To kill time, we walked downhill to the city centre, which is quite large, and meandered about until ending up at what appeared to be the main square. We spent a few hours here, eating a very leisurely lunch and doing some shoe shopping. Let's talk a bit about the city's history as we linger over our flan and red wine, shall we? As you know, Andalucia was the center of the Moorish kingdom in Spain, and the last part of the country to be recovered by the Christians. Seville and Cordoba were world famous centers of Muslim learning and culture, but they were conquered by the Christians in the thirteenth century. Granada, which had been a pretty small backwater, became the new Moorish capital largely because it was the city farthest from the ever encroaching border. Refugees from the rest of Andalucia swelled Granada's population, and for 200 years the city prospered as the last Moorish capital until finally being conquered by Catholic Spain in 1492. The Moors and Jews were then expelled to Africa and hordes of Spaniards from Madrid were imported to completely erase the last traces of Moorish influence. Pretty serious stuff for lunch talk, no?