Distance: None
Country: Spain
Song of the Day: Strangest Tribe - Pearl Jam
This morning I got up and went to the Alhambra. I wanted to leave time open to spend all day there. The Alhambra is both a fortress and palace. Or, two palaces if you want to be technical. The main one is the Nasrid palace. It really is impressive. Arabic architecture and craftsmanship. Almost every surface is covered with some
kind of decoration. It really does look like a palace. The rooms are bare when you go through them, but you can imagine how impressive it must have been 800 years ago. Also, by the time I went to the central courtyard it had started to snow. Giant wet flakes of snow coming down everywhere. It was spectacular.After that I headed over to the Alcazaba. This is the
military fortress sticking out from the rock promontory. Again, the rooms and towers were bare, so it was hard to tell how most of them were used. It was also in stark contrast to the previous palace in that it was bereft of basically all decoration. This was just a military encampment. So all the buildings were fairly utilitarian.There is also the palace of Charles V, which was built during the Renaissance. Architecturally it is quite intriguing. It is a square building with a circular central courtyard. Beyond that though, it is pretty boring. There is no indication of its history or how it was used. There was a museum about the Alhambra inside, but it was closed. If I have one complaint about the visit, it was that there wasn't much explanation about the history. Ah well.
For dinner Ben was going to make some pizza. So I thought that would have been great. Well, I guess they didn't have something for pizza, so he ended up making pasta instead. The food was great, and it was fun just hanging out. I basically spent the whole evening at the hostel talking with people. I met a few who were interested in my bike trip and had questions about how it all worked. I do try to encourage people along where I can.
-Dravis
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