The Alhambra, Granada

I sit in a courtyard created by two white-plaster walls topped with faded-red tiles, a wall of round stones embedded in adobe and a fourth wall painted burnt sienna. A thick, gnarled-trunk tree spreads its limbs and leaves from wall to wall, providing a canopy above the brick and stone-tile floor, the dozen tile-topped tables, the wicker barrel-chairs. I am in the center of Hotel America, a modest but pleasant inn, in the center of the grounds which comprise the famous Alhambra ("red fort").

Two fountains splash and sing, sparrows swoop in for a look, a discordant bell rings from one of the nearby watch towers until it tires of its own annoying clang and slows to a stop. I have eaten a typical breakfast: pan tostada (toasted roll), plain yogurt served with a piece of whole fruit (pear, banana, nectarine), a small glass of jugo de manzana (apple juice) and cafe con leche (strong coffee and hot milk). I sit alone in a place some 2 million visitors a year deem worthy of pilgrimage, surrounded by richly-patterned history.

Last night I visited the Nazaries Palace, the most famous structure on the Alhambra grounds which include a fortress, the gardens and houses of the Generalife ("heneral-leaf-ay"), numerous watch towers, the Palace of Charles V, a bathhouse, some curio shops, the most-expensive Parador in Spain, and Hotel America. The grounds are enormous and confusing. Ticket sales are at one end, entrances at another, and you must be prepared to walk up and down steep inclines and many steps to experience the Alhambra. Explanations and signs are few and far between.

With a special ticket to enter at a precise hour, allowing only 400 people at a time, the Nazaries Palace is lit inside at night by strategically-placed spotlights, but it remains quite dark to give a sense of the mystery, the serenity of the still pools surrounded by delicate arches and box hedges, the magnificence of the scale of genius of Moorish architecture, and the fact that every square inch of the walls is decorated, carved with flowing Arabic letters and an endless number of geometric designs. During the day, although admission is still controlled, the whole of the Alhambra is overrun with tourists, giving it a somewhat Disneyland feel.

This was the palace of Ibn al-Ahmar who, in 1238, became the first Nasrid sultan and the only Muslim governor in the Iberian peninsula after swearing allegiance to King Fernando III and formed the Kingdom of Granada. By this date, the Muslim empire was in decline but Ibn al-Amar found an old fortress on the hill and transformed it into the most important legacy of Muslim Spain.

There was a lot of paranoia in the Nasrid kingdom and the palace was built to baffle, with designs of twists and turns and secret passageways, not only ostensible enemies but people within their own ranks. The kingdom fell apart after 1492 and the Alhambra fell into ruin. It was "discovered" and made popular by Washington Irving, Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand and others who made up fabulous romantic stories about it, which form the basis of much of today's popularity.

There is much more that could be written, and has been, about it. But, for now, enjoy the images...

Toledo Spain

I have tried to be sequential in this trip, but most-recent adventures tend to eclipse what happened last week, or yesterday, so I am taking the liberty to write without concern for actual dates...what difference does it make? It all happened and is now just a story anyway...a very good one.

There is an intensity in newness that must give way to familiarity and comfort in order for us to function. Such a pace as I've been on for more than 2 weeks is starting to feel exhausting. Originally, I planned to spend a week in Madrid and head out to Granada and on to Barcelona then up the Costa Brava and back to Toulouse in southern France to meet my flight back to the states on Oct. 7. But my experience in Madrid is so welcoming -- and I still haven't made it to the Prado! -- that I decided to go to Granada for the weekend as planned, and return to spend another week in Madrid. I will fly directly from here to Toulouse on Oct. 6.

TOLEDO

I enjoyed a beautiful blue-sky day in Toledo (Sunday, 22 Sept.) after a late start. It's difficult to get to sleep in a city where people begin dinner well after 10pm and normally turn in about 2 or 3 in the morning, but it's a rhythm that suits me fine. I hurried to catch a 12:20 train to Toledo but, in typical Spanish style, the vague instructions from the so-called Information booth put me in an hour-long line to buy a ticket for a 40-minute train ride. Oh well, standing in lines here is part of the culture... and now I know there are special fast lines for impending trains. In Spain, one has to discover these things for one's self.

After getting on the 1:50 train, I was met an hour later in the main plaza of Toledo by Professor Abdurrazzak Douhal, a famous nano-chemist from Morocco who I met on the train from Toledo to Madrid last November and he expedited my tightly-planned trip to the airport. He had said, "Next time you're in Toledo, I'll give you a tour of the university." I thought it a fat-chance that I'd ever be back in Toledo, but there I was again.

Toledo is an extraordinary city of tiny, steep and winding cobblestone streets; alleys actually, and its a sure bet that you will get lost in the maze, even after living there 25 years like Abdurrazzak. Actually, I think he has the worst sense of direction I've seen, and I seemed to know my way better than he after only spending 2 days there a year ago. We wandered, and in a delightful mix of Spanish and English, we talked about theoretical science and applied Life, like human nature and will and the magic of the moment when things shift; and they always shift in a moment.

We ate lunch (gaspacho and ensalada mixta) at a sidewalk cafe and visited one of the four Toledo campuses of the Universidad de La Mancha, which presents a good example of melding modern and ancient architecture; there is even an interior area of excavated Roman ruins. Because I was with a professor, we obtained a large iron key by which to visit a terrace which gives an elevated view over the river and crammed-together tile roofs (from the same era as those in Florence) under which dozens of generations have lived and died.

Every twisting street is a photo op of ancient stone and plaster buildings in a variety of colors -- yellow, pink, tan, blue -- with wrought-iron balconies and light fixtures, window boxes and shutters. We visited the huge cathedral, which I did not see last time. If you overlook the catholicism, it is pure art -- vast interior spaces with soaring columns and a plethora of compound arches between which are a myriad of paintings, bas relief sculptures (my favorite) and gold-encrusted designs that attest to Fibanacci series centuries before it was identified mathematically. The sheer size of it -- it felt at least 3 times bigger than Notre Dame in Paris -- was awesome.

There is so much more I could write about Toledo, having spent two days exploring it last November -- El Greco, the Sephardic Jewish community, the Moors, the Inquisition, the capital for a brief time of Isabel & Ferdinand's rule -- but it will have to be another time.

I took the last train back to Madrid at 20:30, the Metro three stops and then, within a block of the apartment I call home this week, I had to use my map to find Calle Relatores. The narrow street, one block long, is in the old part of Madrid, which is all angles and alleys and streets changing names at each intersection. I like it here, and plan to return for another week after this weekend in Granada. Granada! I have found, through www.craigslist.com, a room to rent at a woman writer's apartment nearby, in the old city. I will fly from Madrid to Toulouse Oct. 6, from where I'm ticketed to leave for the States on the morning of Oct. 7.

Planning for a(nother) Trip to Europe

You'd think I'd have it to a fine art by now, and maybe I do...since fine art includes the likes of Jackson Pollack; messy and erratic on a big canvas. As my partner likes to note, planning a trip takes me longer than actually taking the trip. But, of course, I enjoy it.

I relish the obsession which supersedes all "real work" and keeps me focused for countless hours...well, actually, weeks...reading through travel books, pouring over maps and web surfing for recommendations of places to go, or avoid, how best to get there (for example, I've read that the bus is faster and cheaper than the train between Madrid and Granada), sourcing discounts and deals, writing to pensions and vacation rental companies (there is no centralized service, each requires their own forms or emails), and seeking personal connections in my now fairly-determined itinerary.

As a long-time member of Servas (www.servas.org), a 50+-year-old international host/traveler organization, based on the Gandhi quote "Peace is built one friendship at a time," I began reading the host books for France and Spain, as if they were novels, deciding which hosts I might want to meet and stay with for two days. Many hosts live in rural areas that require a car to visit, or are not on my route. After identifying several, I composed emails introducing myself, explaining the purpose my trip and requesting certain dates to visit, and sent them off. Surprisingly, few responded, or emails bounced back, and it started to feel like an exercise in futility. Of course, it is August, when many Europeans go on holiday and presumably do not check their email.

Then I discovered Couch Surfing (www.couchsurfing.com), an innovative internet "project" loosely based on the Servas model but for a younger audience and less formal. More than 400,000 people worldwide have signed up in less than 3 years to offer a "couch" (i.e., place to crash) or to meet for "coffee or a drink." It too is about cultural understanding and peace building.

As a couch surfing (CS) host since July, we've already had 3 different "surfers" stay with us in Santa Fe, 20-somethings who were smart, considerate and fun guests (you can read other people's reviews of them online at their CS profile page). So I've spent hours culling through the 1000+ CSers in Barcelona alone, and made many inquiries in each of the cities I'll be visiting, but again without much response.

After a while, all this solicitation begins to feel like cold-calling: a waste of time and I give up, book my pensions and hotels, rail and air tickets and hope Serendipity finds me. However, I did arrange two CS experiences -- one in Toulouse and another in Amsterdam, both also happen to be Servas hosts as well.

It is less than 3 weeks before I leave for a month and most of the sleeping and transportation portions of my trip are planned, with the exception of 5 days between Granada and an early-morning flight out of Barcelona. I want to leave that open, to see what I feel like after 3 weeks of traveling. "Maybe I'll go to Amsterdam or maybe I'll go to Rome and rent me a grand piano and put some flowers 'round my room..." or maybe I'll find a quiet beach and just relax.

I still have a book about the Prado to read and I'm halfway through Orwell's rather dry "Homage to Catalonia," and more research is definitely required on every stop's highlights. A table in my office is covered with guide books, print-outs of receipts and itineraries, my purse-size umbrella, electrical adapter, European cell phone, passport, pocket-sized journal. Don't touch!

I'm beginning to feel a bit organized, but I haven't even begun to pack and there are dozens of checklist items to accomplish before I leave. I can't imagine not spending this time planning...it's simply too much fun to dream up a trip, learn about places, compose a plan (always changeable, of course), and then, finally, find myself there.