{"id":414,"date":"2018-03-29T09:05:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T09:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=414"},"modified":"2018-06-13T07:35:50","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T14:35:50","slug":"granada-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/granada-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Granada \u2013 Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The weather has improved!\u00a0 Yes!\u00a0 We had a couple of nice days, then it went back to cold and rainy.\u00a0 But I think it\u2019s turned a corner and it was nice yesterday and today.\u00a0 Hot actually.\u00a0 Too bad we\u2019re leaving.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been relatively quiet here after the Alhambra.\u00a0 We\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 Some pretty spectacular views from here.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The next day w<\/span><\/span>e wandered through the bazaars in the Arab quarter and caught a very interesting religious procession.\u00a0 It\u2019s the start of Holy week here (Easter).\u00a0 Lots for the hordes (I respectfully mean tourists) to see and do.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The religious procession was a bonus for us; we just happened to be in the right place at the right time.\u00a0 We don\u2019t 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 \u2018parade\u2019 was very stirring. \u00a0As I said earlier it\u2019s holy week, Semana Santa.\u00a0 This is appropriate as a description of the procession and for those not familiar (and please don\u2019t think I am being disrespectful), it is like Macy\u2019s Santa parade merged with a Klan rally.\u00a0 There are a number of religious \u2018floats\u2019 (Christ carrying the cross and so forth) surrounded by marching bands, numerous \u2018widows\u2019 dressed in black all interspersed with guys in pointy hoods.\u00a0 If the hooded guys were all in white as opposed to an array of beautiful colors, it would definitely look like a Klan rally.\u00a0 And the floats weren\u2019t on flatbed trucks either; they were carried!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was quite magical and if you were a religious person I can see how moving this would be.\u00a0 Throngs of people lined the streets for this.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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And speaking of hordes, we\u2019ve discovered that at least half of what we thought were strictly tourists are in fact students.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 While most look like students, there are a fair number of, for want of a better description, \u2018hippies\u2019, dressed in tie-dye shirts, ponchos, colorful scarves, sandals, and dreadlocks.\u00a0 Wafts of weed and hash.\u00a0 Some are camped on the hillside in tents or live in microvans and sit around playing guitar, solo or in small groups.\u00a0 Maybe the gypsies are still here?\u00a0 It kind of reminds me of travelling in Europe in the 60\u2019s.\u00a0 It’s d\u00e9j\u00e0-vu all over again, to quote a great baseball player <\/span><\/span>😊<\/span>.\u00a0 I keep expecting Woodstock to break out at any moment.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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All in all though, a great place to visit we think, but maybe not to live.\u00a0 I can\u2019t imagine what\u2019s it\u2019s like here in the summer.\u00a0 It would be HOT for one thing, but maybe the tourists and the students wouldn\u2019t be here either.\u00a0 Don\u2019t know, but for now, we\u2019ll leave it at Granada, hipster-ville meets hippy-ville amid the ancient ruins, tourists included.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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    The weather has improved!\u00a0 Yes!\u00a0 We had a couple of nice days, then it went back to cold and rainy.\u00a0 But I think it\u2019s turned a corner and it was nice yesterday and today.\u00a0 Hot actually.\u00a0 Too bad we\u2019re leaving.\u00a0 It\u2019s been relatively quiet here after the Alhambra.\u00a0 We\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 Some pretty spectacular views from here.\u00a0 Granada and surrounds are very pretty (when the sun is out) with a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2775,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/2775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}