Granada – Part Two

 

 

The weather has improved!  Yes!  We had a couple of nice days, then it went back to cold and rainy.  But I think it’s turned a corner and it was nice yesterday and today.  Hot actually.  Too bad we’re leaving. 

It’s been relatively quiet here after the Alhambra.  We’ve walked around town a few times, checked out the cathedrals, some monuments, and trekked up to the Sacromonte, the old (16th century) gypsy community that sits on the side of a steep hill, amid pines and cactus, overlooking the Alhambra.  Some pretty spectacular views from here.  Granada and surrounds are very pretty (when the sun is out) with a backdrop of snowy mountains that reach down to the city and then out to the expansive valleys to the west. 

 

 

 

 

The next day we wandered through the bazaars in the Arab quarter and caught a very interesting religious procession.  It’s the start of Holy week here (Easter).  Lots for the hordes (I respectfully mean tourists) to see and do.

The religious procession was a bonus for us; we just happened to be in the right place at the right time.  We don’t check the internet for weird and wonderful things to do here daily, so this was a plus. We are not all that religious but the ‘parade’ was very stirring.  As I said earlier it’s holy week, Semana Santa.  This is appropriate as a description of the procession and for those not familiar (and please don’t think I am being disrespectful), it is like Macy’s Santa parade merged with a Klan rally.  There are a number of religious ‘floats’ (Christ carrying the cross and so forth) surrounded by marching bands, numerous ‘widows’ dressed in black all interspersed with guys in pointy hoods.  If the hooded guys were all in white as opposed to an array of beautiful colors, it would definitely look like a Klan rally.  And the floats weren’t on flatbed trucks either; they were carried!  Here are these large platforms made of what looks like solid silver with an assortment of Christ figurines and underneath for mobility are a bunch of young men walking them through the streets.  It was quite magical and if you were a religious person I can see how moving this would be.  Throngs of people lined the streets for this.

 

 

And speaking of hordes, we’ve discovered that at least half of what we thought were strictly tourists are in fact students.  There seems to be quite a large college/university crowd here, especially in the area where we are staying so that probably explains why we keep running into large gatherings of young people in the plazas and tapas bars.  While most look like students, there are a fair number of, for want of a better description, ‘hippies’, dressed in tie-dye shirts, ponchos, colorful scarves, sandals, and dreadlocks.  Wafts of weed and hash.  Some are camped on the hillside in tents or live in microvans and sit around playing guitar, solo or in small groups.  Maybe the gypsies are still here?  It kind of reminds me of travelling in Europe in the 60’s.  It’s déjà-vu all over again, to quote a great baseball player 😊.  I keep expecting Woodstock to break out at any moment. 

 

 

All in all though, a great place to visit we think, but maybe not to live.  I can’t imagine what’s it’s like here in the summer.  It would be HOT for one thing, but maybe the tourists and the students wouldn’t be here either.  Don’t know, but for now, we’ll leave it at Granada, hipster-ville meets hippy-ville amid the ancient ruins, tourists included.