Bailar en ingles se dice: to dance. Yo bailo muchas tiempos vende yo en los Estados Unidos. En Europa yo no bailo, pero yo miro personas en Espana bailan. Es una Flamenco y es rapide.
On this day we woke up "early", ate breakfast, packed our things into one suitcase/backpack (George has come for me and now it's necessary to carry the backpack with me), and got on the highway. On the way there I worked like a dog. I still needed to finish up a few blogs so that I could post them once we got into our hotel in Granada. When I was finally called away from the computer we were heading into Granada and my eyes were needed.
After doing a U-turn directly into the police we were pointed into the right direction. We were told how to get onto the street we wanted and then we followed that through the city and past it's diagonal. We ended up missing our turn to get to the hotel we wanted. Instead we ended up just alongside where we wanted to be: the Alhambra was just across the river and up the hill from us. We pulled over and went down to the square to grab a bite to eat in the cafe, making sure to eat inside because it was freezing out there and Ahmee and I had not brought our coats. Ahmee and Poppy ate tappas, or at least, a plate with assorted goodies, while I ate a tray full of different sausages. It filled me up quickly and Ahmee and Poppy were done with their tappas before I was done, so together we managed to spend about 40 minutes in the cafe. Before we left we asked the waiter how to get back to the street we wanted. He showed Poppy on his map, telling him that it was easy enough if you have a small car.
Immediately after we ate lunch we went out to take a look at the local hotels. The best one we'd seen from the car had been the Hotel Moriscos, a hotel that didn't have any star recognition whatsoever. We went up the pebbly street and hit the button to buzz the desk (they had a camera there). When the large wooden door opened we stepped into the shade of the building, into the warmth of the heater, and into a Moorish-styled hotel that was definitely 3-4 star quality. The first two questions we asked the desk were: do you have a room for three for tonight? and do you have wireless? They had both and they were eager to show us the room. I went with the lady to the "1st" floor (here the ground floor is ground zero and the next floor up is the first floor) which had a door in the open "courtyard" which had a running fountain in it. This room contained dark brown furniture, a couch that would later "transform" into my bed, a double bed for Ahmee and Poppy, a Moorish ceiling that I suspected resembled the ceilings we'd see in the Alhambra, and a bathroom that contained a jet-tub, a shower that is functional, two sinks, and a toilet (don't "duh" at me, I've seen literal bathrooms before). I loved it immediately and couldn't wait to pull our things in. After asking several more questions, all about opening times, how to reserve tickets, where to eat dinner, where we could see a Flamenco show, where we could get tickets, and where everything was. We got all the information we needed from Luis and then we went out and got our things out of the car so we could lug the suitcase, my purse, the laptop, and my backpack up the stairs.
Once we had everything in the room I grabbed the computer and tried to get to my email. The computer was fairly slow but I managed to send off a few emails before we went out.
We went back out into the streets of Granada to make our way towards the Catedral and the Capilla Real. As we went Ahmee and I stopped in several shops that had Arabian-styled items. At first our main objective was to find coats, because we'd both had figured that we wouldn't need our coats since we hadn't needed them since we'd left France. Later as we walked around we bought items that were completely off the agenda (this was partially due to the fact that we were then walking in the sun and weren't as cold). We got a few small things as christmas presents for our family members and we also bought ourselves scarves: Ahmee a red one and me an orange one. Ahmee immediately put her scarf on while I kept mine in the bag for later. As usual, we adored looking in the windows, watching the people, listening to the musicians playing in the street (poor guitar players fingers must be frozen!), and looking at the buildings. The buildings were varied. Closer to our hotel we saw older buildings with the traditional brick/stone method. As we got closer to the diagonal we ran into more metal and glass buildings with a few "frilly" buildings close by. Instead of walking down the diagonal we walked through alleys with lots of shop windows to stare in. Maybe it's the alleys, or maybe it's the way I was dressed (I had on Poppy's green windbreaker), but I definitely got more than the average double take while window shopping here. If they normally happen, then it's the alley's and how the enclosed space makes me nervous with others and makes me watch them more closely. If not, then I'm still surprised because George is here and my chin has broken out into a series of zits, plus I was bundling up close due to the cold, plus I was wearing my wearing-thin clothes along with Poppy's green windbreaker which was swallowing me. I later found out it wasn't the alleys. It makes me thoroughly uneasy when people do that.
We moved between a killer bookshop and another store to the entrance of the Capilla Real, or the place where Ferdinand and Isabella are buried and the burial place of another royal couple: Felipe el Guapo (the handsome), and Juana la Loca (the crazy). We double checked the entrance-time for this and the entrance time for the Cathedral. Basically we just had to wait for half an hour to get in. We decided we'd go and find coffee on the diagonal. My favorite part of the Diagonal (apart from the windows-these you can find in any big city) was the street lights. After Barcelona I've been glancing at the street lights to see if I can find any originals (of course, I've always glanced because I like the old-fashioned lampposts and the odd and out-of-ordinary). In Barcelona I got to see Gaudi-style lampposts. Here, I got to see techno lampposts. These lampposts had cubed glass around the bulbs. It was really pretty cool to look at, if you had the time to stop and look and if you like cubes.
It didn't take long before we got to the Double Eye Cafe, a cafe that was small, had alright music, and had quite an interesting collection of people in it. The last part of this cafe didn't come in until after we'd gotten halfway through our coffee/hot chocolate. While sitting at the bar I pulled out my orange scarf and draped it around my neck as I looked around at the green room which only had seats available at the bar and which was definitely more famous for it's alcoholic beverages than it's coffee and hot chocolate (had four or five shelves of various items resting in front of us-one of these Poppy tried). Sitting at the back were two men and a woman all of whom were busy talking to each other and to the waitress in rapid Spanish (I caught the easiest words). On the walls around this cafe were various drawings that all contained half a mans face, a mountain of hair covering the other half his face, and geometric patterns filling up the rest of the drawing (was indeed a drawing). As we sat there drinking and listening I happened to notice that yet again people were giving me several long glances, particularly the guys at the back. I didn't like having to pass them when I had to squeeze to get to the restroom, but when nature calls you absolutely have to go. After that I refused to look in that direction. That is until three more people came in to spare everyone a series of Holas and kisses. One woman brought in a considerable briefcase and sat down at the bar, flipping through various sketches and drawings, all of which looked similar to the ones that could be seen on the walls of the cafe. When she pulled out a drawing that was an exact replica of the thing I could see as the backdrop on the laptop I knew I was looking at the artist of the cafe. It was a meeting of friends that we did not disturb for very long. Shortly after these last three came in we got up to walk back to the Catedral.
The Catedral was surprisingly small. It was very very tall, but it's nave wasn't very long. If you looked up you got to see some of the masterpieces of the Catedral: it's paintings in between the arches featuring the Saints and the Apostles, it's carvings of angels, and it's incredible organs. The Catedral also had on display some ancient music books that were decorated just about as finely as the Book of Kells. These music books contained shape notes and tons of drawings along the outside. It was a shame they had these books propped up. We could see the damage that was being inflicted upon the pages. What those books really needed was to be set on a flat surface, but we weren't about to be the ones to tell them that, we were happy just to see them. Another something that I thoroughly enjoyed seeing, for the first time, was a star-shaped stained glass window. This wasn't a square window with a glass star within it, it was a window that was set into the shape of a pointed star (as in, stonemasons had to cut points into the stone so that this star could be put into place above the central door).
The walls above the alter were stunning, the walls throughout the rest of the Catedral were of white stone, and the chapels that were mostly around the alter were fairly small but were each filled with gold gild.
I know it might seem like I've just paraphrased this Cathedral, and that I haven't gone into much detail over the Cathedral while I went to great lengths to talk about the Cafe. The truth is that: we spent more time at the cafe; the cafe was smaller and thus more intimate; and this Cathedral held no huge architectural, artistic, or historical importance for me before I went in, as I walked around, or afterwards (other than the window and the books).
After walking around we went into the giftshop where Ahmee and I browsed for a bit before heading outside to join Poppy and walk over to the Capilla Real. This was basically a smaller church that has been dedicated as a museum over the Catholic Crowns, namely Ferdinand and Isabella. When we walked through the once empty side street we got to dodge women selling rosemary (later we found out these women were gypsies), and a vendor selling artistic drawings of your name (in Arabic). We bought our tickets and walked around, staring at the many different faces of Ferdinand, Isabella, Felipe el Guapo, and Juana la Loca. Actually Felipe el Guapo and Juana la Loca looked the same in most of their portraits. It was Ferdinand and Isabella that seemed to change often. When we saw the tombs of these kings and queens we wondered if the carvings were a true likeness, or if any of the paintings housed in that place were true likenesses (Ferdinand and Isabella certainly commanded through fear fairly often). Of course, we couldn't see the stone statues on the "tombs", we could only see the sides because they were so large and were sitting on a platform. Under the ground the kings and queens were held in wooden coffins. We didn't go down to see these.
We walked around the church, looked at the various cabinets that held paintings that depicted scenes from the bible and scenes of martyrdom, looked at the fancy "carriages" that Ferdinand and Isabella would sit in to be carried to mass, and viewed the mostly modest church (the benches had the initials F and X for Ferdinand and Isabella and the alter is always decorated). After this we walked into an art gallery featuring paintings of the Virgin and the baby Jesus, the Apostles, the Saints, and scenes from the bible. The most emphasis was on the Virgin and Jesus, and on the gruesome images. Neither of which were surprising.
What I enjoyed most about the Cathedral wasn't it's looks (dark with a few side chapels, benches, and white tombs dominating the space), or the paintings. It was the super-short history lesson I got from Ahmee over Ferdinand, Isabella, Felipe el Guapo, and Juana la Loca. I'd already heard about Ferdinand and Isabella, they're famous everywhere as being the Catholic Crowns who pushed all other religions from Spain. I had not heard about Felipe el Guapo or Juana la Loca. Ahmee simply explained their "titles". Juana la Loca was madly in love with Felipe el Guapo and when he died she earned the title of crazy when she carried her dead husbands coffin around with her everywhere she went. We saw a picture of Felipe "el Guapo", Ahmee and I think that he's not very guapo (handsome) and that Juana probably bestowed this name upon him. I thought Juana was very beautiful with her dark, curly hair and dark eyes (she also had a widows peak-this makes me wonder if that was just added in in reference to her dead husband).
After the church we walked up into the small and frigid souvenir shop where Ahmee spent her time examining and picking out some postcards while I examined the sudoku puzzle the cashier lady was working on (and had made herself). She looked up after a short period and caught me looking at it and said, "Can I help you?" I smiled, shook my head, and was about to say no when she chuckled and said, "Or do you just want to help me?" This made me laugh and I told her how I loved sudoku puzzles, after this Ahmee came up with her purchases, we commented on the freezing cold room and told her to try to stay warm, and then we went back out into the side-street. This time all three of us got nabbed by the women with the rosemary twigs. Ahmee got nabbed first, picking the rosemary out of another womans hand. As the woman spoke to Ahmee I slipped out of the gate and onto the Diagonal only to find another woman offering me rosemary. I saw Ahmee still talking to the woman out of the corner of my eye and I saw Poppy shake his head out of the corner of the other as I timidly took the rosemary out of the womans hand. It turns out that the women were using the rosemary as a way to see which hand people would use, so they could then read that hand. Before the woman took the rosemary out of my left hand she knodded at Ahmee and asked if she was my mother (this is in Spanish-she only knew how to speak spanish). I told her (again in Spanish) that no she was my grandmother. The woman smiled, looked down at my hand, and said I was moy inteligente and ran her nail down what I'd previously thought was my life-line. She then said something I didn't understand and I saw Ahmee motioning for me to walk away. I said sorry and pointed to my grandmother and slipped away from the woman (who I can guess probably was going on with my fortune in a language I know tiny bits of). When I caught up with Ahmee and Poppy I asked Ahmee what the woman had told her. She said that the woman had declared that Ahmee was nervous, really really nice, and that she was going to live a long time. Poppy said that the woman who'd given him his fortune had spoken only spanish and that he hadn't understood any of it except for the long-life part.
We walked back through the streets, the light becoming fairly orange and the temperature dropping slightly as we walked. We enjoyed doing the usual watching and we were delighted when we caught sight of an art class drawing a detailed sketch of the facade of one of the buildings. Those poor hands were going to freeze before they ever got done (since some of them had nothing on their paper).
Once back at the hotel I had plenty of time to send blogs and to type to people and to type blogs. I had to do this before 7:30 because at 8 we were going to go out, eat, and then go to a Flamenco show that started at 9:30 and lasted until 11. I ended up being rushed and not getting everything done. I told myself I'd simply send everything once I got back to the room and then I went and quickly got all dressed up in my black pants, my orange shirt, my turquoise earrings, my lipgloss (I also covered up my zits), put on mascara, put on my blue sweater, and wrapped myself in my new orange scarf which was big enough to be a shawl. After all this primping we really needed to get out and eat. We went around the corner and into a nearby cafe where we exclaimed at the freezing cold air outside, ate our food, reveled in the warmth (I was right next to the heater), and admired the posters of the bullfight posters.
After waiting in the warmth of the restaurant for our bill we went back out onto the streets to head back up the road next to the hotel, through the college (highschool) where guys were up on the roof hooting and hollering (what they were doing up there I still have absolutely no idea), and across the street to follow the Asian tour group into the Flamenco show cafe. Our tickets got us entry and got us each free drinks. A man came around and asked us what we wanted to drink and I told him I'd take Fanta. I don't know what Ahmee and Poppy got, I was too busy looking around the room. We'd been seated in a white "cave": a long, narrow, rectangular room that had a short, barrel-vaulted ceiling. On the ceiling there were a series of lights (which I knew from experience in show choir had to be extremely hot, especially up close), on the floor there was the "stage"-the scuffed up area where we could see where previous feet had stomped, and along the walls there were pictures of old Flamenco dancers hanging above the heads of tourists. The two predominant groups were the Asian group who sat in the back of the room, and the German group, who had a guide who wore leather pants and who had done the tour many times and had become a good friend of the dancers. There were two women sitting next to me who I later discovered had seen more than one Flamenco show, and who were both very passionate about the dance (hard not to be). Across from me, frighteningly enough, was a man who I'd seen twice within the past two hours. He was traveling by himself, and looked an awful lot like Jasper off of 101 Dalmations. When I saw him come in and sit down just opposite from me (and when I saw him glance at me several times) I nudged Ahmee and told her that I'd seen the man as we were leaving the hotel (he was coming in through the big door), AND in the cafe when we were eating dinner. I decided I was going to ignore the man. This became easier and easier as the night flew by.
When the dancers came in they turned their seats along the wall opposite us and sat down. It is impossible for me to explain everything that happened. I shall do my best to get the general gist of this dance, but by no means base all of your opinions of it on what I write. I'd never heard what happens in a Flamenco Dance. I never knew that they started out sitting (dancing requires a person to stand up right? wrong). I also never knew that men could Flamenco Dance (all of the posters have women). When they sat down I cast curious eyes on them and when one started clapping I was surprised when the others did not join in in a steady beat. One person would clap, another would join them, another person would tap their feet in a different rythmn, another would start singing, another would do a combination of the base beat with their toe and would clap another beat. One could not distinguish who was doing what beat all at the same time, but the result was music from percussion which was sped up or slowed down with no warning whatsoever. One dancer would stand and begin to work their way along the dance floor, doing their own moves, tapping their own beats, forcing the rest to speed up, going from flowing arm motions to furious foot-work in less than a second, going from serious and focusing on immersing into the music into a flurry of movement and tapping out a music of their own at a speed that was incredible for me. Those of you who've seen Happy Feet: this was a whole different style but just as complicated of moves. Those of you who've seen me clog: this is similar in that a beat and music is tapped out with the feet-the difference is in the motion. The dancers did not often scuff their feet on the floor. It was all furious tap-work. Each dancer had his or her turn where they would get up from the mist of a new beat and would begin dancing, choosing just how much they wanted to dance and how much they wanted to sweat. The first woman was slightly plump and did mostly slow movements, but who would surprise us with her footwork every now and then. The second woman was older, had issues keeping her shirt from showing her bra, and had a killer attitude. She hardly danced at all, and none of us cared. She sang Frank Sinatra's "I did it my way" (in Spanish), making the tallest man laugh like crazy, and producing smiles from all the people in the group. After her came the tall man who had nothing to flourish, no skirts to pull up, no heels to show off, all he had was his attitude and his feet and he worked these very very well. His dance was almost as if it was choreographed (none of them were and you could tell with the first couple people). He was so intense, and so into his movements, and put soo much energy into what he was doing. It was incredible watching him flow from slow upper body movements and a few taps to incredible flourishes of the feet paired with few other movements. Unfortunately for the other dancers he sweat a lot (I told you those lights were hot-he was so tall his face was practically in them) and when he spun he caused the youngest girl and the first woman to dance to duck and cover there heads. I think a few people got spattered by him.
After him they had a short intermission where the Asian people had a good time clapping their hands and trying to figure out how to Flamenco Dance, while the German tour guide hopped on stage and started talking in rapid German (accent sounded similar to some of my relatives, just thought I'd throw that out there) about the people in the pictures. As she talked everyone tried to figure out what she was saying (those of us who didn't speak German that is). I don't remember how much I got out of her speech, so I'm going to guess that I only got the names of the Flamenco Dancers that were in the pictures.
After about 15 minutes the Dancers came back in. This time the first woman to dance was the oldest woman. She had gray hair that was pulled up, seemed to be the relative to the youngest member of the group, and had on the most stereotypical Flamenco garb. She had on the ruffly skirt and sported a flower in her hair. When she danced she used mostly her fingers because she had castanets in both hands. Of course, she'd also do a bit of footwork, but most of the time she was focusing on her fingers. She had the biggest problem with the tourists who had out their camera's. When she saw this she'd bark, "No video." Her dance didn't last very long and then came her younger relative who I'd seen do fancy footwork while sitting down and who was really quite pretty. Her dance was just as fantastic as the tall man's. He was even watching her footwork closely, as if checking for future use. Hers wasn't as much of a suspension-filled dance though. I think she was well and truly tired of slow movement and was ready to work her feet. She didn't slow down much throughout her dance but she wasn't frantic either. The elderly woman watched from the back of the room with a smile and a hint of what I suspected was pride in her eyes. It was a lovely dance, and I was definitely not surprised when she breathed heavily when she sat down. Immediately after her came another man. This guy had spiked, brown hair, had come in late, had on a red shirt, and was slightly shorter and thinner than the tall man. His dance was equally impressive as the tall mans, if not more so. As the dance went on the tall guy watched his movements closely and smiled and laughed every now and then when he'd pull an impressive move. I said before that I don't think these dances were choreographed, I did not say that the steps were not played with by the dancers. When I watched this man dance it seemed apparent that the two dancing men had traded foot ideas before (this is something I can recognize because my friend Kayla and I do this all the time when line-dancing). This guy combined suspension, fluidity, percussion, and choppy moves almost perfectly. He also liked dancing at our end of the dance floor-because the women sitting next to me had answered "This way!" when the dancers cried "Ole!" He had greatly appreciated them and made sure to dance at their end during his fast and furious moment.
After that groups of two would go up and dance. The youngest girl with the first woman to dance, then the two men together-bouncing ideas off right there, and then the oldest woman with the German tour-guide (told ya they knew her well! she had on tennis shoes and still managed). It was then over and we all clapped and cheered as the dancers bowed and walked out into the street.
We followed after them literally minutes after they'd left and we couldn't see them anywhere on the streets. We avoided the castanet vendor, and went back along the same route to the hotel where we stopped to check in on Victor (a different guy had come in to take the desk job from Luis), to say goodnight to him, and then to go up to the room where we all got in our pj's. Ahmee and Poppy quickly climbed into bed while I stayed awake typing emails to people and sending off more blogs. I eventually closed up the computer, dreading having to wake up early the next morning.
I didn't sleep very well that night, I woke up multiple times.
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