Granada
Having taken in the sails at the end of the day we proceeded overnight to the Andalusian port of Motril, our point of departure for a full day in Granada, the town from which pomegranates take their name. For anyone who traveled in Spain a generation ago - and there happen to be a few of us board in that category - the transformation that has overtaken this country is mind-blowing. In the late sixties, the journey from Motril inland to Granada took most of the day along narrow roads that wound their way tortuously up into the mountains. Today, a replacement highway is under construction for a relatively recent one that already seems to be a prodigious feat of engineering. High bridges will span deep river gorges and newly dammed valleys store water to meet the pressing needs of a construction boom that seems as vigorous in the suburbs of Granada as on the sun-drenched Costa del Sol. In just over an hour, we rise several thousand feet from sea level to the snow-capped mountains the Sierra Nevada, backdrop for the Moorish citadel of Granada.
Here we parted company with the twenty-first century to spend an enchanting morning visiting the only Muslim palace to have survived from the Middle Ages. The Alhambra was the last stronghold of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula, a territory they had occupied since 711AD. It did not fall until 1492, when the last Moorish ruler, Boabdil, surrendered to the Catholic monarchs of Ferdinand and Isabella, rulers of the newly united territories of Castille and Aragon. As we approached Granada on the new road we passed the township of Sospiro del Moro, the Sigh of the Moor, legendary place where Boabdil, heading for exile in north Africa, turned back for one last look at the beautiful palace he had lately vacated. Seeing her son shed a tear, his mother reprimanded him: "You cry now as a woman, when you should have fought as a man".
And cry he might. The gardens of the Generalife were breathtaking: at their best under blue skies in warm sunshine, fragrant with the season's first rose blooms. We saw all the famous rooms of the palace, the Court of Myrtles, the Hall of the Ambassadors and the Court of Lions, the latter without the lions which are under restoration. Restoration is an on-going activity here. Indeed what we see is often a replica, albeit a very fine one, of an original lost either in the centuries of neglect between 1492 and the arrival of such Romantics as Washington Irving and Chateaubriand in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Some of what we see today at the Alhambra thus conforms more to the aesthetics of Romantic Europeans than to the Islamic original: for instance, the Islamic architects used overflowing fountains and not projectile jets. Nevertheless, the overall experience remains as enchanting as any tale from the Arabian Nights. A regular visitor for forty years, I have never yet been disappointed by any visit to the Alhambra and today's visit was close to perfection.
After a splendid lunch at the Alhambra Palace Hotel, a place that echoes the style of the adjoining Moorish complex, we rounded off the day by paying our respects to Ferdinand and Isabella in their mausoleum in the Royal Chapel next to the Cathedral in the old town. Thus we drew to a close a day in which we had experienced the entire history of Spain in microcosm.
Having taken in the sails at the end of the day we proceeded overnight to the Andalusian port of Motril, our point of departure for a full day in Granada, the town from which pomegranates take their name. For anyone who traveled in Spain a generation ago - and there happen to be a few of us board in that category - the transformation that has overtaken this country is mind-blowing. In the late sixties, the journey from Motril inland to Granada took most of the day along narrow roads that wound their way tortuously up into the mountains. Today, a replacement highway is under construction for a relatively recent one that already seems to be a prodigious feat of engineering. High bridges will span deep river gorges and newly dammed valleys store water to meet the pressing needs of a construction boom that seems as vigorous in the suburbs of Granada as on the sun-drenched Costa del Sol. In just over an hour, we rise several thousand feet from sea level to the snow-capped mountains the Sierra Nevada, backdrop for the Moorish citadel of Granada.
Here we parted company with the twenty-first century to spend an enchanting morning visiting the only Muslim palace to have survived from the Middle Ages. The Alhambra was the last stronghold of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula, a territory they had occupied since 711AD. It did not fall until 1492, when the last Moorish ruler, Boabdil, surrendered to the Catholic monarchs of Ferdinand and Isabella, rulers of the newly united territories of Castille and Aragon. As we approached Granada on the new road we passed the township of Sospiro del Moro, the Sigh of the Moor, legendary place where Boabdil, heading for exile in north Africa, turned back for one last look at the beautiful palace he had lately vacated. Seeing her son shed a tear, his mother reprimanded him: "You cry now as a woman, when you should have fought as a man".
And cry he might. The gardens of the Generalife were breathtaking: at their best under blue skies in warm sunshine, fragrant with the season's first rose blooms. We saw all the famous rooms of the palace, the Court of Myrtles, the Hall of the Ambassadors and the Court of Lions, the latter without the lions which are under restoration. Restoration is an on-going activity here. Indeed what we see is often a replica, albeit a very fine one, of an original lost either in the centuries of neglect between 1492 and the arrival of such Romantics as Washington Irving and Chateaubriand in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Some of what we see today at the Alhambra thus conforms more to the aesthetics of Romantic Europeans than to the Islamic original: for instance, the Islamic architects used overflowing fountains and not projectile jets. Nevertheless, the overall experience remains as enchanting as any tale from the Arabian Nights. A regular visitor for forty years, I have never yet been disappointed by any visit to the Alhambra and today's visit was close to perfection.
After a splendid lunch at the Alhambra Palace Hotel, a place that echoes the style of the adjoining Moorish complex, we rounded off the day by paying our respects to Ferdinand and Isabella in their mausoleum in the Royal Chapel next to the Cathedral in the old town. Thus we drew to a close a day in which we had experienced the entire history of Spain in microcosm.
