A twist of fate & Grrranada!

********
Our party of four planned to enter Spain via Malaga, then proceed to Granada-Cordoba-Toledo and Madrid. But what we didn’t plan was to miss the flight! We reached the Frankfurt-Hahn airport 3 minutes shy of the last check-in call. The boys put to use their best German to reason with the airport officials that we came all the way from Weingarten, but to no avail. So what were we to do?

After mulling over a few options, we settled on buying another ticket to Madrid the next day. Pick our hired car in Madrid, scrap Malaga off our itinerary, and stick to the rest of our plan from Granada onwards. We accepted it as taqdir. Allahualam.

So, on 26th February, we flew into Madrid on Ryanair. The flight took over three hours. Spain's time is the same as Germany’s, so we needn't adjust our watches. After collecting our rented VW Jetta at the airport, my brother, being the designated driver consulted the excellent Garmin GPS and drove us to the Islamic Cultural Centre. What a relief to know that Islam is alive in Madrid, judging from the facilities at the centre and the respectable size of jemaah at Isya’ prayer that night. After dinner at Sinbad Restaurant, we hit the highway to Granada that is some 500km away. Alhamdulillah for my brother’s driving skill and his able co-pilot, we arrived in Granada at 3 am, and thanks to the GPS, finding the hotel was a breeze.

Friday, 27th February 2009, Alhambra
************************************

Our first day in Andalucia was dedicated to the famous Alhambra, that sits on a hill the Moors called Sabika, and the surrounding Albaicin. My brother has pre-booked the entry tickets for 2pm admission and it cost us 10 euros each. The Alhambra is basically divided into three parts; first Los Palacious Nazaries or the Nasrid Palaces, the Alcazabar or the fortress, and the Generalife, a luscious garden and summer palace.

Many praises have been given to this place that I was scared it would not live up to its honours. But my jaw dropped to the floor when I entered Los Palacious Nazaries. I overheard another visitor said that she had “goosebumps on her skull” – (is that possible?) – in describing her reaction to this place. You have to be there in person to experience the beauty and splendour of this place; the pictures, well at least my pictures don’t do justice. It’s a blessing that this delicate and beautiful masterpiece survived the time for us to appreciate and reflect. It tore me inside to see Arabic inscriptions and intricate carvings and floral motifs throughout the complex evidencing the height of Islam at one time in Spain.

We spent a good four hours at this complex – we would spend much longer if we were not chased out of the grounds as they close at 6 pm. (Apr-Oct hours 8.30am-8 pm.) We adjourned to the nearby souvenir shops. My regret was that I didn’t buy enough as the prices there is the cheapest compared to other parts of Spain. We returned to our hotel “Villa Blanca”, but the boys later ventured out for a mosque or Islamic Centre that eluded us during the first half of the day.

Granada is gorgeous to me for the Alhambra plus the ubiquitous orange trees that add colour to that place. I puzzled why people don’t eat the fruits off the trees; I just learnt that they are sour. The trees are so laden with this bright-coloured things that the oranges that fell under the trees looked like a chap-goh-meh aftermath.