Monday, November 27th – Tuesday, November 29th (2 nights)
Arrival and First night (Monday, November 27th)
Our Hotel is The Hotel Granada Five Senses. Apparently, their decor focuses on the five senses, involving artwork, and sound. It seems a lot of the artwork/photography focuses on the Alhambra.
It should be an interesting experience!
After arriving at the railway station, we make our way to the hotel, check in, relax a little, maybe explore the immediate neighborhood…
Dinner/Entertainment
We arrive in Granada on my birthday, so it seems fitting that I should choose an interesting place to have dinner. So, after exploring via Google, etc., I found the Tablao Flamenco Jardines de Zoraya. It gets TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice 2023 award. They say that the food is good, and that the Flamenco show is really good.
There is an area of Granada called Sacromonte, which is famous for caves where the Roma (Gypsy) people lived. The Roma are famous for their Flamenco style — Zambra — and there are many places in Sacromonte that have performances of that style, in the caves. However, all the reports I’ve seen say that they are pretty touristy, and people were not impressed with the performances. I think I found one that matches our tastes better.
It’s located in the Albaicin (Albayzín) area of Granada, which, according to Rick Steves, is Spain’s best old Moorish quarter. According to Wikipedia:
It is centered around a hill on the north side of the Darro River which passes through the city. The neighbourhood is notable for its historic monuments and for largely retaining its medieval street plan dating back to the Nasrid period (13th to 15th centuries).
It isn’t terribly far from the hotel, although it’s hilly, so perhaps we should take a minibus there and back?
Here’s a good video from Rick Steves, talking about modern Granada:
Our Full Day in Granada (Tuesday, November 28th)
We only have a single full day in Granada, and so we are taking advantage of a Tours By Locals All inclusive Alhambra and Food Tour. Gabriela will pick us up at our hotel at 9am, drive to the Alhambra, and have a thorough visit, which will probably take some time. Afterwards, we go on a Tapas Tour, visiting 2 local bars, enjoying tapas and drinks, and finish in the city center.
The main attraction is, of course, the Alhambra, a place I have long wanted to see. Here is how Wikipedia describes it:
The Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain. It is one of the most famous monuments of Islamic architecture and one of the best-preserved palaces of the historic Islamic world, in addition to containing notable examples of Spanish Renaissance architecture.
The Alhambra and Patterns
One aspect of the Alhambra that has always intrigued me since I learned about it is the significance of the Moorish decorations there.
A shambling series of interconnecting quadrangles, the Alhambra began its life as a small fortress in 899 in present-day Granada, Spain. It took off in its ascent from mere building to legend in the 11th century, when the Moorish king of Granada, Mohammed ben Al-Ahmar, renovated its ruins, a project continued and embellished upon by his successor Yusuf I, Sultan of Granada, in 1333.
Flash forward several centuries, when British designer Owen Jones extolled the place in a now-seminal volume from 1836. He later gave Moorish pattern and the Alhambra pride-of-place in his Grammar of Ornament, one of pattern’s most cited works.
Jude Stewart
“The Alhambra is at the very summit of perfection of Moorish art, as is the Parthenon of Greek art. We can find no work so fitted to illustrate a Grammar of Ornament as that in which every ornament contains a grammar within itself.”
Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, 1856
Scholars have debated the point, but it seems officially agreed that the Alhambra includes examples of all 17 of the so-called “wallpaper groups,” all of the possible permutations one can make with a repeating pattern on a flat plane.
This fact is even more amazing when you realize that the Moors of that day did not have the mathematics to discover that there are only 17 possible patterns, but they did manage to include them all at the Alhambra. (No, I’m not going to try to find them all, but my eyes will be more open with that knowledge.)
You can learn more about the mathematics of patterns on Wikipedia.
Tapas in Granada
Here’s a great video made by James Blick, a New Zealander who moved to Spain, and creates great travel guides about Spain. The video is about Tapas in Granada, and I couldn’t not add it to this page. It really makes me salivate!
Here are the eateries mentioned in this video:
- Taberna Andaluza (Tripadvisor review)
- La Macetilla (Tripadvisor review)
- Poetas Andaluzas II (Tripadvisor review)
- Rincón de Rodri (Tripadvisor review)
- La Tana (Tripadvisor review)
- La Trasienda (Tripadvisor review)
- Bar Aliatar (Tripadvisor review)
Of course, in two nights and one full day in Granada, we can’t do justice to these places, but perhaps we should try to experience one or two…
General Information
Here’s an interesting video from Rick Steves, who provides lots of very useful travel information about Europe.