Saturday March 1

The CIEE Advanced Liberal Arts program (about 30 of us) headed to Granada this weekend. We left Saturday morning around 9 am from the university building. The bus took 4 hours with only one quick stop. We got to Granada around 1 pm, left our bags at the hotel, had lunch and headed straight to the Alhambra. Just to walk to the entrance took quite awhile, since the Alhambra is GIANT. It's really a grouping of different buildings, including the Nasrid palace, a palace built by King Carlos V and the Generalife building (the country estate of the Nasrid kings). The Nasrid palace is such a big attraction that you only get a 30-minute window during which you can enter it when you buy your ticket. The original structure of the Alhambra was built by Ismail I, Yusuf I and Muhammad V, caliphs of the Nasrid dynasty, which ruled Granada until 1492 (when Granada fell from Muslim control to the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel). The many bedrooms, patios and salons of the Alhambra were begun during the early 14th century, as an attempt to show that the territory was strong and would not fall from Muslim control any time soon. The palace of Carlos V, which has a circular inner patio and perfect acoustics and which is still used today for concerts, was added in 1526. The materials used on the main structure of the Alhambra (so pretty much everything but the palace of Carlos V) are extremely plain: almost all brick, plaster and wood. It’s significant because when you see the Alhambra, it looks like it’s made of gold, with domes and decorations carved from marble. That is to say, the craftsmanship is second to none and is still dazzling more than 600 years after the Alhambra was built. So, here you go:

If you click on this to view it larger, you can see all the little teeny tiny details in the plasterwork (all the tan colored material is plaster). So pretty. This is part of the Nasrid palaces.
An insanely finely detailed ceiling in the Nasrid palaces. This is painted plasterwork. You can see it better if you open it up to a larger size.
A part of the beautiful gardens at the Generalife.
A cool view of the whole Alhambra complex, seen through arches at the Generalife building.
The circular - and acoustically flawless - inner patio of the palace of Carlos V.