Granada and beyonda

Okay, since Stacy has transferred to me the weighty responsibility of writing about one of the coolest places we visited on our entire trip, I´m now feeling the pressure.
Well, it´s a smaller town than Seville, definitely, and when you step off the bus you immediately notice the mountain air circulating through your lungs. You also notice the tons and tons of foreign students everywhere, as well as a fair number of expats from across the globe manning counters and running coffee shops. Down one long avenue lay the Plaza Isabel la Catolica, a small square in the center of the city with a statue and fountain commemorating Christopher Columbus´(Cristoforo Colon, to Granadans) pact with Queen Isabel of Spain to find a route to India. A huge Gothic cathedral stands nearby, in whose chapel are buried the remains of Queen Isabel and her husband Ferdinand. Towering over the city on a flat overhang sprawls the ancient towers and sculpted gardens of the Alhambra, an incomprehensibly immense fortress and retreat for the last Moorish rulers of the city, before they were chased away by the Christian Requonquistadors. And far up on the highest hills before the landscape stretches away to the misty valleys and snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the small gypsy village of Sacromonte exists in a world totally removed from Granada. Some people still live in cave-homes their ancestors dug out of the sheer rugged hillsides to hide from the Inquisition in the 16th century, though most live in ramshackle two-story whitewashed cottages along the path up to a crumbling 13th century chapel.
On our second day we hoofed it up to Sacromonte, where we wandered on goat paths, goggled at the nearby mountains, and watched 85 year old men with canes cruise up steep hillsides like they were Olympic athletes. We visited the Alhambra on our last full day in town, and even with several hours of climbing towers, getting lost in endless gardens, and choking on the dust of thousand-year-old Arab baths, we couldn't possibly see it all. On the plus side, we did get lots and lots of pictures (some of which I may even get around to posting). Let me tell you folks, three or four days in Granada is not really enough. Get yourself into a five month language program (there´s one advertised around every corner) and come learn Spanish here - you just might run into Stacy and I on a goat trail.