Big Bird yellow. With enormous blue stars.

Kali was a much bigger fan of Granada than me. I thought it was hot, dirty, loud, smelly, and full of tourists. However, we were only there for 36 hours, so I didn't exactly have a chance to fully immerse myself in its culture. We also stayed in a hostal apparently designed for 19-year-olds on mushrooms, so that didn't really help either.

(Seriously, I need to talk about this hostal for a second. First of all, we walk in, and the entire front desk is covered in mirror shards. Not just one big mirror - hundreds of reflective surfaces, all tiled on at different angles to create a funhouse wonderland of sparkles and movement. We walk into the secondary lobby, which on first glance is nice - marble floors and columns, a couple of computers for communal use. But then we see the huge chiffon scarf-curtains hanging from the ceiling. And the pleather couches covered in all manner of douchebag. And the signs on the walls announcing "Saturday night MOJITO party!!!!!!!" Trudging warily up the stairs, we are assaulted with an odor we still haven't been able to identify before finally making it to our room. Which is painted Big Bird yellow. With enormous blue stars. All over the ceiling. Kill me now. This place (and another in Madrid that we stayed the night we fled Morocco) has convinced me I can never stay in a hostal again. And yes, it's because I'm old - I would have LOVED this place if I'd found it in Costa Rica in 2003.)

So Granada itself didn't really do it for me, but the main point of coming to Granada most definitely did (funny how Kali loved the city but not the sight, while I was the other way around.) The Alhambra was awe-inspiring. Built by the Moors during their occupation of Spain and then taken back by the Spanish in 1492, this palace compound was unbelievably rich in history (as Kali posted, it was here that Ferdinand and Isabella listened to Columbus's pitch to sail to India... in the same year they had reconquered Granada from the Moors. Who says life didn't move quickly in the 1400s?) You start in the General's Gardens (where Hector Cobb proposed to his wife), which is where Kali's favorite feature was located: a stairway with running water in the bannister. And nothing against said bannister (which I used to soak my forearms in blessedly cool water - it was HOT that day), but I was far more impressed by the Muslim architecture throughout. Even before we got to the main attraction, the gardens were awing me. The pools, the archways, the ceilings. Breathtaking.

Kali's beloved watery stair bannister.

Next up was a long sun-baked walk to the Palace of Charles V, which was built in a somewhat reactionary manner after the Reconquista. "Oh, you Muslims think you can build a palace? Well watch this!" The most notable thing about this palace was it's square exterior construction and circular interior courtyard. That description clearly doesn't do it justice, so allow I'll just trust you to click the Google image search I linked above. It was the first time this construction had ever been used in Renaissance architecture. Ah screw it, here are some pictures:

The outside.

And the inside.

So anyway, that was awesome. And yet the best was still to come - the palace of the sultan.

As Rick Steves said about the cathedral in Toledo, I walked around staring upwards with my mouth hanging out like a Pez dispenser that no longer works properly. One of the reasons I love Muslim architecture has to do with the religion itself: since "graven images" are strictly banned, there are no pictures of people in any of the art. Unlike in a Christian church, where you're inundated with images of people (Jesus, Mary and Joseph, angels, Adam and Eve, David and Goliath... the list goes on), the sultan's palace at the Alhambra is decorated solely with geometric designs and a single phrase in Arabic repeated a whopping 9,000 times: "only Allah is victorious." The tilework, the carvings, the fountains, the columns - I felt like my head was on a swivel, and was overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.

The Hall of the Ambassadors, where foreign dignitaries would meet with the sultan (and where Ferdinand and Isabella signed off on Columbus's voyage to India).

At the end of the Alhambra day, we were hot, sweaty, and exhausted. But I swear I've never seen a single more beautiful place in my entire life.