After Seville, we had a superspeedy stopover in Granada, home to the most-visited monument in Spain, the Alhambra.
The Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex of the Moorish rulers in Spain, begun [they think] in the 9th century, and completed in the fourteenth century [though modified plenty since then..] Anyway, anyone looking for a history lesson can find it at google.com ...
It just has to be seen... the name means 'red castle', and was meant to be because it was built on red clay... but now the walls and fortifications themselves appear red, though they were once whitewashed. The sheer scale of the site is completely daunting, covering over 140,000m squared area... and walking around it it feels every bit that big. Simple though it may sound, what got to us was the sheer 'castle-ness' of it all... irrelevant/unexciting if you have grown up in an area steeped in centuries and centuries of history, but to two [literally, at times] lost kiwis 20,000km from home, it was mind-blowing. The history that this site has seen, the destructive forces it has withstood, and those that it did not make it through - as evident in the many ruined/collapsed bridges/former buildings around.
In an attempt at shortest post in some time, we'll leave it there... awe-inspiring, larger than life, and oozing history all over the dusty red clay - whatever hassle it takes to get to Granada is worth it just to say you've been.
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