On our last night of the seminar, our professors took us to a beautiful restaurant with a view of the Alhambra and then to a flamenco show in the caves of an old Gitano village. Here are some of our pretty pictures.
Yesterday I found this great little Kebab hole in the wall by La Plaza Nueva and had my falafel on a bench outside talking to a gypsy and she thought I was from Ireland! Score! Then we spent the afternoon at the Alhambra, the huge Muslim fortress and palace on a hill overlooking the city. The decoration used is so different from anything I’ve ever seen. The outside and entryways of the buildings are very plain but the inside and patios are incredibly ornate. They use muqarna, a plaster element that hangs down from the ceiling like little beehives, to symbolize stalactites in the cave where Muhammed had his revelation. My favorite garden was also the saddest. There was a beautiful garden built where the harem girls who were never chosen as the sultan’s favorite committed suicide.
We’ve reached our last city of the seminar and will be headed back to Madrid tomorrow. Granada may be my favorite city because of its incredible Islamic influence. Just from the four cities we’ve been to, I’ve realized you can tell the Islamic barrios because the stone in the streets is laid out in beautiful patterns whereas the Christians just try their best for a relatively even surface.
We arrived in Sevilla yesterday but had meetings about housing and registration until dinner. Our room looks out over the rooftop of someone who also hit up the Gaffer’s mannequin sale. Please note the leg coming up along the right wall and the devil horns on the center mannequin. We walked to the Cathedral after dinner, which was the biggest in the world when it was built and is now the third biggest. When they tore down the mosque to build it, the loose translation was “Let’s build the most ridiculously huge cathedral so that other people think we’re crazy.” Today we’re touring inside the cathedral and up into La Giralda (that big tower).
We’ve spent the past two days in Cordoba and its beautiful. It’s more like Morocco than Spain because it reached its height under Islamic rule. We visited La Mezquita yesterday, a mosque built in the 700s and the second biggest in the world and the only that isn’t facing Mecca. The inside is made of hundreds of arches meant to look like a giant forest of palm trees, an oasis in the desert. Of course when the Christians conquered the city, the placed a massive cathedral inside La Mezquita but now its falling down.
I think I enjoy night here much more than the day. During the day it’s so hot that there are giant awnings stretched between building tops to shade the street. At night it cools off and all of the towers, palm trees, and fountains are beautifully lit. Today we traveled outside the city to an archeological dig of Medina Azahara. This was the city of the caliph constructed on a mountain several miles outside of Cordoba. The gardens have been reconstructed and we were told that in the height of the city, it took several pounds of bread to feed the goldfish in the gardens everyday.
We just spent four days in Toledo and now we’re on our way to Cordoba. Its about 40 students with three professors and I really like them so far. The seminar is studying the history of Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism and tracing their histories through the cities where they merged. In Toledo, we went to the first primary Cathedral in Spain and I got to go to mass there this morning. We had a great hour long lecture sitting in front of an El Greco painting and went to the central Synagogue of Spain from the 1200s. Lucia and I did a lot of wandering around the tiny streets and tried our luck conversing in Spanish. We had lunch yesterday at a Pakistani restaurant on the outskirts of the town and watched the Simpsons in Spanish. Its not quite the same thing.
