Just an addendum from the distaff side of this crew:
I’d really looked forward to seeing the Alhambra and especially the gardens (a
real surprise, I’m sure, to my friends.) We got a nice early start with the
light just getting good when we got to the entry. Just past the turnstiles we
were greeted by the nicest of welcomes – one of the local cats, obviously in
desperate need of a couple of good pats. We obliged, and Warren got a picture.
How lovely to get a cat-fix! (We ran into other cat residents later, but these,
although willing to hustle over when you sat down on the hope of a donation of
food, were wary and unwilling to be touched.) DO NOT mention this to Mapie.
We continued on up into the Generalife gardens and
every section of it just got better and better. I was so delighted at how many
things were still blooming. Amazingly there were iris (!), and roses, salvia
and lavender, marigolds and ageratum, not to mention orange trees heavy with
fruit, persimmons hanging like Christmas ornaments on bare limbs, and the last
of the granadas (pomegranates) for which the city is named and which are its
symbol. One of the downsides of winter travel is not seeing the gardens at
their best, but one of the positives is being able to see them in quiet and at
leisure. We got to a lovely walled garden at the summer palace with a Moorish
tiles, a plashing fountain, little bathing birds, blooming roses and even a another
caretaker cat, and we had it totally to ourselves for over fifteen minutes, to
just sit in the sun and enjoy. I never dreamed I’d get to see the Generalife in
such “privacy.”
We spent several hours wandering through the various
Alhambra gardens. Everywhere are the famous Moorish fountains. Fountains in all
sorts of shapes, scalloped, incised, plain, quiet fountains, noisy fountains, and
still basins. One will start high up from a ferny grotto cut into a rock wall, then
its water will be channeled down through tile “gutters” (such a negative word
for these beautiful little sparkling, chuckling streams) through the gardens down
to a lotus shaped fountain under a trellis, and then from there through the
gutters to another bowl shaped vessel with a splasher in the center set among
tall tree roses, back into more channels down to a basin among low rosemary
hedges, on into more channels and lastly into a long shallow still fish pond
with water lilies. 
And the paths among the hedged gardens – they’re
rocks about the size of a lemon or lime, set on edge to channel the rain away,
and set in patterns, geometric or floral or heraldic. The bright autumn leaves
are lying on them in drifts, and the reflections from the water play and dance across
the textures of the rocks and the leaves and an occasional fallen flower petal.
Gertrude Jekyll, the famous British gardener, talked
about having “garden rooms” each with its own character and with views into the
next “room.” These Moorish gardeners appear to have perfected this art at least
600 years ago, since much of the layout and planning of these gardens dates
from then. These Alhambra gardens are some of the oldest in Europe. We walked
though one garden room after another, each with its own plantings, each with
some special feature whether a fountain or view or tree.
I realize I’m going on for too long, but these
gardens just delighted me. Warren took picture after picture and I’m going to
be glad for every one.
Granada is the fruit of muslim paradise (symbol)
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