Panoramic vistas are an added plus from the
Alcazaba. The sea of white buildings on a hill is the old Moorish district, while the sprawl on the plane is the modern city of Granada, with the cathedral dominating the skyline.

Just some more sights of downtown Granada. I've stretched out the posts to give you an idea of how much time we spent waiting for our Alhambra time slot. Note the fake smiles on Catherine and Tracey as they listen to the history lecture in the previous post.

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?

68. Granada

Thursday was our other big group trip, to Granada. Granada is still in Andalucia but away from the Costa del Sol, and ranks with Sevilla and Cordoba as the must see cities of Andalucia. Unlike the other two, however, Granada is really a one-hit wonder, as the home of the world famous and extremely popular Moorish palace of Alhambra. The popularity is important, because we drove a couple of hours to get here, got lost in the big, pretty non-descript city to arrive at the Alhambra gate around 10 am. We managed to snag almost the last tickets of the day, but the downside is we weren't allowed in until 6 pm.