We finally returned to the Alhambra around 3 pm, since you're allowed to come a few hours earlier than your palace admit time to walk around the grounds and lesser buildings. Our first stop was the oldest part of the complex, the Alcazaba. This was the main fort built to defent the Moorish camp when they first invaded Spain. It's mostly walls and ruins now but very atmospheric from afar. Speaking of afar, that photo showing the whole complex from a far off vantage point...that's not ours. I'm making a change to the blog that will destroy its artistic integrity only to the extent our own photos were art. So from now on, supplementing our photos will be the occassional photo I steal from the web. I'll usually do this for interiors of buildings, restaurants I'm talking about etc. where it's hard to take the photos but I'd still like to keep them in our blog to help jog our memories as our mental faculties deteriorate. To be intellectually honest I was thinking of a way to highlight which ones we didn't take, but that was too complicated. So the general rule will be if the photo is particularly nice, I probably stole it. But I'm sure this will be less than ten percent of the total, because I'm too lazy to constantly be searching the web for supplemental photos.
Back to the main story, when the Catholics reconquered the complex in 1492, the Christian cross was hoisted at the fort's tower. The evicted sultan, seeing this blasphemy, cried at his great loss, whereupon his supportive mother said "Do not weep like a woman for what you could not defend like a man." Nice.