Granada--2nd Day

I moved a little more slowly today--felt like I had been running all over the Alhambra yesterday as if to take everything in at once. I began with the bus tour of the city. Sprawling over hills and valleys, modern Granada has almost 400,000 people in it. Scattered throughout the city rest the remains of many older cultures almost crowded out by new construction. The bus takes riders up the hill of the Alhambra by circling around from the North and provides, along the way, a wonderful view of the highest peaks in the Sierra Nevada range. Only alout 35 miles away, three of them top 10,000 feet and one reaches almost 11,000. The ski resort there is Europe´s southernmost such vacation spot (the bus came with a running commentary about local features). In fact, Granada has applied to be a host city for the next available Winter Olympics (don´t know when that is). At the top of the Alhambra, the real size of the ancient city reveals itself; there were remains still being excavated outside the defensive walls that I visited yesterday.

After the round-about of the modern city, I took the tour of the old town that consists of winding streets too narrow for any bus to traverse. At one shop, I bought a copy of Washington Irving´s ¨Tales of the Alhambra¨ that was wonderfully illustrated with photos of the sites I´d seen yesterday. Then, I made my way up a hill to the 16th-century church of El Salvador. The church, a small, local parish, was fairly unremarkable, but the view was incomparable. Sitting atop a hill beside the Alhambra, the plaza of the church affords a panoramic view of the Alhambra streached out in its length. I took a seat at one end of the plaza in the cool Spanish sun and began reading Irving´s tale of ¨The Three Daughters¨--didn´t stop until I´d finished the story of ¨The Poor Mason.¨ Now, this is how I should have my students read Irving next time I teach survey of American Literature--first, we get on a plane and fly to Spain . . . . Halfway down the hill, there was a "Cervaseria." The only way I know how to translate that is "little beer shop." They were offering an afternoon special: one small beer and one order of ¨tapa de dia¨ for only €1.5 (that´s about two bucks). I´m not much of a beer drinker (despite what Mark Coley will tell you), but that sounded tasty. The beer in Spain is COLD; the Spanish, like Americans, want their cold drinks cold--unlike the British for whom "cold" means "not actually hot." It was the local brew--"Alhambra," of course--and a small, cold glass was perfect. The tapas of the day turned out to be a piece of flat bread with a heaping tablespoon of spinach, sprinkled liberally with goat cheese, and topped with a slice of boiled egg. Show me where you can find this snack in the mall!

In the late afternoon, I visited the Carthusian monastery--included in its art collection were a pair of Murillos--and then made my way over to the home of author Garcia Lorca. Lorca´s house is a national museum and has been surrounded with a lovely municipal park. I had the uncomfortable feeling that the flower-laden park was almost Spain´s apology to its poet. You may not know that Lorca was captured from his home and executed in 1936 in Granada during the chaos of the Spanish Civil War. Great authors have a way of speaking too near the heart of things to be endured by some governments. I concluded the day with a visit to a pair of churches, San Juan de Dios Basilica and Santos Justo y Pastor Chruch. The former was stylistically Renaissance and the latter New-Classical--I wish I´d had my students there because the differences between the styles couldn´t have been more profound. At 7:20 in the evening, just as I came out of Santos Justo, mass ended around the city; I cannot successfully relate the din of chruch bells that surrounded me for about three minutes. Of course, I thought of E. A. Poe´s poem "The Bells"--¨the tintinabulation that so musically swells of the bells, bells, bells, bells . . .¨ but that´s only because I can´t escape being an English teacher.

Tomorrow, back to the bus and on to the cathedral town of Jaën. Don´t know if I´ll find an internet connection until I reach Córdoba. But tonight, I´ll just walk back to my hotel with a little more Poe in my head: ¨while the stars that over sprinkle all the heavens seem to twinkle with a crystaline delight.¨ Good night, Texas.