Category: Portugal/Spain, Fall 2018

Once again the GPS in the car led me into some pretty narrow streets.  Turns out we were supposed to go directly to a public parking lot before heading to the hotel.  Would have been nice to know that in advance!

Sunset from the roof of our very strange hotel.

The hotel is a converted house, and the shower is enclosed in a glass wall directly behind the bed.  The toilet is in a little cave they have created that runs under a set of stairs in the common area of the hotel.  Not the best choice we have made, but at least the bed isn’t hard as a rock.  We needed the window open at night, and we had smokers and motorcycles going by right outside our window.  Lovely smell of exhaust to wake up to!

The main thing to see here is the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba.  What used to be the minaret of the mosque (erected in 951 AD) has been converted into a Christian bell tower.  They originally built the first part of the bell tower right on top of the smallish minaret, which couldn’t support the weight.  They then had to shore up the minaret to hold their Christain bells.  I think it would have been easier to tear it down and start over, but that’s just me.

Here is the view of the Mosque-Catheral (yes, it’s both in one) from the top of the bell tower.  The tower in the middle is the transept.  It’s like having a Catholic church in the middle of a Muslim mosque.

A view of the historic section of Cordoba.

Here is a view of the bell tower from the courtyard orange grove.  There are orange trees everywhere in Spain, but I think Cordoba takes the cake in how many there are per acre…all of them filled with oranges.  One item you never need to go to the store for around here.

The original mosque was built in 786-788.  Unusual to this mosque is that the qibla wall, which is supposed to be facing east towards Mecca, was instead facing south.  The mosque was enlarged in 833-848, and then again in 962-966, when they added the ornate Mihrab.

Here is the Mihrab, which is intended to show the direction of prayer, even though this one faces south from the prayer area.

The final enlargement was in 991, basically doubling the size, and this place is big!

When Cordoba was reconquered by the Catholics in 1236, they added a bunch of Catholic stuff….hell….I started losing track….but they did put in the previously mentioned transept that was pretty incredible.  I couldn’t take a photo to do it justice, but here is one from google.

Here is the pipe organ, and there was one on each side.  Early stereo!

The Catholics built these very dark wooden spaces for the choir.  Each choir spot had it’s own little detail work depicting some saint or other important biblical figure.  Beside each and every one (I walked around and checked), there is a depiction of some guy getting killed with a knife or a sword.  WTF?

They had some ruins they pulled up while doing renovation work, and they had them on display.  Remember that Visigoth symbol that was a  part of a cathedral way back in Lisbon?  They found the same symbol here.

They also found the remains of the Visigoth Basilica of San Vicente, which dates back to the 6th Century, that the Moors basically built right over once they took control.  You can look down into this site through a glass floor.

Very close to the Mosque-Cathedral is the Roman Bridge, originally built in the 1st century BC.  It’s been restored and renovated several times, but hey, at least the Romans started it!  They have quite the preoccupation with the fact Romans were here.

There are some beautiful spots to be seen while walking around Cordoba.

So about that preoccupation with the Romans, when they do any sort of construction in Cordoba, they can’t disturb anything that might possibly be Roman, and once confirmed, they must work around it and make it available for public viewing.  Here are some ruins that were in the floor of two restaurants that we ate in.

Thank goodness the Romans never visited California.  Can you imagine the rules there?

Off to Cuenca!

 

 

 

Home to some of the narrowest streets yet, we arrived in Granda and found our way to the hotel, but not without getting lost….and heading up some streets that I didn’t think our car would fit through.  There was a small car following me and I actually had to stop and ask him if we were going where cars should be going!  He told me to pull in our mirrors and we’d be fine.

I think I scraped the outside of a mirror, but we made it through.  I hate these narrow streets!  This sign says it all!  Why is it only in English??

Here is a sign as we leave the hotel.  If you aren’t careful you can walk out the front door and directly into a moving car or bus.

The one thing that everybody must see in Granada is The Alhambra, a palace and fortress that dominates the views of the city.

Starting out as a small fortress built on top of Roman ruins in 889, and then renovated and rebuilt in the mid-13th century by the Moors.  After the Christians took it back in 1492, it became the Royal Court of Ferdinand and Isabella.  This is the site where Christopher Columbus received Isabella’s endorsement for his mission to sail across the “ocean blue”.

Here is a night shot that was our view from the restaurant our first night.

We read and heard a lot of warnings about tickets selling out, but there was really no line to get in, and it never really seemed all that crowded during the 6 hours we were there.

First stop was the Generalife (the “life” part is pronounced “leafy”) gardens.  That’s Kim way down there…..she had to practically push some people into the water to get them to move.  Lots of self absorbed selfie obsessed people at this place!

Wow….I found a spot in the garden with nobody standing there taking their own photo!

The Moors loved their water features.  They are everywhere.

Kim wearing her audio guide.  These were not included in the ticket price, but for 6 euros each they were well worth it.  There is very little in the way of descriptions to read throughout the Alhambra.

The best part of the Generalife to us was the Water Stairway.  Water is running along a system of gutters on both sides of the stairways, some of it going into fountains at each landing.  Very cool!

Next stop was lunch at a nice little restaurant inside the Alhambra, and then off to the Charles the V palace.  Built within the walls of the Alhambra in 1526, Charles wanted a palace that would be befitting of a Holy Roman Emperor (I’m pretty sure Robin said “Holy Roman Emperor” to Batman at least once).

There was a gate inside called the Wine Gate, which immediately drew my interest.  Considered to be one of the oldest constructions of the Alhambra, dating back to the mid 9th century.  The Alhambra website has these two possible reasons it was called the wine gate (I found it odd to have a wine gate in a muslim site):

Since 1556, the neighbours of the Alhambra left at this gate the wine that they drunk and which was not submitted to taxation. This is a possible explanation for the gate’s name, although there is another theory, according to which the name is the result of a mistake. Apparently two words got muddled up: «Bib al-hamra’», meaning Red Gate or Gate to the Alhambra, which would be the original name of the gate, and «Bib al-jamra», meaning Wine Gate. This second theory would then prove that this was the access gate to the higher Alhambra.

Your ticket comes with a specific time to visit the Nasrid Palaces, and if you miss it you have to pay for a new ticket to get in.  They are quite strict about this.  I really don’t understand why, because once you are in there are no restrictions on how long you can stay.  Whatever.  The place is beautiful, and I will only post a few photos because I think I took about 50.

There were baths modeled after Roman Thermal Baths, and they have been restored only recently.  You could not enter, but the following two photos show the view from above, and the view from inside the hot baths.

Our last stop was the Alcazaba, which is the part of the Alhambra that most people notice, the large tower that overlooks the city of Granada.  Plenty of snow on the mountains in the background.

In the middle of this picture you can see a wall with a line of people sitting on it.  This was like a crazy hippy drunk fest when we walked through it the day prior.  I don’t know if the numerous people with dreads were the result of “fashion” or just not showering for weeks on end.  Granada is definitely the Berkeley of Spain.

There was a lot of smoke hanging over the city because it seems a lot of the people on the outskirts of the city are burning refuse.

Bonus shot since Kim is tired of being featured so much!

The morning before we left Granada we took a walking tour of the area of the city we were staying in, the Albayzin.  We toured a restored Moorish house, and the owner there loved collecting various metal objects.  On the right are door knockers, and on the left are door hooks to help you in opening and closing the doors.  This guy had stacks and stacks of knockers,  so many that I think he knows more about knockers than Hugh Hefner!!

Here is Hugh Jr. himself.  See that medicine bowl and grinder behind him on the table?  I think he had at least 20 of those scattered around the house.

Off to Cordoba!  Let’s hope the streets are a little bit wider.