. A clever idea. Local men sat beyond the shade with pot bellies and sun hats.
Had a drink with Teresa, a South American married to a staid-looking Englishman. She is very lively and delighted to speak in Spanish with the son of the couple alongside, he’s been learning the language at night school for four years.
Discovered that Teresa and husband had missed our Cosmos visit to the Alhambra and, therefore, had taken a taxi and bought their own tickets, about half of the £18 we had been charged. However, looking around without a guide was disappointing, they were hot and tired and took a long time to drive back to the hotel. Also, Raymonde says that preference is being given to groups to promote work for the guides so in future it could be difficult to gain access independently.
Return to history. In 711 Arab forces together with 4,000 Berbers crossed from North Africa to Gibraltar and invaded the weak Christian kingdoms. In seven years they had conquered almost the whole of Spain staying in Andalusia, the southernmost area, for eight hundred years. Grenada was important but the main Kingdom was Cordoba, containing the largest mosque in the western hemisphere begun building in the early 800s, (the Great Mosque of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is the largest in the world). There was also an important mosque in Seville but it was destroyed about 1200.
The Arabs, coming from a more sophisticated culture, brought the art of learning to Spain, also new methods of agriculture including an irrigation system. Small channels were dug along the hillsides to carry water for irrigating the fields. And, of course Islamic architecture which we’ve already witnessed in Grenada.
Raymond has been flooding us with history before preparing us for a drop from our four star to a two star hotel, besides detailing the procedure on our arrival.
The coach began a leisurely winding descent back down towards the plain. The man sitting across the aisle is perusing a map of Cordoba in search of The Oasis Hotel. He’s now moved back to the large scale map of Spain.
Suddenly distracted by unexpected fields of vivid yellow sunflowers all looking back towards Grenada, followed by a hill as yellow as the Sahara covered with rye, then more sunflowers, the blend of colours reminiscent of my spontaneous paintings. An unexpected field of brown and white horses eating hay outside a stable building.
First sign of a railway, a single track, heading like us for Cordoba. Field upon field of sunflowers standing rather like flamenco dancers waiting in the wings awaiting the call to perform. Field upon field of used cars, two ‘cemeteries ‘of them.
Arriving back into habitation, Arab by the look of the clothing, poor quality blocks of flats on the outskirts of the town littered with tall TV aerials.
Raymond carefully repeated the arrivals procedure adding, “They do have a swimming pool at the oasis. last time I was here they were painting it so maybe this time you can have your lunch by it. Don’t leap in, they haven’t put the water in yet!”
The pool did provide good David Hockney style tranquil photograph from one angle, from the other it fronted a major busy road. My room, in drab shades of brown looked onto quiet waste ground with gum trees. Flies buzzed all around amidst an unusual aroma.
Lunch over we returned to the coach for a short drive along a dual carriage way to a very unexpected river bank. At one time the river must have been wider than the Thames, was navigable and was spanned by a wonderful bridge of golden stone Roman arches, old stone flour mills perched on each bank and on a small island in the river. But now much has changed.
The river has decreased to half its former flow, a lazy yellow, muddy brown flow creeping around land grown out from the bank, green and covered with shocking pink flowering calendula bushes, the brown and white buildings of the old town rising beyond them.
Cordoba was settled by the Romans, by the Visigoths and by the Moors of Morocco. The latter built a high crenelated wall around their city, decorated at intervals with ornamental gateways leading to courtyards infront of the most unusual mosque I’ve ever visited.
Walking inside the mosque the immediate impression was of being in a grove of palm trees. Short marble and stone columns stretched uniformly in all directions, remarkable for their lack of uniformity in colour, size, material and decoration because when the mosque was being built materials were brought from many places.
The pillars were linked by striped double arches of red bricks and white stone beneath a low ceiling of patterned wood. Initially the side of the main entrance was left open to light and air, the floor was covered by sand and carpets but later it was walled in and a stone floor was laid.
As the Moslem population of the city increased so the mosque grew to vast proportions over two hundred years. The later sections were constructed with a uniform pattern of pillars and more lace-like stone arches, the main area from where the Call to Prayer was made was covered with mosaics made of tiny pieces of coloured glass.
However, all changed around 1491 when the Christian King Ferdinand and his Queen Isabella fought the Moors and sent them retreating from Cordoba. Part of the Grand Mosque was converted into a Cathedral! Pillars were removed along with the ceiling, large stone columns were inserted to support the new vaulted ceiling.
Our group sat in mahogany pews listening as the guide directed our attention to the vast altar decorated with huge bouquets of white carnations and gladioli in readiness for the Corpus Christi celebrations the following day. (No-one has yet given the non-Catholics in the group a clear description of the significance of this obviously important celebration.)
Behind us were the most magnificent choir stalls I’ve ever seen, over one hundred seats each individually carved in a profusion of faces, flowers and fruit. Oh that there had been more time to look at them in detail. All had been carved by forty artists unknown now apart from their leader, a Sicilian, who was belatedly buried there.
Tucked away in a small room was the treasure of the cathedral, the most impressive piece being a tall sheaf of corn-like structure with intricate silver and gold carvings, which was being prepared for lifting onto a huge gold podium balanced on a cart in readiness for the Corpus Christi celebrations.
A time for thought as we stroll out through orange trees and make our way back to the bustle of the old town of Cordoba.
The streets were very narrow, ideal for keeping out sunlight and the heat. The houses were painted in shades of yellow, margarine on the walls, mustard around the doors and windows. The latter were covered with ornate wrought iron work which extended over the ubiquitous balconies. Pots of geraniums and greenery hung from the walls alongside colourful ornamental plates whilst occasional glimpses could be seen of quiet courtyards with trailing greenery and trickling fountains.
The area was laced with little shops selling the traditional colourful plates, embroidered shawls, intricate marquetry tables and boxes with inlaid mother of pearl, coloured woods and filigree silver. But there was no time to linger, to purchase anything , we were led to the remains of a synagogue.
The synagogue was situated in a quiet square where the scent of jasmine wafted all around. Infront of the building was a beautiful statue of a Jewish scholar whilst a small courtyard led into a small stone room. There were a few carvings in Hebrew on the walls, very simple and beautiful. But a congregation of ten Jewish people is needed to keep a synagogue functioning. There are no Jewish people living in Cordoba now hence the synagogue has become a museum.
Close by, workmen were busy constructing a small morgue for Roman Catholic believers living on the edge of the town. Odd, the swings and roundabouts of religious life in one location.
After the synagogue, along with several other tour groups, we were given time to browse the tourist shops before returning to the hotel.
Dinner was at 8.30, I’m still not accustomed to this change of eating schedule. Ate with Rosemary and Carole, linked through teaching in some way, and Teresa, very vivacious from Colombia, a fluent Spanish speaker, and her English husband Alan, calm, introverted English and always late. The couple were celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary!
(Apologies - Problem with editing photos. My technical advisor is currently abroad.)
Google - Alhambra, and Cordoba for images.
Next Week - Andalusia Part 3 including Gibraltar.
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For Art Lovers : https://www.naomielfredross.com/post/the-anxious-artist-processing-trauma-creatively
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