INTERRAIL 2003 > Day 20 > Granada
(Alhambra)
Granada (Alhambra)
I had very rarely been afforded opportunities during
the trip to enjoy a long, relaxed sleep, and to wash away the many hours
of built up exhaustion which accumulated over the days and weeks. Living
in youth hostels usually required taking breakfast before nine o'clock,
and whilst this option could be skipped it would only add to the expense
in finding food later on, and provide no energy source to get the day
started. I had slept well for all of five hours later in the night,
but my two room-mates had ensured that my luxury of unconsciousness
would be limited.
They had stumbled in after midnight and proceeded to
put the main light on whilst they chatted and rummaged through their
belongings. When being woken from my drowsy state in this way, the senses
would become aware of their surroundings through a hazy sort of tunnel
which magnified the things determined to be most important, and it sounded
like their booming voices were being pumped through a PA system at me.
Their luggage, meanwhile, must have contained pots, pans, glass vases,
crockery and lead ball-bearings inside a portable reverberating cathedral.
My dormitory companions seemed totally oblivious to
my presence, even though I had met them earlier in the evening and they
knew that I occupied the other bed. But most annoying was the French
guy's insistence on keeping the door to the corridor open. He and the
Korean guy on the bunks opposite were positioned away from the line
of sight of all the other hostel residents walking to and fro, whilst
I was laying there with pillow marks on my face in front of all passers-by
looking like a spaniel's supper. I asked him to shut the door and he
grumpily mumbled something regarding the air conditioning, or lack of
it.
I had assumed that the pair had both been out on the
town, but come the morning the Korean explained how our other room-mate
had spent most of the night in the reception, attempting to chat up
the female member of staff who was on the night shift. There was little
else to do of an evening inside this hostel, and I could forgive them
for their desperation to get out, and their subsequent disruptive re-entry.
I had an unappealing habit myself of rustling bags full of noisier bags
in my dormitory whilst others tried to sleep.
I got the shower-breakfast routine out of the way,
thankfully remembering the getting dressed bit in the middle else I'd
have put people off their cornflakes. It was still early morning and
I felt weary, so I decided to extend my stay for an extra night and
cut out the panic of finding a new destination by the evening. It would
also allow me access to my dormitory for the morning and a chance to
take further rest. My intention was to spend the afternoon visiting
the Alhambra, a beautiful palacial Moorish kingdom built on a hill to
the north of the city. Several people had advised me to see the place,
claiming a whole day could easily be whiled away within the grounds.
After midday I began my journey across Granada to pay
a visit. I wasn't sure how or why my legs were still working, since
they should have gone on strike long ago. My feet were like a school
orchestra; they didn't perform in a way that was wholly satisfying but
it would be difficult and ill-conceived to give them a good kicking.
At the halfway point I jumped on a bus, an action I reserved for special
occasions because it shaved a further Euro off my daily budget. I was
dumped off in a busy central district, and I realized that the city
suffered from Sintra syndrome, in that once again all the signs to the
place I wanted to go seemed to point in completely the opposite direction.
I was convinced that ignoring them was the best policy, and I soon found
myself in a street surrounded with souvenir shops for visitors to the
Alhambra.
Glancing at the crude photocopied map I had been given
by my Korean hostel-mate, I could ascertain that I was standing at the
foot of a large hill, the Alhambra lay halfway up it, and the entrance
was thoughtfully located right at the very top. Access to the site unfairly
favoured those in cars, which explained the misleading signs directing
traffic the long way around the back of the hill, so I would have to
take the laborious pedestrian route up through the gardens.
The surrounding lush walkways and terraced gardens
were extensive, and provided a haven of tranquility away from the heaving
city traffic below. The pathways were also steep and now it was my thighs'
turn to take the strain. By the end of the week my bottom half should
have given way and I would be a shuffling torso. Exotic trees loomed
above me and birds tweeted in the gentle breeze which swayed the branches.
I had begun my travels with a plan to hop from city to city, absorbing
the cultural highlights and attractions, but any trip required a mixture
of urban adventures and rural retreats, so that each could counteract
the other and provide some respite. I had struck just the right balance
so far, and here in Granada I had found a perfect setting which offered
the best of both worlds within a short distance of each other.
The paths began to level out a little in the unspoilt
paradise, and I neared the entrance to the Alhambra. I was channelled
into a narrow footway to complete the final stage, when all of a sudden
I was accosted by a wizened old heather seller who leapt out at me from
a bush. I had been lulled into a false sense of security and this was
clever tactics on her part. I realized quickly what her game was, but
felt unable to escape on the narrow walkway we both occupied, spotting
the second backup heather-basher who loitered a little further up the
path in case I got away from the first one.
My Spanish wasn't good enough to fully understand the
many blessings she was placing upon me, telling me how I was such a
fine upstanding man and how many children I would have as she lovingly
gazed at my palm. But all in my life was well, because she said so,
although she then relaxed the over-compassionate muscles on her face
and held out her hand coldly, demanding I stump up for the sprig of
purple weed she had presumably ripped out of a nearby field earlier
on. Upon emptying my wallet of coins, I found a total of just 1 Euro
and 10 cents in small change, and I certainly wasn't going to be so
generous as to give this wrinkled old thief one of my 20 Euro notes.
With every coin I offered she moaned and stood arms folded, with a grumpy
look on her face that was more tightly creased than a savoy cabbage.
Eventually she took the coins and also whipped the
heather back from me, shaking her head. She resented my presence and
my offerings. I argued and demanded my money back, and she began cursing
my life, muttering threats which although in Spanish, were clearly along
the lines of 'you will die as will all of your deformed children, everybody
will detest you and your home will smell of Morocco, before your life
ends diabolically in some painful freak mishap'. She ripped off a tiny
sprig from the generous portion of heather she had previously placed
upon my shoulder, shoving it in my hand like it was the embodiment of
death itself. I was desperate to eke out my revenge and shove her in
the bush, then take a photo of her yelping like an enlarged animated
beetroot in a dress, but images of Spanish prison cells washed through
my brain and I walked on.
I knew that this must be an infamous local tourist
trap and I threw my own curses back at her, ensuring mine were larger
and more heartfelt than her own, and wishing for her untimely demise
when winter approached and she lost her grip on the slippery slopes
of the Alhambra, sliding all the way down into town like an amateur
luge enthusiast having hallucinations, and ultimately squelching under
the wheels of an unstoppable taxi. Well I was quite angry anyway. Perhaps
falling in the hedge would have sufficed.
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I finished my trek and arrived at the entrance, where
I was immediately met by a familiar sight. There amongst the crowds
stood Eric and Susanne, looking a little puzzled and concerned. I approached
with a degree of caution, knowing that my latest intrusion into their
lives would arouse perfectly justified misgivings involving the keywords
'stalker' and 'Englishman'. I really hadn't expected to meet them again,
although today would definitely be the last time because they were setting
off later in the evening to another town, from where they would catch
a plane home.
A problem was facing them, in that they had no money
remaining to gain admission to the Alhambra, and the only cashpoint
nearby was out of order. They had come prepared but had fallen for the
same trap as myself only minutes beforehand. Likewise, my German friends
had been confronted by the nasty heather-pusher, but had panicked and
responded in a far more generous way than I, giving the old bat the
only 10 Euro note they had. Whether they had known that I would later
appear again beside them due to our strange magnetic attraction of recent
days, and had stood around waiting for my help I don't know, but I offered
to pay for their tickets to save them running all the way down the hill
to the nearest unbroken cashpoint.
In a further twist of fate surely cunningly devised
in secret by the Anglo-Germanic Goddess of Unity looking down upon us,
we were issued with a joint ticket which we could not change for separates.
Effectively, this meant that as the ticket was required for entrance
to different sections within the Alhambra, we must stay together like
a family unit for the rest of the afternoon. They were like a mother
and father, and I, their worryingly grown up son.
| It provided for some company and
we now had no need to ask strangers to take photos. Our first discovery
in the Alhambra was the Generalife gardens at the top of the hill,
from where we could look down on the rest of the beautiful site,
incorporating the Alcazaba (above) and the Palace of Charles V (right). |
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