Christmas in Granada
As the final bastion of Al-Andalus, Granada has a unique culture that blends elements from Spain, Morocco, east, and west. It also holds a wealth of Islamic architecture. Most notably, the Kings of Granada were the architects of the Alhambra. But what is the Alhambra?
The Alhambra at night
The three best preserved monuments of Al-Andalus are: the mosque/cathedral of Cordoba, the Alhambra of Granada, and the Alcazar of Sevilla. The Alhambra is a large walled administrative city-within-city, containing a mosque, a palace, hammams, residences, gardens, and fortifications. Matt visited Cordoba when he studied in Spain in college, but did not make it to Granada or Sevilla. Karen visited the Alhambra as part of a bus tour as a teenager, but the tour didn't give her enough time to see even a small fraction of it. Suffice to say, we both had unfinished business in Granada.
Many surfaces of the Nasrid Palaces inside the Alhambra are covered in intricate carvings of calligraphy, geometric patterns, and floral designs.
So, when a friend of ours invited us to spend Christmas with her friend in Granada, we knew we had to go.
The Alhambra can be tricky to visit if you don't plan ahead. Tickets sell out about 2 weeks ahead of time, but you need to book even earlier than that if you want all the timeslots to be available. The Alhambra itself is huge- basically an entire walled city where all of the governing and administrative offices were located. You need special timed-entry tickets to enter the palace portion of the grounds. We timed our arrival in Granada for early in the day and went straight to the Alhambra, where we wolfed down some bread and cheese in the parking lot to fuel up for the day, and then started our tour.
Side note: We rented a car for this trip, and it was our first time driving outside of the US! To prepare, we studied up on new traffic signs, and printed out a cheat-sheet so the co-pilot could refer to them easily while navigating. The experience went mostly smoothly, except that Karen suspected that one of our car tires looked a bit flat when we parked at the Alhambra. Fortunately, we were able to compartmentalize and enjoy our day of tourism. Once the Alhambra shut down around dusk, we booked it to a gas station to use a pressure gauge and were able to confirm that our tire was not, in fact, flat. Crisis averted (or rather, invented)!
Our first Alhambra stop was the gardens: large grounds with a few open-air structures, trees that have been cultivated to form walls and arches, and fountains and channels of water running through it all. The quantity of water is very impressive, considering the arid nature of the area and the elevation of the Alhambra (the entire structure occupies a hilltop). An impressive system of pumps and aqueducts makes it all possible.
From the gardens, you can see the rest of the Alhambra across a crevasse between the two hilltops.
A section of the gardens
Not wanting to miss our timeslot, we hightailed it from the gardens to the palace. A visitor could spend hours just exploring the palace. The most striking sections, in our opinion, were the rooms with intricate calligraphies and arabesques covering every square inch, from the floor all the way up to a ceiling that was in some cases 30 or 40 feet high.
Matt especially enjoyed trying to read the Arabic calligraphic inscriptions. The secret to doing so is knowing that the same religious phrases tend to show up again and again. One phrase praising god was repeated probably thousands of times throughout the palace. It's so omnipresent we're surprised nobody is printing it on shirts to sell as souvenirs.
Like ancient Greek and Roman statues, apparently many of the decorations used to be brightly colored but time and sunlight have faded them away. In some places that are protected from the sun, you can still see hints of the original pigment.
"Wow, this is a lot of pictures of the Alhambra-" We hear you but we were very excited to see it.
After the palace, we walked around the walls of the city-fortress, getting some impressive sunset views of the nearby mountains and the surrounding city.
A view from the walls of the fortress section of the Alhambra
The next day we joined with our friends to explore the Albaicin, the old Muslim quarter of the city. If you imagine the Alhambra sitting atop one hill, you can imagine the Albaicin occupying the side of a neighboring hill. When you're in the Albaicin, you're always either walking uphill or downhill. At the top of the neighborhood, there are some lookouts with excellent views of the Alhambra. Fortunately, Matt is in touch with his former college study abroad professor whose classes focus on the history of Al-Andalus. She generously sent us audio messages that essentially guided us through a walking tour of the neighborhood, with directions like, "Keeping the church on your left, go down the street that exits the square. On your right will be a really cool water cistern."
The "really cool" water cistern in question
Another stop on the tour for a very "cool" ("chula") facade
We began our tour at the bottom of the hill, and climbed our way up, passing through "Little Morocco," a street known for selling teapots and other classic Moroccan goods. By the time we reached the top of the hill, the sun was setting again and a crowd had gathered to admire the Alhambra. We climbed to the top of a church tower to get a view.
Our view of the Alhambra, lit up after dark
From that point on, a lot of things began closing for Christmas. We gathered at a friend's house for dinner and games- until 3AM, when we finally threw in the towel and went to bed. Everyone else stayed up another 2 hours!
The enormous facade of the Granada cathedral. Fun fact: All Spanish kings and queens are buried in El Escorial, except for Ferdinand and Isabella who are in this cathedral in Granada.
Christmas dinner with friends
On Christmas day, one thing that we knew would be open was the cathedral- for Christmas mass! In fact, the friend-of-a-friend who recently moved to Granada, did so because she is teaching singing classes at the cathedral and she is in the choir. We met a friend of hers at her Christmas dinner, and he directs the choir! We attended the mass and managed to catch their eyes and wave from the audience as they sang from an epic balcony next to the giant church organ.
The cathedral houses these old music books in Latin that were used by the choir hundreds of years ago. Our friend was able to bring some of the tunes to life for us.
The interior of the cathedral
Just before we left, we tried to experience one more classic piece of Granada culture: tapas. The farther south you go in Spain, the more serious they become about tapas. In Granada, the belief seems to be that you should basically be able to eat an entire meal of tapas by ordering 3 drinks. Most bars were closed, but we found one that seemed popular. We ordered drinks and a little food and, just as promised, received a tasty tapa, although it wasn't quite as large as we've been led to believe. There is a bar near our apartment in Madrid called La Pequeña Graná (read "Granada," but with an Andalucian accent) that serves Granada-style tapas. We've seen them, and they look very generous! So we'll have to get our fix there.
Last year we found a nativity scene in a town called Evora, with the description: "this diorama imagines an alternative history in which Jesus was born in Evora." We thought this was very funny at the time, but it turns out it is practically the national sport to make elaborate models of Jesus being born in whatever town you prefer. This model depicted a world in which Jesus was born in Granada.
Granada has a lot more to offer, from hiking and skiing, to a tradition of living in caves stretching back thousands of years. You can visit these caves, stay in cave hotels, eat and watch flamenco in caves. We'll have to go back someday.
Most AirBnBs have kitschy decorations, but our AirBnB in Granada was the worst offender by far. The walls were covered in things like this, that had been printed out on paper, glued to cardboard, and taped to the wall. It felt like an AirBnB that had been decorated by an AI that cannot comprehend the human experience.
Did you notice the 6 sided stars in some of the artistic works (especially the metal gates)in Alhambra - there were apparently a number of Jewish artisans who worked/served as slaves on building the palace.
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