Tuesday, October 20, 2015 The Alhambra

Today marks our ultimate tourist day, anxiously awaited. For today we visit the Alhambra, actually the Palacios Nazaries, considered by many to be the most important tourist spot in Spain, if not all of Europe. I purchased our tickets online this past June, noting even then that many of the half-hour entrance time slots had already been taken.

The Alhambra complex itself lies at the top of the main hill, La Sabica, in Granada. For once bowing to temporal reality, we hire a cab to take us up to the hilltop. We join the line to pick up our tickets for the palace. Bird and I try to sit up near the front of the line awaiting our turn. A guard officiously insists that we get at the end of the line that has one person in it, namely Bloodroot. We join Bloodroot and the guard now believes we try to jump the queue, pushing Bloodroot aside. The guard begins fussing anew. At long last, Bloodroot looks at the guard and says “juntos” (meaning “together”). The man finally buzzes off. In due time, our turn at last arrives. We enter the kiosk to claim our all-important tickets, as required using the same credit card with which I made the initial purchase way back in June.

An immense line neighbors us for those without reservations, people who neglected to purchase prepaid tickets. Do they not read their guidebooks? Every book goes on and on about the number of people wishing to visit the Alhambra. The palace sells out daily, probably by 8 AM. By 9:30, the current time, all palace tickets long ago sold for today. This does not disperse the line or even, as far as I can tell, discourage its inhabitants. You need a different ticket to visit the rest of the complex. Perhaps they desire this or think that they’ll magically get a palace ticket. Reminds one of the old Grateful Dead shows with people begging for a “miracle” ticket.

The Alhambra actually consists of a bunch of things. The Moors built Palacios Nazaries or the alcazar (palace), the alcazaba (fortress), the Generalife gardens and a surrounding medina (city). Charles V erected an unfinished rotunda palace on the property.

In a bizarre twist of fate, we follow in Keith’s mom Jean’s footsteps. She toured the Alhambra in the early 1990s on an AARP tour. We have her tour book she bought here, still full of good info. Jean pronounced the Alhambra the best thing she visited in Spain. I never met Jean. She died young, ten years before I met Keith. But I relish her gentle shaping of his soul. I reach out to touch her spirit through the Alhambra.

For the most part, Europe and her attractions tend to be old. We forget the age of what we visit until something jolts us, be it someone’s guidebook or an old photo. I once saw a photo of my grandmother Carrie standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in the 1950s. We saw the selfsame tower in 2009. Our ancestors wanted to see the same things we do and as us, sometimes they pulled it off too.

Our tickets for the Palacios Nazaries permit entry between 10 and 10:30 AM. Bloodroot won’t listen to me, his beloved mother. Quelle surprise, eh? Deciding we must be physically at the palace by 10AM sharp, Bloodroot insists we run the fifteen minute walk to the entrance. Bloodroot charges ahead, blazing the path. Arriving at 9:50, we learn that the guards forbid entry until 10AM. Thus, arriving early only has cast us into another line.

The guards approach. They maneuver us ahead of the crowd, supplying a removable ramp to cover a set of steps, and set us near the palace entrance to wait. The crowd threatens to overflow, spilling past the line behind us. Like us, they’re forbidden entry prior to 10AM. We all wait, as the guards before the palace doors have machines that must say 10AM before they can stamp our tickets and open the doors.

10AM, here we go! The alcazar, or the sultan’s palace, formed the last stand facing the reconquista. We enter a dim, almost hushed space, mesmerized by the incredible tilework we find in the first room. 

The palace opens into bright light as we enter the first courtyard, the courtyard of the Myrtles. Hedges surround a swimming pool. The palace displays water, wealth in the Islamic world. Water gracefully flows everywhere, sparkling like gold, leaving us humbled by the sultan’s wealth.

From the courtyard, we access a more dimly lit room, the Grand Hall of the Ambassadors. Here, years ago, the sultan would receive you. As our eyes adjust, we see the perfect star covered ceiling and Arabic script everywhere. The room reverberates with history. We picture, almost unwillingly shoved back in time, the reconquista ending here. A bit later, Columbus talked Isabella into financing his voyage in the very same room.

We enter the next courtyard, the Courtyard of the Lions. Per the Rick Steves’ bible, the Jewish community gave the sultan the fountain with twelve lions, one for each tribe of Israel. Water splashes from each lion’s mouth. When the Christians conquered in 1492, they took apart the fountain to see how it worked. They weren’t smart enough to put it back together correctly, but did display the pieces. Fully restored in 2012, the fountain with its flowing water delights us.

While I commune with the Jewish lions, desperately trying to remember the name of even one tribe of Israel, the boys disappear into the sultan’s private rooms, sadly wheelchair inaccessible. Unfortunately, guards prevent the boys sneaking me and Bird into the forbidden area. Bear describes a maze filled with rooms, hallways and staircases bursting with intricately carved wood, filigreed windows filled with wavy thick glass. Peering through the glass produces an antique look to the world. Randomly, beautiful courtyards spring open when you descend one stair. “I also saw amazing private gardens, with a beautiful view across a ravine looking at a church,” rhapsodizes Bear.

Numerous rooms branch off of this courtyard, sadly inaccessible for me. The boys explore them all.

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Leaving the palace, we look for something to eat. Trapped once more in a tourist hell, we buy some amazingly bad sandwiches. We eat our crappy sandwiches while sitting outside overlooking a drop off into a lower inaccessible pavilion. We spot some really heavy cats. The cats own the place and have taken it over, but why are these feral cats so fat? Living the good life? Watching the other tourists and the cats, we see people throw the lousy sandwiches to the cats. Eschewing the bread parts, the cats eat the cheese and quasi-meaty parts. But they get so much food they can be picky, often leaving the tourist offerings untouched. Watching the cats forms the best part of the meal.

We eat enough of the quasi-sandwiches to stave off crazy hunger. Full enough to feed the cats too, we then toss our lunch remains (sadly most of it) and leave the stand of questionable sandwiches.

We next visit Charles V’s palace, a two-story circular open-air place. Thankfully, conquering Charles (grandson of Isabel & Ferdinand) built his palace next to, instead of on top of, the Palacio Nazaries. Charles’s son, Philip II, didn’t finish the palace, choosing instead to build El Escorial while leaving his dad’s place exposed to the elements. The place has perfect acoustics. Anything you say in the middle of the circle can be heard all around. The boys set me into the courtyard’s center. I begin to declaim Macbeth. For some reason, they hurriedly push me away, long before I finish.

We take a secret lift upstairs to find Oh God more art( a fine arts museum). I just can’t take any more art. Can you believe that I would ever even think that? Much less utter the statement? We walk around the courtyard and ask to go back downstairs. Keith resists, of course, sucked in by yet another art museum. We leave, ignoring his protests. We threaten to visit another church, bringing instant compliance with our wishes.

On to the fort that defended the city! From the bottom of the hill at the fort’s base, we peer into the fort, seeing a maze of steps, not at all accessible. We part ways with Bloodroot because he wants to see the fort. He promises to meet us right outside the gate of the gardens.

Now we wish to tour the fabled Generalife Gardens. Taking various paths, Keith and I wander through the gardens. Keith likes the olive trees, the pomegranates, and especially the view of the palace from the gardens. We encounter steps repeatedly preventing me from seeing much of the gardens. Keith parks Bird and I, then disappears down a cripple-forbidden path. He sees the Alhambra again, liking the view, as it occasionally pops up as an amazing background item.  Bloodroot actually eventually finds us. He expresses his disappointment in the fort. “Lots of steps. Not much to see.”  Following Bloodroot’s lead, we see another secret part of the gardens, as he takes us on a step free tour.

Gardened and palaced out, we make to depart. As we learned from the morning taxi ride, the palace complex sits upon the tallest hill in town. As we all know, the high ground is priceless militarily. Leaving, we decide to walk down the tour bus road. Rounding the first bend, I spot two Roma with fists full of rosemary standing at the base of stairs descending directly from the Alhambra. I believe I watch them discuss, rosemary waving about, how they will perpetrate their scam on the people walking down the stairs. I also believe the Roma consider wheelchairs unlucky. Unlike prior wheelchair-free trips, on this one no Roma approach us. For what it’s worth, the rosemary scam involves a gypsy (Roma) aggressively pushing a sprig of rosemary on you then demanding five euros compensation as coins are unlucky. The bible warns us of this. We see a good bit less of the scam than we had expected, perhaps because by October the main tourist season has ended.

Leaving the stairs behind, walking downhill, we see how incredibly clever the Moors were with water. Old, very old, tile lined courses next to the road easily handle all the water coming off the hill. The roadway, tree lined and green, feels more gardeny than the official gardens. We watch the water dart here and there, under the road at times. It’s still summer here. We walk under a green leafy place. Eventually, we come to an archway. We enter the city through a gate again finding ourselves on the outskirts of the Albayzin.

The boys know our location. Left to my own devices, I would wander witless and die. We wander slowly back to our flat. Our last official day of vacation ends with the group too tired to cook. We stop to eat our dinner at a place called Abades Paco Martin. We are the only customers in the huge restaurant, never a good sign. Apparently adept at feeding large tour groups, the mediocre food does fill us up. We return to our flat and turn in for the night.

Monday, October 19, 2015 Granada

Today we leave Madrid for Granada, a major trek. The high-speed train tracks lead to Malaga. We ride the bullet train (AVE, or “bird”) from Puerta de Atocha to Antequera Santa Ana.

My computer gives up the ghost on the train, the battery refusing to restart. Since his arrival in Madrid, Bloodroot has refused to power down the computer correctly via Windows 10. He simply slams the top closed, so that by the time the poor thing finally shuts down, he has completely drained the battery. Alas, alack: the computer defeats us, by simply quitting. Would the battery have given up the ghost anyway? Of course, but probably not so soon. Going forward, we have only our phones. I have a dumb phone, albeit with a phone number and international access. Bloodroot has an iPhone without a number and the disposable phone he purchased at the Madrid airport. Can we, as 21^st-century people, survive with such limited access to the internet? We boldly venture forth.

In the physical world, at Antequera Santa Ana, the train abandons us, booting us out to a waiting bus. Fortunately, we spent all that time on Saturday at Puerta de Atocha (Madrid’s main train depot), thus RENFE expects us. The employees on the lookout for a family of three with a wheelchair quickly locate us. Somehow the RENFE bus just feels higher level, perhaps because unlike the lifts in El Escorial buses, this operational lift goes up and down. Big bonus, the employees actually can operate the lift! They rapidly load me onto the bus.

The bus trip allows us to see things passing by more slowly than the train did. We see lots and lots of olive trees. According to the Bear, we pass nothing else. He considers our current journey down to Granada to be a trip through a wasteland. Looking more closely, I feel North Africa and Maghreb approaching through the dry yellow hills surrounding us.

For the duration of the bus trip, I stay in my uncomfortable wheelchair (“Humph!” says Bird) as I really don’t want to have an argument with RENFE.

I speak of the joys of various trips with a woman across the aisle. Her fluent unaccented English leads me to believe her to be a fellow American. Wrong! She’s Dutch. She encourages me to travel, explaining that she spends all her disposable time and income doing so. She has just spent a few weeks in the south of Spain. Now heading for Granada, she sadly admits that she hadn’t booked a ticket in advance for the Alhambra, forcing her to instead buy a spot on an overpriced tour.

Arriving at the Granada train station, we leave the bus behind. Accustomed to huge American taxis, we fruitlessly search for a reasonably sized cab, at least a Prius station wagon, for goodness sake! Luck deserts us. We pile into a cab far too small for us. In this tiny car, we hook Tinky the Walker around Keith’s neck and cram his wheels behind my back. Each time the cabbie brakes, my back uncomfortably bangs against the Tinky’s wheels. Fortunately, the taxi quickly delivers us to our new Airbnb flat.

Using the dumb phone, we contact Emilio, our Airbnb host. He meets us at the apartment and lets us in. Our beautiful flat boasts marble floors and delightful balcony windows. Keith and I take the twin beds next to the bathroom so that I needn’t walk so far with Tinky. Bloodroot gets the big double bed at the opposite side of the flat. Now the bathroom has a bidet beside the toilet, which I must maneuver Tinky around. Each time I visit the pot I think, “Who put this fucking bidet in my way?”

Safely settled in, what shall we do? As the clock says only 2PM, let’s tour! We take off for the Royal Chapel, Ferdinand and Isabella’s tomb. Entering, we eavesdrop on an English tour passing by.

History considers Isabella the brighter of the two Reyes Católicos (Catholic Kings), in our parlance “the brains behind Pa.” On their sarcophagi, her sculpted face holds greater intelligence but more otherworldly calm, as if contemplating eternity with serenity as she faces down Death. I believe Death may have been scared, for once.

By marriage, Isabella (Elisabeth in English) and Ferdinand united the Iberian Peninsula, creating Spain. Together they completed the Reconquista (re-conquest), triumphing over the Moors. Intensely Catholic, they believed that all of Spain (actually all of Europe) should have one religion, Catholicism. Earlier, in 1480, to maintain Catholic orthodoxy and enforce/insure compliance they instituted the Spanish Inquisition, headed by one Tomás de Torquemada.

After 1492, the Inquisition focused mainly on the recently, forcibly converted Jews and Muslims. Never the bugaboo created by the fervid 19^th-century Protestant writers, the Inquisition began as a government sponsored channel to eliminate extra-judicial killings. Historical records, although undeniably spotty, have the court examining 150,000 people and murdering 3,000. (Other sources claim 5,000 victims.) But the auto de fes, with the human torches, provided massive spectacle and propaganda, no? To extract confessions, the court did use torture (theoretically only in 15-minute sessions and leaving no permanent damage). Torture, a legal norm at the time, produced acceptable confessions. The court also relied upon elaborate inter-community spying, reminiscent of the East German Stasi, 450 years later.

Back to Isabella, who perished first, preceding her husband Ferdinand in death by a few years. Ferdinand, a poorly behaved widower, did his utmost to steal kingdoms not rightfully his, including hers. She died believing she had accomplished great things—Spain regained, united under one religion, wholly Catholic, rich beyond belief from the discovery of the Americas. She never knew what havoc her actions bequeathed her descendants, her country, and the world.

The couple had many children, five surviving childhood. Their daughter Catherine married Henry VIII of England. Henry VIII’s & Catherine’s child, Mary Tudor (aka Mary I), inherited her mother’s and grandmother’s overzealous Catholicism, raining down disaster upon England during her short reign. Immense joy had greeted her Spanish princess mother’s (Catherine’s) marriage but times changed. Mary lost her popular acclaim by marrying her first cousin once removed, Philip II. The English had no desire to rejoin the Spanish royal family. To add insult to injury, Mary began burning people, in the name of God, of course. History has not been over-kind to her. In England, Mary Tudor became Bloody Mary, nearly universally reviled, yet in Spain, Madrid has a subway stop named for her (Maria Tudor). Guess it depends which side you’re on.

My favorite of Isabella’s children is Juana la Loca (Joanna the Crazy). She married the playboy prince Philip the Fair. Her obsession with him compelled her to drag about his coffin for years, earning her the ”Mad” epithet. She inherited the Spanish crown, but her son Carlos, ruling in her name, ensured she remained incarcerated as a lunatic. Current historians debate the level of her purported insanity, given her son’s self-serving behavior. Artists love Juana; we saw many paintings of her in the Prado. Think about it. What great material!

Returning to here and now, leaving the sarcophagus, Bloodroot goes down into the crypt, inaccessible to me because once again we encounter “fucking steps”.

Keith returns to our flat as Bloodroot and I tour a madrasa or Islamic school. The school hasn’t been operational since the Reconquista in 1492. A previous unenlightened generation plastered over the school’s incredible Moorish engravings in the walls. One day, perhaps 50 years ago, some of the plaster fell off of the wall revealing amazing hidden beauty. Curators carefully removed all the remaining plaster to discover that whatever zealous Christian who had covered all the Moorish artwork had done us all an immense favor. Protected from the elements, the geometric intricacies carved into the stone retain their bright green, red and blue paint, reminding Bloodroot of the vibrant medieval colors in Louis IX’s Sainte Chapelle in Paris, all the more so for its beautiful tile. An uncovered window points toward Mecca, channeling the prayers of ancient students in the correct direction.

We return home, retrieving Keith. Leaving the flat, we walk to the old Moorish neighborhood called the Albayzin, and begin to wander. Narrow alleys containing lots of steps wind their way up the hill. The thousand-year-old neighborhood laughs at the concept of wheelchair accessibility. Fortunately, I travel with two people who don’t believe in handicap inaccessibility. The shallow stairs have one step up then 10 or 20 feet flat. We pick a restaurant from Rick Steves’ bible. Bloodroot, using his GPS, guides us on a meandering path to the restaurant. Looking around we note every available space holds a stall staffed by merchants aggressively hawking souvenirs, the identical souvenirs probably all made in China.

As we ascend, a woman steps out of a restaurant, inviting us in. No way! Bloodroot has decided that we will dine at the place mentioned in the Rick Steves’ bible. Following his lead, we ascend the many steps, at long last finding the storied restaurant. We look up. A  flight of perhaps twenty much steeper steps lies between us on the street and the restaurant. Accepting defeat, never easy for the males, we began to descend. We return to the restaurant where the woman had beckoned to us earlier.

This Moroccan-style restaurant, Terteria Kasbah, has low tables and backless chairs, definitely a challenge. Somehow, the boys get me out of Bird and onto the edge of the table in a booth with a back, while they take the backless chairs. (Balance, a big problem with MS, demands chairs with armrests and a back. I tumble easily to the floor.) Hookah pipes seem to be everywhere. We try to avoid them as we really don’t want to breathe tobacco smoke while we dine. Looking in a stall across the alley, I see some lamps I like. Unfortunately, they don’t match our mid-century modern house back in Denver. And how would we get them home in one piece? Easily cowed by the boys, I give up. We enjoy the reasonably priced, Moroccan food. I devour my eggplant dish. After dinner, we smell more hookahs coming out to various tables. The tobacco, heavily cut with fruitish smells, primarily apple, wafts by pleasantly. Remember the old saw about tobacco settling the stomach? May be true!

Sated, we bumpily return to our high-end Airbnb and turn in for the night.