Spain (July 11-14)

Granada:  View of the Alhambra from St. Nicholas Church

We are headed home now [July 23], but I thought I’d try to catch up the blog for those who are following our travels.  Where we left off was leaving Finland headed for Spain.  We flew from Finland and the first thing we noticed was that no one even asked to see our passports.  They basically didn’t care who we were, as long as we had a valid boarding pass.  So different from the USA!

When we arrived in Madrid, we had to take an airport bus to the main train station and walk from there to our hotel.  We got to see a few sights out of the bus window, but really didn’t know what we were seeing because there was no guide.  When we got to the train station, we decided to get reservations for our trains through Spain since all required reservations and we couldn’t get them beforehand because Spain’s computer system didn’t seem to work outside of the country.  We waited forever to get to speak to a ticketing agent and then we found out that our planned itinerary wasn’t going to work.  We flew into Madrid then planned to go to Granada for a day, Cordoba for a day, and then go to Barcelona for part of a day before flying out to Berlin.  However, we couldn’t get a train from Cordoba to Barcelona.  So, we had to skip Cordoba and take a night train from Granada to Barcelona.  That gave us more time in Granada and Barcelona, but it meant that we had to miss Cordoba.  Oh well!  Guess we will save that for another trip when we can fit in Seville!

So, we spent most of the night in the train station and didn’t get to see any of Madrid or get our laundry washed like we hoped.  But, our “hotel” was nice.  It was basically somebody’s house with some extra rooms, but we liked it.  Like many places we had seen in large cities, it was sort of an apartment house arranged vertically, so we had to climb several flights of stairs—and there were 5 different keys (outside door, inside door, elevator, apartment door, room door).  We ate a quick dinner at a Thai restaurant next door and then crashed for the night.

The following morning (July 12) we ate at Dunkin Coffee (really a Dunkin Donuts, but they called it by the other name for some reason).  We took the train to Granada and then had to walk forever to find our hostel.  Once we got there we basically had enough time to drop our stuff off before heading to the Alhambra for our admission.  We tried to figure out the public transportation, but ended up grabbing a taxi at the last minute so we wouldn’t be too late. 

The Alhambra was amazing.  It is part of a Moorish fortress because Granada was ruled by the Moors for 700 years before the Christians retook it.  The Moors were Muslim, but not Arab; their influence can be seen all over southern Spain.  We got to see the Moorish palaces and gardens built on the hill overlooking Granada.  We spent hours going through the buildings and gardens, including the whitewashed “summer palace” and manicured gardens of the Generalife, with its shaped Cyprus walls.  Afterward we went down into the old part of town and saw a variety of street life on our way to dinner.  We saw “hippie” kids playing music on the street barefooted; we saw a girl with a group of other girls and they dressed up and getting her to ride a donkey—probably some sort of pre-wedding custom.  We also saw people leaving a wedding at a nearby church and later saw a whole group of people dressed to the nines who eventually were picked up by a charter bus for another wedding.

  

  

    

     

   

[David] Interestingly, we ate dinner at the “Palatine”, a restaurant with Roman decoration and a menu combining Italian and Spanish.  While I had paella (basically saffron rice with all sorts of meat in it—prawns, pork, who knows), others had Italian.  Erin enjoyed her melon and ham (Spanish version of prosciutto) so much that she carved a message to the chef on her melon rind—we noticed the waiter stop and stare at it before he went to the kitchen.  (That’s my girl….)

The next day we did a walking tour of Granada (following some of Rick Steves’ guidebook suggestions and reading some commentary along the way).  We saw an old caravansary where camels used to be corralled—now it has a stage for small events.  We walked through the narrow streets of an old shopping district and made our way toward the hill on which the Alhambra stands.  We found the St. Nicholas church, whose plaza has a magnificent view of the Alhambra and the city of Granada.  Heidi remembered hearing that Bill Clinton was so enamored by this view that he insisted on brining his family to that same spot on another trip to Spain, so that he could show them.  After having seen it, I can believe it.  (Picture at top of blog post)

We also saw the beautiful Cathedral of Granada, built as a symbol of Christian triumph after the reconquest of the Moors.  (To add insult to injury, the mosque on that site was completely razed and the cathedral was built there, despite the availability of a much better building site elsewhere in the city.)  The cathedral has elaborately decorated altars and the most over-the-top set of pipe organs I have ever seen.  I found it quite interesting that I could find no information on the pair of organs anywhere in the church--not even in the book shop.  It appears the Spanish don't take the same pride in their pipe organs as the Germans and Austrians.  Also interesting to us were the numerous display cases of oversize illuminated manuscripts of medieval chant.  All in all a very impressive church.  The Renaissance cathedral and the Alhambra add to the fascinating interplay of Christian and Muslim culture in Granada.  Their decoration and architecture are completely different, but beautiful in their own way.  The colorful geometric designs in the tilework, ceiling plaster, and stonework of the Alhambra appeals to me in both artistic and mathematical ways--much as the decoration and pipe organs of the cathedral appeal to the musician in me.

  

  

Visiting the Alhambra was, for me, a dream come true.  I had learned about it some 30 years ago in junior high in my Spanish classes taught by Señora Suco (who is still one of my favorite people!).  I had always wanted to see the intricate geometric plaster and tilework up close, and it did not disappoint.  Equally thrilling was finally getting to Barcelona to see the famous cathedral Sagrada Familia, designed by the architect  Antoni Gaudí.  He worked on the cathedral for about 40 years before his death in 1926, and the project is still unfinished.  Significant progress was made before the Barcelona Summer Olympics in 1992 and the nave was finally completed in 2000, just in time for Pope Benedict to come hold a dedication mass there.  The cathedral reminded me of other cathedrals we had seen in Europe—floor layout in the shape of a cross, tall spires, carved stone entryways, high ceilings with arches, richly decorated altar, stained glass windows, etc.  Even so, this cathedral looks like no other in the world; it is in a much more modern style, which the Catalan people have embraced.  (Note:  Barcelona is in Catalonia, which is now part of Spain, but which has its own language and distinct culture.  It was interesting to see signs first in Catalan, then Spanish, then maybe English.)  The spires have interesting shapes and are crowned with different color “fruit;” there are four spires on each of 3 entryways, with another four central spires planned (for the four evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), plus a larger Mary spire over the altar area, and finally a Jesus spire in the center which, when completed, will be the tallest church spire anywhere—but a few meters shorter than a nearby hill, because Gaudí thought something man-made should not overshadow what God had made.  Each entryway has a different theme:  Gaudí himself basically finished the Nativity façade (picture below), while another architect recently completed the Passion façade, and the Glory façade has yet to be finished.  (Gaudí knew he wouldn’t complete the cathedral, so he drew up plans which allowed for future architects and artists to bring their own ideas.)

  

Stained glass windows are a recent addition by another artist—according to him, they bring a “symphony of light” into the church, and I couldn’t agree more.  I was transfixed by the colors reflecting off the columns and walls of the cathedral.  The most interesting use of color, to me, was the Resurrection window behind the altar, which has darker oranges and yellows at the bottom but becomes clear at the top, letting in all the sunlight; a clear skylight illuminates a glass mosaic.  The columns themselves split into “branches” at the top, resembling palm trees, and the arches they form are hyperbolic, a mathematical form Gaudí found to work best to hold immense weight with minimal support.  (The museum had a whole exhibit about the mathematics behind the columns and arches!)  One of four planned pipe organs had already been installed, and we were lucky enough to hear it.  It most likely has a MIDI recorder which was set to play back several selections periodically.  We were sitting right behind the organ, seeing all the colors of the windows reflected by the pipes…an awesome experience for me!

   

Barcelona seems to be a favorite city for many people on both sides of the Atlantic—many of our friends in Europe asked if we were going there—but we unfortunately had just a little time there.  We could easily spend a week there, I’m sure.  But it was time for our evening flight to Berlin, to begin our exploration of the eastern part of Germany….