And then it became clear what everyone had been waiting for. Everyone started clapping and taking photos as this gigantic chunk of religious fervor solidifed shambled down the streets on the shoulders of what must've been a bunch of zealots to be carrying it in that heat. I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of aliens or something watching us and thinking 'wtf?' It's like all this grand metalwork and flowers and bells and what's in the top? A small piece of bread. 'Ooooh it's the sacred piece of bread! Bow down before its might!'
This slimy specimen was rushing around muttering holy phrases and touching as many children's heads as he could while trying to keep up with the pace of the parade. Also notable is his purle-haired companion.
It was cool how excited everyone got over the mayor. We haven't even had one in Wollongong for three years and no one seems to care.
Eventually we returned to the hostel bearing a less than favourable assortment of foodstuffs because everything had been closed due to the festivities. Nevertheless, Adélie, Charlie, Til and I were able to cobble something surprisingly delicious out of it.
The seemingly disparate but surprisingly compatible ingredients. This was supposed to be a 'before' shot but, as usual, I forgot to get an 'after' one.
After lunch the four of us took a walk up to the Alhambra, the fourteenth-century Moopish fortress-palace that overlooks the city. I mean Moorish, Moorish.
'Moops!' 'Moors!' 'Moops!' 'Moors!'
You have to book tickets days in advance or else show up first thing in the morning, neither of which any of us (save Adélie) had done, but you could access the gardens and this cool amphitheatre for free:
The path up to the Alhambra has two streams of water running down either side of it, with benches along the way for you to sit on and dangle your feet in. It was an awesome, and pretty, little addition for a place as hot as Granada (it'd been over forty everyday; one day I left my copy of Anil's Ghost out in the sun and it was so hot that the glue in the binding melted and the first forty pages fell out) and we sat there for probably like fifteen or twenty blissful minutes. Small things, indeed.
The path.
Forty-onnnnne!
That afternoon we went on this Granada graffiti tour with one of the hostel's employees. There are murals all over the city, especially in the old Jewish quarter, mostly painted by this one guy (whose alias might be 'El nino'?) who has a real love-hate relationship with the local government, having been both fined and given awards by them. It's really funny to me somehow that they might punish him now, but his stuff is really beautiful and artistic, as you'll see below, and if it only lasts like, a hundred years, I'm sure they'll be protected and lauded as symbols of the city.
Spot the giraffe.
The tour was pretty exacting, and the last leg involved climbing a massive hill up to Sacromonte to descend down some graffitied stairs, but everyone except the guide, his friend, one other dude, Til and me were too exhausted so it was just us. The walk was tough, but the view and the artwork were so awesome when we finally reached the top that it was well worth it.
A bit of simulacrum: a real lamp, the shadow of a real lamp, and the painting of the shadow of the real lamp.
But the other reward we got for our perseverence was even better. We reached the bottom of the stairs and were just on our way back to the hostel when we passed an older man sunning himself as he read out the front of his house. He began a conversation with us, asking each of us in turn where we were from.
'America,' our guide replied when it was his turn.
'There are many countries in America,' said our interlocutor. 'North America? South America?'
'North America,' our guide laughed. 'The United States.'
'The United States? Which ones do you mean? The United States of Mexico?'
The guide pursed his lips at the game. 'I'm from the United States of America.'
So he was eccentric, but nice as well. And fascinating. I think his name was Manny. He ended up inviting us into his front garden, where we drank from a fountain of fresh mountain water and admired a Porsche he'd been given as a gift by two German friends of his. Next he gave us a tour of his house, which was built into the caves. It was absolutely COVERED in pictures of Mirra Alfassa, the founder of this city in India which is supposed to 'realise human unity.' The movement sounded pretty cool, except that to live there you have to be 'a servant of the divine consciousness', whatever that means. I'm sure it's some vague pluralistic shell religion that accommodates all beliefs, but still.
Mirra Alfassa, aka 'The Mother'.
One of the few images in the house that wasn't of Alfassa was one of Carlos Santana, who we were told was our host's second cousin!
The last room Manny took us to was a small prayer chamber. He asked if we could observe ten seconds silence as a prayer for the world, and we obliged. He asked us to form a circle, then rearranged it so that Tilly was at its head, for symmetry because she was the only girl. He rang a gong, and after ten seconds he said something along the lines of 'Divine spirits of the cosmos, let there be peace, joy, love, truth, beauty' and any other banal hippie noun you can think of, haha.
The whole time our guide had been fidgety because he obviously hadn't accounted for this detour, and he was s'posed to be back at the hostel already. Manny wouldn't let him leave though, scolding him, 'Don't be in such a rush all the time.' We eventually escaped, however, and were left asking ourselves what ... the hell just happened?
Manny and me.
That evening we went for paella and sangria (our favourites) with AEIOUllie, Joe and his Australian wife, whose name I forget, Adélie, Charlie, and another Englishman named Johnny at Plaza Larga, the twelfth-century Moorish marketplace. In the square we vacillated between continuing on to find somewhere else or eating there, when this large, vicacious woman danced up to us and insisted we sit down at her restaurant. No one objected, so we just followed her.
She didn't hold still long enough to get a decent photo.
These little girls were dancing to the music in the square, and got all excited and giggly when thy realised we were watching them.
We finished the night with some delicious mojitos back at the hostel bar, 'cause Joe, his wife and Ellie were leaving early the next morning and Charlie, Til and I had to get up early for Alhambra tickets. We were also exhausted. I'm pretty sure that day was summer solstice, which makes sense because that day and the ones around it seemed to go on forever. By night time we could never work out if what we'd done in the mornings was the same day or the day before.
The next day when we were getting ready to head up to the Alhambra, we ran into Andy, one of the Australians from the hammock that first night, who said he'd join us. The palace was incredible. Every surface was intricately carved, tiled, or painted. Water had been brought into every aspect of the building, with beautiful fountains and opulent garden ponds everywhere. It was obviously a status symbol back then to have so much water around.
There are birds everywhere in Granada. These ones were circling the courtyard at great speed.
This was my favourite water feature: water-filled handrails for the stairs. If I'm ever rich, I'm so having these.
At one point when we were walking around, we asked Andy what he did. He told us he was a drummer and, since he knew we were from Wollongong and Sydney, he started telling us the places he'd played in the area like the Oxford, the Brass Monkey, the Oxford Art Factory and stuff. 'What was the band called?' we asked eventually, thinking it would just be some band.
'Whitley.'
...
'Whitley Whitley!?'
'Yeah, I forget when I meet Australians over here they might know it,' he said.
How crazy is that? Just, y'know, hangin' out at the Alhambra in Granada with the drummer from Whitley. Then he told us the other Aussie from the hammocks on the first night was the bass player! That arvo when we got back, after cooking up another storm out of disparate ingredients with Adélie, we spent like an hour or two lazing through the hottest part of the day in the hammocks talking about Australian music (us missing home), and asking him about which bands and artists he knew or had played with, which was pretty much everyone considering how big Whitley is and how small and Melbo-centric Australian music is.
Putting the French girl on omelette duty was a wise decision.
The spread: bread and butter; roasted almonds; chopped tomatoes with olive oil, garlic salt and black peppercorns; omelette; tuna; salsa pasta; fruit salad; and a jug of the finest chilled Granadin water.
Some time earlier, Adélie had expressed disappointment at the quality of the Moorish teashop she'd visited, saying she'd expected it to be better than she was used to at home in Paris. Since then I'd emailed Merlinda asking for suggestions on where to go, and she happened to mention As-Sirat, an authentic, traditional Arabic teashop frequented by locals and removed from most tourists by the anfractuous route through the streets needed to be taken to reach it, despite its being recommended by Lonely Planet and several other websites as the best teashop in Granada. Needless to say, I suggested we check it out.
When Merlinda had been in the city making her radioplay, she had been interviewing Leila, the owner of the shop, about Lorca (apparanetly the poet is so loved in Granada that you can ask any stranger on the street about him and be responded to enthusiastically) when she had pointed to another man sitting in the café and said to ask him about Lorca because he was a Lorca actor. The shop then became a little theatre, with the actor performing from Merlinda's book of poetry and all the patrons listening. Sadly, nothing quite that cool happened during our visit.
Yeah, nothing in that picture is in focus ... but the iced tea was delicious!
Andy, Til, Adélie, Jonathon, Charlie and me.
After As-Sirat, we walked to the other side of the city to visit the Lorca museum, which is situated in the poet-playwright's old summer house in the middle of a park. It was boiling at this point, and as we walked, Til and I couldn't believe that the landlocked city existed without a beach. For us, that type of heat is synonymous with the beach. It felt like there was a beach just around the corner at every turn, especially here:
With the icecream stand and the pavement, it felt like there should be a beach just on the other side of the park.
Alas, when we finally reached the museum, it was closed due to the festival going all week.
The exterior.
