As another side trip, I also scheduled a stop at the El Refugio del Burrito. Although you might think this is a Mexican restaurant it’s actually Spain’s donkey sanctuary. If this stop surprises you, I’ll put you in the Doesn’t Know Paige Very Well box. I tried to enroll her as a Protector of her favorite donkey (Dante) last night, but their website is wonky … so at least at present, they are missing out. I’ll have to try to find a workaround in the near future. Anyway, the Donkey Sanctuary has probably 150 rescued animals on site and they met the primary Paige criteria of smelling like horses (donkeys) and being willing (many of them) to be petted.
We reached Granada in late afternoon. While Paige and Hollis hung out, I headed off to explore the Albaicin – the old Moorish area of town. Albaicin is Arabic for “bring bread crumbs if you want to make it out alive.” Honestly, this area makes Seville’s Jewish quarter seem like it is laid out on a grid. I have a good sense of direction, but I don’t know how one would navigate the Albaicin without a cell phone and Google maps. At 4 in the afternoon the lanes (one certainly can’t call them streets) were largely deserted but about half of the people I did come across had paper maps that they were turning in various directions trying to figure out where the heck they were. It’s a fascinating part of the city but I definitely understand why it is not recommended to fly solo there late at night. The picture below, which is one of my favorites, captures the quaint vibe as opposed to the edgy vibe. For dinner, we ate at a Moroccan place called Restaurant Arranyes (thanks, Laura) which bypassed the Mexican place in Seville for top restaurant honors on the trip.
The following morning, we went to the Granada Cathedral and the adjoining Royal Chapel. Although it’s nowhere near as imposing, I actually preferred the Granada Cathedral to the Seville Cathedral. Queen Isabella made Granada the capitol of Spain sometime after agreeing to sponsor Columbus (if I am remembering correctly), and she donated some impressive stuff to the cathedral. She and Ferdinand are buried in the Royal Chapel.
In the afternoon, we trekked up the hill to the Alhambra. The Alhambra is, I believe, the top attraction in all of Spain. It was home to Moorish sultans and such until the Reconquista, at which point Isabella and Ferdinand moved in. The Alhambra certainly lives up to its billing. The interior is very hard to get across in pictures and even harder to get across in words, so I would just say that if you come to Spain you definitely should come to Granada and see it. It was the inspiration for probably the most well-known piece of Spanish guitar music – Tarrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” – and Washington Irving (of Headless Horseman fame) crashed here for a while and wrote “Tales of the Alhambra” based on his experiences. I’m looking forward to reading it this summer. One final note on the Alhambra – if you plan to visit during tourist season, you need advance tickets. I got ours in February and when I checked (out of curiosity) in early April, they were sold out through mid-June.
On Day 9 we had another private car drive us the 3 ½ hours from Granada to Toledo. I had debated stopping in Consuegra (Don Quixote country, about 40 miles outside of Toledo) to see the castle and windmills, but didn’t think we would have enough to time to do that as well as the stuff I wanted to do in Toledo. The highway passes pretty close to the main photo-op, though, so we at least got a quick glimpse. Rather than taking a blurry picture from the car, I decided to just rely on the internet. While I’m thinking about it, our experience with the private driver company was very good. I think they operate in many different countries so you might give them a look if train service isn’t an option and if you don’t want to deal with the hassle of renting a car and driving in unfamiliar places. Driving outside of cities in Europe would be totally fine but dealing with in-town stuff in a lot of places would be a bit of a nightmare.
The main attraction of Toledo is the Toledo Cathedral. It’s an imposing hodgepodge of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles with a truly spectacular interior. Or at least that’s what I’m told. When I passed by on my initial recon of the city there were dozens upon dozens of official priest-looking people hanging around at the entrance wearing black robes and making merry. Then the camera went to slow-motion and drifted toward the sign at the ticket booth that read, “The Cathedral currently is closed to the public for liturgical acts. We apologize for the inconvenience.” No joke. I’m not entirely sure what these acts entailed, but I’m hoping it was like the NFL Combine or at least some type of field day thing. I looked for a bouncy castle where you could place bets on the shuttle run, egg walk, and potato sack races (one old, one young priest per sack), but had no luck. Seems like a wasted opportunity to raise money for the poor, but what do I know? Ah well. Although we were, indeed, “inconvenienced,” the view of the cathedral from the window of our apartment is not shabby at all.
After bouncing back from being inconvenienced, we did manage to spend a good bit of time exploring the city in addition to visiting the Visigoth Museum (small, virtually empty, and interesting) and the San Juan de los Reyes Monastery. The monastery was fabulous (because it’s a monastery), but now that I think about it, we were inconvenienced there as well. We saw the courtyard but the chapel was closed for a wedding. And then when we got to the Transito Synagogue and Jewish Museum, they had randomly decided to close early for the day. So that was pretty inconvenient. So I guess all in all, Toledo gets a D-minus for convenience. But it has a distinctly medieval flair to it and Paige said that she liked the town itself better than any other place we visited. I agree that it’s a charming place. Of course I also now wish that we had stopped in Consuegra.
So … that’s a wrap on our action-packed, exhausting (see Hollis above) 2019 summer trip. In addition to having a variety of new cultural experiences in a country we had never visited (and letting Hollis practice his Spanish for real), I also learned at least three new things. First, if you want coffee before work in Spain you either have to find a Starbucks with a total whip-cracking owner or get really lucky with a local shop. I found a couple of people that managed to drag themselves out of bed to get things rolling by 8:00, but the vast majority don’t open until at least 9:00 (!!!). Second, when most Americans think olive oil, most Americans think Italy. And most Americans are wrong. Spain produces double the olive oil that Italy produces. There are places on the highway around Granada where olive trees stretch in all directions, as far as the eye can see. Finally, despite having visited no telling how many cathedrals in my adult life, I finally realized this week that the Sacristy basically is the priests’ locker room. Not sure how I had missed that before, but now I know.
Cheers,
Mike
