Days 17 and 18

[Dan’s comments are italicized]

• Train to Cordoba
• Train to Zaragoza

Our bodies were feeling the mountain climbing from yesterday (yes, ‘bodies’ as in mine too!). Rhia’s endurance has markedly improved over the last two weeks, so soon she will be carrying my pack as well. Instead of more hiking, we decided to take a more gentle approach today and immerse ourselves in the culture. Because this place was Arabic for almost 800 years, that culture is still very prevalent.

We visited the best preserved bathhouse in Europe…but it’s a mere 1,000 years old.

The traditional house from 800 years ago was interesting too…

…though neither understood the significance of the hospital as a site of importance. It felt like a lonely monument found in an empty field declaring “Here once stood a beautiful hospital of significant importance.”

The rest of the evening and following morning saw us getting organized for a long train journey and wandering around the streets of Granada; I make it sound like we were lost souls…but we were just taking in the culture and languages and smells. I was fascinated by the stonework for floors in regular places…

…by the carvings on building facades…

…by beautiful entrances to regular apartments…

… by open spice and tea shops …

…by the recycling of objects (here, what looks like grinding wheels being used as part of a wall)…

…by how small some doorways were…

…by some confusing statues (e.g. why is there a statue of Washington Irving here?)…

…and just some general ‘why?’…

The train ride out of Granada was not socked in by fog like our journey in had been, so I got to see the countryside from the railway to the mountaintops full of olive trees. Simply amazing. However, no pictures were added because the train was travelling at almost 300 kph, which in mph is really fast. (Actually, the pictures I took were extremely unimpressive, so I just did not add them.)