Spain Part II – Granada and The Alhambra

Although the blog has been severely lacking in knitting content lately, I still don’t have any to share with you. For one, my thumb has just recently healed (yay for healing!) and for two I am so so so close to finishing this enormous shawl that I am test knitting and until that is done I’m not picking up any other projects! And so knitting content must wait. I decided instead to revisit my trip to Spain by moving on to part two. I wasn’t sure what to do first, all the little towns that we visited while there or the Alhambra. Mostly because I like to do things in order and all of these pictures were interspersed through different days and times, so it was hard. But I decided since I LOVED the Alhambra (and Granada) so much that those would have to come first! Part III will have all the different places that we visited around Andalucía as well as Valencia and Montserrat (you can see a little preview of beautiful Montserrat below).

But back on course… my sister and I just LOVED visiting Andalucía. In fact, I am dying to go back there and have already told my husband that we need to take a trip there again to see all the other little towns I missed. But by far one of my favorites parts of the trip was staying in Granada.

Granada is a beautiful little city situated in the mountains in the community of Andalucía. It has a lot of Muslim influence in its design, as do a lot of the cities around Andalucía. For instance the use of cloth to cool down the streets during the hot days.

Not only does it look neat, but it works incredibly well at keeping the streets below cooler, which is very helpful as it gets very very hot in Granada (we were there in May and it was already 90 degrees – that’s 32 Celsius – almost every day!).

Of course even with the Muslim influences, there are plenty of Catholic churches and Christian architecture around!

And just as I found in Barcelona, there is plenty of interesting graffiti to look at!

We loved the food in Granada too! Tapas are the big thing there. Basically a tapas is a small plate of food that they bring out for free for every drink you buy. You might think that’s great so you can eat for free but they are tiny plates and in general only include some olives or bread. Not really a meal at all. However, what food we did have (that we ordered) was amazing. And not too expensive either. Our favorite restaurant/tapas bar was Bodegas Castañeda. My sister and I made friends with two of the waiters and were always able to get a nice seat outside (they even brought out a table especially for us one of the nights!). As you might be able to tell, we went there more than once! We also loved the gelato places that they have around… as you can tell by my sister’s face in this picture! 😀

And although we had a rental car, we wound up taking the bus from our hotel into the center of the city every night. It was easier than trying to find parking anyway, and my sister and I thought it was awesome that they tell you how many minutes are left until your bus comes… why doesn’t NYC have this?

And on the hills overlooking Granada is the Alhambra. It has a beautiful view of the city from up there!

If you have never heard of The Alhambra, you can read more about it on Wikipedia. In short, though, it is a palace built during the Muslim reign of Spain in the 14th century and it is truly, in my opinion, one of the greatest works of architecture in the world.

It is one of those places that just capture your imagination and leaves you completely awestruck. The Generalife (the gardens) were gorgeous! It was so beautiful to walk through and get lost in it…

After admiring the Generalife, we walked over to see inside Nasrid palace. From the outside when you enter, it doesn’t look like much:

But the minute I got inside, the beauty of everything just took my breath away… look at the wide views first and then check out the little details that just pop out at you while you’re there!

And that was just the first room! The next few completely enthralled me… it was incredible to see! The myriad details and the grandiose scope of the palace and its grounds just left me with a sense of wonder. I was in love.

I swear I took SO many pictures and stayed for so long in each spot that the group we came in with (I believe they come in every 30 minutes) had long left spots I was admiring and the next group was already entering – and in some cases passed me by as well. I was so impressed with the Nasrid palace and just kept thinking about the fact that although it was built 700 years ago that it would still impact a person today as much as it did someone in the era during which it was built.

This below is a ceiling! I kid you not! Check out all the detail work on it:

This whole wall (over 20 feet high for sure) was covered from ceiling to floor with carved out details… the whole palace was like this. It is truly inspiring to see it!

This ceiling was amazing:

Yet another wide view and close up of the same wall to show you the incredible detail put into everything:

And as we left, I got this one last shot that I think perfectly captures how I felt that day. It’s just a sense of peace and wonderment all wrapped into one for me and I love how it came out.

I honestly have a TON more pictures that you can check out if you visit my flickr site (click on any of the images to go to it) and a ton more that I didn’t even put on Flickr! The Alhambra really touched me in a way that other places I have visited haven’t, though, and that is why I went picture overload on it. I hope it wasn’t too boring for you all to look through and, if you haven’t guessed yet, I wholeheartedly recommend a trip to see these places in person. Definitely worth it!