from Granada to Ronda

I had been meaning to get up for a sunrise this entire trip and I think I forever would have felt the regret of not doing it here, in Granada. Especially since we are a five minute walk from perhaps the best vantage point in town toward the east and toward the Alhambra. And, too, in this part of the world, the January sun rises at a hefty 8 o’clock.

And yet it’s not easy to get out of bed. Our guest house, among its other stellar qualities, has the best pillows I’ve ever slept on (by contrast, at home we have the oldest, lumpiest things in the Midwest and possibly the whole continent). Still, it is our last morning here and I note a thin band of clouds at the horizon – always a good thing at sunrise. So I’m up.

I walk up to the small square by San Nicolas. A handful of our old hippie friends are there, drinking coffee, talking amicably.

We wait and watch.

Perhaps my memory is not serving me well, but truly, I can’t think when I have ever seen such blazing color in the sky. (The photos here are exactly right – I compared each one to the scene before me.)

It’s a trilogy of stunning vistas that grabs your attention – the fire in the sky, the white peaks of the Sierra Nevada, not so white now in the light of the rising sun, and of course, the Alhambra, taking the back seat at first, emerging ever so slowly from the shadows of the night.





I can’t get enough of it (and therefore, you’re likely to get too much of it).





Slowly, the color fades and the sky becomes lighter. I leave, but the image is now set in my head: Alhambra, dramatically emerging, under a blazing sky.






The morning is quiet for us. Because it’s a holiday, the breakfast helper is off and the matriarch is there, tending to the morning buffet and I chat with her (no, I do not speak Spanish, but I understand it because it is so very close to Italian and in any case, she speaks fluent French) about this great project of the hotel.

It’s a family business. Mom and dad, both doctors, two daughters and a son – all lawyers. Six years ago, the house of their dreams, of her dreams really (an old Arab sultan’s home, predating at the foundation even the Alhambra, she tells me), is finally for sale. They give up their professions and together plunge their efforts into the running of the guest house.

To say they do a fantastic job is the understatement of the year.

But she wont part with the recipe for the orange liquor.
Too complicated, she tells me. Besides, you can’t get the base liquor anywhere but here, in Granada. It’s her mother’s secret recipe. Darn.






For the remaining morning hours, Ed and I work, each in our favorite place (I’m downstairs in the living area, he’s upstairs, propped by the puffy pillows).

And then it’s early afternoon: time for our hike to the train station. We pass the café where we had lunched twice during our stay here. The owner waves and wishes us a good day. I have a tiny regret about leaving. We could idle away another day, another week perhaps? No, not this time.


Down we go, past the morning scenes of a southern city in Spain, where oranges are as common as potatoes are in Poland and where people wear thick coats and wooly scarves when the temperature dips to a cool... fifty-five.











The train is there, waiting. A last wave to Granada and we board the local for the 2.5 hour ride to Ronda.

Say what? Where’s Ronda? Well, if you went toward the Mediterranean coast on a diagonal, two thirds of the way there, you’d pass Ronda.

Traveling in the off off season is interesting because much of the world of inns and guest houses closes down for the ‘cold months.’ Since we avoid big hotels like the plague and our budget is deliberately quite small, but my taste for clean and honest quite high, this poses limits on where we can go. I spend many lonely hours on the Internet in early fall tracking down places and writing emails to see who would be open for business. Ronda, a hill town quite known for its very unusual location, has one such place.

So we’re speeding along to Ronda, past....






...right: olive groves... and I think how easy it is to get attached to places. I missed Seville when we left it and now I’m thinking how terrific it would be to sit on a sunny bench in Granada.

Never get too comfortable, never get too comfortable...

We get off the train in Ronda and my immediate reaction is quite negative. The town is too big for us! It’s fine to be in Seville, in Granada – you expect cities there. But here, in Ronda, I was hoping we’d find quiet.

We walk from the train station to our even tinier hotel (Ed is delighted – it’s a one star place, meaning, the bottom of the heap) and along the way, we bump against the festive crowds. So many people! For a town of 30,000, Ronda seems to have gathered all of them here for one last hurrah.

So I’m a tad disheartened by this. Ronda was to be our escape. Instead, it feels a bit like a smaller version of... a bigger town. Pretty, yes, definitely that. But it takes a good while for the street to clear of the rush of cars so that I can take a photo.


 



 



Except, as my senses adjust to the new reality (it’s not Granada and it’s not a quiet), a good, kind face begins to emerge.

Start with the hotel – called the Ronda. A family home, recently converted to a guest house, with spirit. Similar story as in Granada, but the Ronda is humbler, much much humbler. The owners live on one part of the house still. There are five rooms that they rent out and each has a splash of color and a contemporary art piece. It’s very very simple, but truly delightful.


 




 




 


On my Escanaba scale, it’s half the price of an Econolodge (coming in at 66 Euros per night, with great WiFi!).

The owner is intrigued by my name and background. Poland... ah, Poland. Nice country. But you seem more American... she says. Do I? I suppose I’m no longer surprised.


Then, too, you have to know this about Ronda: it’s location is crazy fantastic. It’s perched at the edge of a deep gorge.







Who would build a city here is beyond me, but there you have it – Ronda is actually one of the oldest towns in Spain, having, too, a Moorish past, greatly influencing the present character of the town. It brags at being also the town that made bullfighting fashionable, but we'll pass on exploring this further. There is, however, an old arena here and bulls are... prominently featured all over town.






We get our bearings in the late afternoon and note that Ronda has more eateries concentrated in the center of town than possibly all of Madison. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but not a huge one. And they are very well priced. Set menus (3 courses) for 10 or 11 Euros, tax and service included. No wonder the whole town is engaged in a continuous moving feast.

Yes, it’s a holiday (Three Kings) and people are out and about, buying up the cakes...


 


...pausing at cafés, shifting then to tapas bars, and finally to the bodega for a full evening meal. And I see that fashion runs high here. At least in the shoe department. Women like their heels, even when pushing a baby carriage over cobbles.











And children are dressed up. Girls wear ribbons in their hair.



 


This is the way of the old world. Put on your fine apparel and spend your day in the company of others. No wonder we appear so... American, me with my comfy walking shoes that do well in cities and mountains alike, Ed -- well, he’s looking a lot spiffier since a friend took pity on him and gave him some dollar barrel t-shirts. So far, no tears.


Ronda's looking lovely. And the same moon shines over her as the one over Granada.






We go out again, after nine, in search of dinner. This small bodega wins...


 



...for its menu -- with paella and shrimp pal pal. We’ve become great fans of both.











The bodega is, predictably, family run – a five table place that fills quickly with people who probably prefer to have someone do the cooking for them on this day, on most any day.

It’s a delicious feast for us and we leave happy, bantering about what place to eat on the next day and the day after.

Ronda. What a splendid little town!

The Alhambra

The moon comes to the forge,
in her creamy-white petticoat.
The child stares, stares.
The child is staring at her...
 ~ Federico García Lorca


The moon climbs over the summer Palace of the Generalife. It isn’t a full moon and it isn’t dark yet, but we had just walked through those very palatial arches and taken such delight in the delicate carvings and the sweeping views to the hills of Granada that it seems an added bonus to watch the moon now begin its sweeping arch just there, at the northern most tip of the Alhambra.

It is our day to visit this grand palatial fortress.

But not immediately. I’d reserved a late afternoon hour (3:30) to enter the Nasrid Palace of the Alhambra. That means that we can pick up our tickets anytime after 2 p.m. and spend the time before and the time after the Nasrid walking through the Alhambra grounds, poking into old baths and climbing ancient towers, idling our way through the enormous complex however we please – until 6 p.m., when the Alhambra closes its gates to visitors for the day.

[My apologies for a terribly long post; it could not be otherwise.]

Part I

And so we have a morning to still give over to Granada. After, we can refresh ourselves, rest a little maybe and proceed to the Alhambra.

That is the plan. And initially, the pieces fall into place: we walk down the now familiar alleys of the Arab Quarter, down to the interesting Calle de Elvira, pretty now in the morning light...



elvira


...and I do go to the Cathedral, though not for long (Ed waits outside). And it is dazzling, in an empty sort of way. Without many visitors, the vast ornate space seems remote and, to me, rather cold. Or maybe it's that the January air is not very forgiving here, in this cavernous interior.

I want us to walk then to Granada’s park and perhaps poke into the summer residence of Grenada’s celebrated poet, Federico García Lorca, but here I take a wrong turn. A completely 180 degree wrong turn. We walk through the commercial heart of Granada...







...and the streets became more and more crowded, as it is the day before the great Feast of the Three Kings – another holiday gift giving situation for children, I hear, and it seems that everyone is doing last minute errands because in the course of the hour, the streets fill with crowds of shoppers.

We poke into several bakeries, for the fun of it, settling finally on a few tidbits for later...



pastry


...and we have an errand too – a comb for me since I managed to break one earlier. Only after an hour or so of rambling around town does it strike me that we are not where we should be.

Eventually we do find the park – not hard, it’s Granada’s dominant green space after all – but by then the summer house of Lorca is closing...



Lorca summer house


... and indeed, the guard there tells us it wont be open again for several days as we are in the middle of the great Fete.

No matter. Ed takes to a bench...



Ed on bench


...and I stroll. The park has a grand rose garden, but the blooms are mostly faded and in fact, the maintenance crew is just now clipping back the spent roses. But they haven’t gotten to this patch yet, where an occasional flower still proudly displays her petals.



winter rose


There are the usual strollers and wanderers and children playing and parents hovering over their little guys...



family


...and it’s all very pleasant, except that it’s now getting late and here we are in the park of Lorca rather than in our guest house preparing for the afternoon at the Alhambra.

We pause at a bakery for a quick pick-me-up espresso and pastry (and my oh my, is the bakery part crowded now with a holiday cake buying public!)...



quick espresso


...though I notice that others prefer wine over coffee...



wine


And now it is time to hike up the hill to the Alhambra.

Part II

As if there wasn't enough of a build-up,  the walk up to the palatial compound is uphill, ceremonial almost. A slow approach, as if you should brace yourself for what's before you.

As we go through the first gates, I see that I got the images all wrong. From across the hills, the Alhambra looks stark and fortified. What you don't see is the vast natural setting -- the park outside the walls, the great gardens within.

We pass through a monstrous gate -- and it's the wrong gate for us. (Better prepared visitors know to head right up to the top where there is an efficient retrieval of prepaid tickets.) Up we climb even further... and now we are there.

You get a tremor when you enter the fortification, you really do. (Ed would dispute this.)  It's only 2:15 and we have time to visit the Palace of the Generalife first (no lines here and very few visitors -- it's a tad to the side and requires more of an uphill climb, so I suspect most pass on it, which is very pleasant for those who do take the detour).

I think you get the idea of how vast the Alhambra is as you look down toward the buildings at the lower end of the fortress, from the gardens of the Generalife.





For me, the delight here is the courtyard.


 

 
In these winter months, the Alhambra gardens look winter bare. Yes, there's stark beauty in them and many never shed their green leaves so that you can't really think of it as desolate. But at the summer palace, the garden explodes still with flowers that refuse to give in to the season. The entire effect is absolutely lovely.

We are where the sultans found their delights and recreation and here you get the first twinge of realization how much human toil and effort was expanded for the pleasure of just a few.






And just as from the hills of the Arab Quarter you can gaze at the Alhambra, so, too, from the Alhambra, you can gaze at the Albaicín.





We leave the summer palace and walk down toward the Palace of the Nasrids (without question the most famous Spanish Islamic edifice in the world). It's a very well planned circuit: your map tells you where you are and where you should go next and there are agents who electronically check your ticket at entry points -- you may enter any of the listed sights only once. The crowd control here is exquisite. This just astonishes me: you never feel that there are many visitors here. Indeed, we pause more than once to sit on a bench and in the space of minutes, we see very few people. I read that in the summer months, some 6000 come up to the Alhambra each day. Now, there may be fewer, but still, most time slots for the Palace of the Nasrids were full. And yet, as you stroll through the Alhambra grounds, you never feel overwhelmed by the presence of others.


We come to the entrance of the great palace and this requires you to stay with your time slot. The line is forming already. Several hundred visitors, waiting for 3:30. We decide to take the tail end, to be the last ones in. The line is long enough that if you are last, you are just barely ahead of the next (4 pm) group. And still, it's a good plan. As we enter the palace, we feel unrushed. At times, we have a corner of it to ourselves.






Here's where I could overwhelm even the most patient Ocean reader with too much of everything. So let me hush down the words and let a few images give you a feeling of seeing it on your own. In the golden light of the late afternoon.






































(can't resist)


It is so beautiful, all of it, that I find myself tearing up more than once. Ed's amused with me, but I can tell that it's all rubbing off a little. He's been here before, as a high school student. And he tells me it feels different now. The things that stand out change over time. And they change with the seasons, so that I have to believe that on a hot summer afternoon, our pleasure would be entirely of a different kind.


We have the one photo request, because it seems so important to document our presence (to me at least)...






And then we pass through the baths...





...and we leave the Palace of the Nasrids.


You need a moment to recover. But not just yet, take in one more brilliant reflection (this is of the Partal Palace)...






...give a nod to the pomegranate (Grananda can be translated to mean that)...





...then find a space to sit down. We do. An empty bench, facing the quickly descending sun. It's 5:30, but that means we still have a good half hour at the Alhambra. We go to the southern most tip -- the Watch Tower -- the oldest part of the Alhambra complex.

As the brick walls change from yellow to orange, we look out at the moon climbing higher still, and at the hills beyond, distantly, where the crumbling abbey stands...





...and of course, onto our beloved Arab Quarter...





We watch the sun set over Granada from the top of the Tower, as if we haven't been moved enough yet and so there is this additional emotional layer, because setting suns, in their beauty and grandness are always that for me...






To the back, the mountains of the Sierra Nevada take on the red glow of a dazzling light. Yes, that's the moon -- creeping up on the photo so as not to be forgotten.





And now it's time to go.

We leave with one last look at the mountains, there, peeking through, between the trees...






Time to pass through the gate. We all are made mellow by the visit. A child holds a father's hand, a lover puts his arm around his sweet one...






And of course, I get a bit weepy. Happy stuff. It's the way I am.

And hungry -- I'm that too. We've done a lot of rambling and walking and, on my part, emoting. So the appetite surges. It's after six and I know there is a celebratory gathering of children, Three Kings, all that, in downtown Granada, but our moods are elsewhere and so we climb up toward the Arab Quarter (it's more commercial at the base of the hill)...


 


...and we find a tiny place where the owner serves us plates of cheese and olives...





...and because I'm hungry still, a bowl of Andalusian gazpacho.





The walk up to our guest house is now in darkness. We pass a small church (there are so many here!) and we peek inside to find nuns cloaked in white, almost ghostly from the back, chanting in prayer...





We retreat quietly and climb some more. Every now and then, there'll be an open doorway, maybe with a table outside...





...but mostly, the city is now in the deep shadow of the night.

We have time to rest before dinner. Our last big meal in Granada is one with a view and it has good food, great food even, but the setting is just a tad too formal and so we limit ourselves to just one dish -- calamari for me -- and it is pleasant enough, but we both admit that we should have just stayed with a local bar, perhaps for a tapas or two. Still, food here is inexpensive (at least as compared with Madison) and we leave happy, especially since the owner, noting my camera, takes me upstairs to the rooftop, from where I see the twinkling lights of our neighborhood...





...and on the hill before us, the magnificent Alhambra.