Morocco IV: Now We’re Cookin’

Reading this week:

  • Captives and Voyagers by Alexander X. Byrd

As I teased in my last entry my super amazing wife had signed us up for a cooking class while we were in Tangier. This was with Blue Door Cuisine and was a lot of fun! As part of the cooking class you can go on a market tour, which we opted to do. We met up with our guide Lena in the Grand Socco (we were easy to spot) and she took us off around the market. We went to spice shops and vegetable stands and a meat place and she pointed out all the traditional stuff they cook with as she bantered with the shop keepers. She also took us by the communal ovens which were neat. Back in the day it was a hassle to have your own oven so for bread baking they had these big communal ovens where you could bring your stuff to be baked. Communal ovens are going out of fashion these days but not entirely; they are fired with orange and olive woods which provide a special flavor you just don’t get at home. After the market tour it was off to the cooking class itself.

The class took place in the proprietor’s house, though the first floor is laid out for cooking classes with different work stations. In addition to Lena we met her two accomplices. First they walked us through making the bread to go with dinner, specifically khobz. It’s not a flatbread but it is a pretty flat bread. After we prepared the dough they were whisked off to the communal ovens to get that authentic flavor.

Then it was on to the main course, of course literally. The point of the class was to learn how to cook with the tagine, which is that ceramic oven thingy you see all over Tangier. We spent the rest of the trip trying to find one we liked to buy but never really did. Plus that is a lot of luggage space to commit to. A lot of the cooking was handed to us, i.e. we mostly just sliced and arrange vegetables and didn’t even have to clean the fish, but that of course was to make it more fun. They taught us how to arrange the vegetables in the bottom of the tagine so the meat doesn’t stick, and then we mixed together the marinade for the fish itself. We slathered the fish up with the sauce and arranged it just so and proudly stood by our creations which were then cooked over the stove as the tagine worked as an oven.

A note on our teachers there. They were phenomenal. Like Lena there not only teaches at blue Door, but also teaches English, is getting her Masters’, and takes care of her dad and brother. Women! They work too much and are underappreciated. But what I did especially appreciate is that when you are taking a class from homemakers they give you the real down-to-earth tips, like “a metal sponge is best for cleaning tagines” and the non-stick veggies tip above. The women also kept hinting to me that a man doing the cooking is very appreciated and I should remember to do it sometimes at home. I’ll try!

As we waited for our dinner creations to cook we had a lesson on tea. We had been enjoying mint tea our entire time in Tangier, including even at Café Baba, but here is where we really learned about it. Turns out there are a lot more spices in it than we thought. Well sometimes. Normally it’s just tea and mint but for special occasions there are like ten spices including cinnamon and cloves and all sorts of stuff. The women described their heirloom tea sets at home and how it really connected them with their families and were a tad disappointed at how little sugar we asked to get added. And then you boil it all together in the pot for a while instead of just like pouring already boiling water over the spices? That’s an important technique I wouldn’t have guessed. When it was ready we drank tea for a while and admired the items in the little shop they have (we got a beautiful embroidered, um, I guess like a pad for the teapot and a oven mitt except not a mitt thing so you can pick up your metal teapot without it burning your hand, beautiful at any rate, and also we got some tea). And then eventually it was time for dinner!

They brought over our tagines full of food and the bread we had made and some more tea and let us chow down in a lovely little dining room. It was of course too much food and they offered to pack up our leftovers. We insisted we didn’t have a fridge (this was fish we’re talking about here) but they insisted in turn we pack it up so we wouldn’t go hungry and so we set off with our food and eventually gave the leftover fish to a cat with some kittens near our hotel. So that was a lot of fun and if you’re even in Tangier you should do it too!

Morocco III: To Remember

The big event for our second day in Tangier was to do a cooking lesson! But that was a dinnertime thing so we spent the rest of the day doing other stuff. The first of these was visiting the Punic Necropolis. That was really cool, actually. The Punic Necropolis was of course originally full of dead Phoenicians from the 4th century BC, but according to the sign in the first century the Romans cleared out all the dead Phoenicians so they could put dead Romans there instead (tip to the wise, on Google Maps there is a site “Nécropole Punico-Romaine” but I don’t know what that is and never found it; you want the “Tombeaux Phéniciens” instead). The tombs themselves are actually a little bit underwhelming. They are at this point just sorta holes carved into the rocks which are now filled with water with some trash floating around in it; if you want to see what used to be in the tombs (I mean like, the coffins, not just dead people), they got one in the Kasbah museum we had gone to the previous day. But the site! It is amazing that this very spot has been significant to human kind for millennia, and you can see why. Those views are gorgeous. Fantastic. Phenomenal. Great place to be dead, lemme tell ya. We stood there for a while just admiring it. Besides us there were several other couples enjoying the majesty of the sea from above on that glorious February day. Definitely swing by.

From there it was onto some shopping. The funny thing that happened on the way to the forum was that as we were walking along the sidewalk this woman tossed out the dregs of her tea right into the street from her alcove office. I strode into her view at nearly the same instant and she was mortified that she almost dumped tea all over me (she looked suitably embarrassed), but I thought it was funny. Our first destination was the Librarie des Colonnes. My super amazing wife and I both really like bookshops so we of course like to visit them. The Librarie des Colonnes was really neat, a beautiful space, full of history, and with a friendly shopkeeper, but man I didn’t know what to do with those books. They focused on a brand of art and intellectualism that I just don’t have the training to deal with. Nice to hang out there though. Next we went to Les Insolites, which was slightly more our style. They even had a cookbook my super amazing wife had been contemplating. Fortuitously, they also had a short book on Moroccan handicrafts which finally let us know what we were looking at in all the shops.

I said last time that we were running out of museums, but there was another: the Musée Dar Niaba. It took a bit to find it because we blew past it on the first time around. It is a nice little space, recently renovated, and we were there for diplomatic history (the place used to be…) but they didn’t have much. What they had instead were a good number of paintings of Tangier done by foreign artists, which were interesting to see. Again they also had a lovely courtyard, and then on top of that some sections on Tangier history.

Landscape of the South, Max Flegier, 1961

With that over we went tea set shopping. This was a fun little experience, and another instance of me contradicting myself from what I said last time. We were looking for a tea set because my super amazing wife wanted one. After wandering a bit we finally poked into a shop. The shopkeeper was of course very attentive. My super amazing wife asked about the price of a tea set and the guy said “800” which was insanely high (like $80 in USD) and as an opening gambit for the haggling to ensue she just turned him down. Except the guy seemed really thrown off? He then set about giving her a lesson in negotiating, explaining that here in Morocco we haggle and suggested she name a price. She eventually got down I think to 350MAD for the tea set which was probably too much but it was a fun haggling experience. She kept going to walk away which had him lower the offer a bit. It is a pretty nice little tea set.

The next experience was lunch. I had suggested one place but the reviews said the wait times were long, so we went to a different place. That different place also took an hour to serve us any food (good kebabs though) and I was in the sun the whole time so I was grumpy my suggestion hadn’t been taken, BUT what it did mean is that as we were departing we ran into a tiny shop displaying the artwork of Hafida Zizi. This was really cool, so the kebabs had a silver lining. I had initially been drawn in by the pottery but she also had these paintings of Moroccan women doing traditional handicrafts. My super amazing wife was most interested in the paintings of women doing textile work. We eventually settled on a painting of a woman spinning yarn. My super amazing wife really loved it. She loved it so much that we actually went back later in the day to pick up a second painting, which means we went from admirers of Zizi’s work to collectors all in one day. They are now in pride of place in our house so that was a really really neat souvenir of Tangier.

And then, finally, we were onto cooking! But I’ll cover that next entry.

Morocco II: Tortoise Power

Having already learned so much about world travelers already in Tangier, we were all set to keep visiting more museums but then we got distracted by lunch. We by happenstance ran across Le Salon Bleu and decided to stop in. It was fantastic. We got seven small bowls of various things and each and every one was great, and the biggest discovery of the day was that putting cinnamon on orange slices is the way to go, dessert-wise. The café is perched up on the top of the building so you got these great views of the harbor and off in the distance Spain. There were also some funny seagulls which was cool and all, but my super amazing wife had been excited by the reviews which noted “heaps of cats.” We didn’t see any while we were there so they must have all been off doing something. In Tangier though there were certainly a whole bunch of cats, which seemed mostly well cared for and were definitely extremely cute. There was also a snake charmer outside, charming a snake, which is a thing I thought they only did in movies.

I love a good harbor. I was also impressed that Tangier still seemed to have a working fishing fleet.

Anyways after lunch we then popped across the courtyard to our original destination, the Kasbah Museum! Even when lunch distracts us you can’t keep us away from museums for long. It is not technically the Kasbah museum (I have resisted calling this entry “Rock the Kasbah,” by the way, for your benefit), it is technically the Museum of Mediterranean Cultures, but it’s in the Kasbah so it’s the Kasbah museum. It’s a cute little museum at that. It proceeds lightly through the many many cultures that have called Tangier home, with a few interesting artifacts. Since it is built into the Sultan of Morocco’s old palace, it continues the theme we had been seeing of beautiful ceilings and peaceful courtyards. And there is a big ole’ Roman mural to boot with a boat in it. So that is neat.

Speaking of courtyards, this is where we first noticed Morocco’s fondness for tortoises. In one of the several courtyards of the Kasbah museum I noticed there was a tortoise wandering around, and then noticed there were a bunch of tortoises wandering around, including cute little baby tortoises. We took lots and lots of pictures. Maybe in some ways not as cute as cats but much more unique. Thinking back, there had been a tortoise at the American Legation Museum too and then as we proceeded through the rest of our trip in Morocco it seemed like every courtyard had one. I guess it is just the thing to do in Morocco. Where do they come from? Hard to tell, but a nice feature and keep an eye out for it.

After the delight in meeting the tortoises, the next thing we set out to do was visit the Contemporary Art Museum that was supposed to be nearby the Kasbah Museum. Turns out it is in the same compound as the Kasbah Museum, like you didn’t have to even go outside to get to it, so we wandered on through. They had some interesting works, and a lot of works at the time by Palestinian artists. Nice stuff!

At this point, we were unfortunately running a bit low on museums we could visit in Tangier, leaving us only able to enjoy the ambiance and culture of our surroundings. This meant wandering through the medina and trying to do some light haggling as a warm-up. We are not very good at haggling, and furthermore we were a little paralyzed in our souvenir buying because we weren’t sure if there was going to be nicer stuff elsewhere in Morocco. But one place our medina wanderings did bring us to was Cafe Baba. If you’ve never heard of Cafe Baba I hadn’t either, but my super amazing wife had. It is famed as being a place that the Rolling Stones hung out. There is little my super amazing wife loves more than a good cafe, and if Cafe Baba was good enough for the Rolling Stones it was good enough for us. Or so we thought. I can see why they liked it! It was not a place for us. The tea was good and the views pretty but the best part about the table they sat us at is that the window was broken so fresh air came in to displace the cigarette smoke. So we enjoyed our tea and departed, having been a little closer to rock n’ roll history and a little happier for having subsequently gotten farther away from rock n’ roll history. And with that our first full day in Morocco largely came to a close.

Morocco I: ‘Merica

Reading this week:

  • In The Shadow of the Cotton Tree by Jack Rillie

So we were finally here: the ancient city of Tangier. I had wanted to go for a long time, because of the usual exoticism reasons. Lots of history in the place, and a lot of that history is westerners coming in and deciding they liked the decor a whole lot. We were firmly in that milieu. Plus while back in Peace Corps I had read the book Tangerine, so I was excited to be stalked by a repressed lesbian ex-lover (that is my recollection of what the book is about but now that I am reading the New Yorker review I am very suddenly worried I am wrong in a bigoted way. I enjoyed the book!).

Breakfast at the hotel was a heavenly combination of fruit and bread and fresh cheese and butter and jam and coffee and juice and fortified us to proceed to our first destination: the American Legation Museum. This is a super neat place. It is the building that housed the U.S. diplomatic mission to Morocco and was the first American public property abroad. It has lived many lives and now is a wonderful little display of American diplomacy abroad. ‘Merica!

You wander up to the place via some narrow streets in the medina (that is redundant, all the streets are narrow), ducking into the door underneath an archway. The building spans the street which is a neat little architectural feature. The first part of the museum is a timeline of the building, and it describes the mission as being a pretty sleep place from around 1820 until 1920, and oh, to be a consulate in a sleepy legation in Tangier, sounds phenomenal. As you go upstairs the next chunk is a sort of house museum, describing life in the legation through the centuries. There are stories about lions and a big collection of furniture and very easy to imagine entertaining diplomatic guests on a sinecure from the U.S. government. I am salivating. It was sleepy until about 1920 and then you know some world wars picked up, and one section of the museum is dedicated to wartime activities and especially some spying that took place out of the building, with a recreation of the secret radio room out of which intelligence was transmitted back to the U.S. authorities. Eventually the U.S. diplomatic presence shifted on down to Rabat and left the building a little listless, so the Peace Corps moved in. I did my Peace Corps training out of a mud hut, which to be clear I very much enjoyed, but I could have also enjoyed a sunny courtyard in Morocco, you know? The most fun part of this part of the history is that the volunteers turned the cistern into a disco so they could let their hair down, and they dubbed this disco the “Cistern Chapel,” which is just a real good pun man. As a good intro into some of the modern international history of Tangier, the American Legation museum is the place to go.

When we initially went to the American Legation Museum, I managed to take us straight there through the medina’s winding streets. I mean, like I was an expert. This gave me a very false sense of confidence and every time we went anywhere else I tried to recreate the feat but we wound up twisting and turning and only ever arrived at subsequent destinations through luck and providence. But that’s fine, the medina is very cool, very nice to see how people live and very interesting to check out the shops. Plus the locals are used to it, immediately warning us every time we were headed down a dead end. One guy did actually try to lead us astray I think but honestly I can’t tell.

The destination of these wanderings was to see some Ibn Battuta sights. Maybe I knew something about Ibn Battuta before going to Tangier but probably not much. But in Tangier he is a bit of a thing. It’s his home town after all, and for a long long time he was the most well-travelled person in the world. I have subsequently bought a copy of his book (and a guide to his book) and will let you know when I manage to read them, but they seem interesting. Atlas Obscura turned me onto Ibn Battuta’s tomb, so I wanted to visit. It is right in the midst of the medina and surrounded by houses. Apparently there is some controversy over whether the man is actually buried in the mausoleum but I wasn’t able to verify. They supposedly open it up occasionally, someone who lives by has the key, but it wasn’t open when I visited so I couldn’t see if it was Ibn Battuta himself in there or not. But still pretty cool and not an unbeautiful place to be laid to rest (if he is laid to rest there).

Having seen the man himself (again, potentially) it was time to learn something about him so off we went to the museum dedicated to him, the aptly named Ibn Battouta Museum. It is a fine little museum though if you were on a tight schedule it is potentially skippable. No pictures allowed inside so you’ll have to trust me. The point of the museum is to walk you through Ibn Battuta’s life and travels, and how they show the interconnectedness of both Tangier and the Muslim world circa the 14th century. There aren’t a whole lot of actual artifacts in the museum (I don’t recall any at all but the museum website says they have some stuff), but the displays are well done and in multiple languages. You see models of like the boats he would have sailed on and maps of his destinations and neat stuff like that. Then at the end there is a little gift shop, so that’s nice. And that’s about it. After the visit to the museum we were back into the medina for the next adventure.

Interlude: Strait of Gibraltar

The Strait of Gibraltar! Oh man. As I said last time, we were now wrapping up the Spain portion of our honeymoon and it was on to Part 2: Morocco! But of course those two places are separated by one of the most storied bodies of water on the planet, the Strait of Gibraltar, the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea and boundary to the great Atlantic. I had never been before and I was pumped to go across it.

First we had to get there. There was no convenient way to take a train between Granada and Algeciras so instead of a very fun high-speed ride we took the bus. I suppose it was fine. It was from the bus that I caught the first glimpse in my life of the Mediterranean, so that was very cool. We arrived at the port rather early and were a bit confused and there was an initial mix-up with the tickets and at one point they closed off the gate and it seemed like we had missed the ferry and it was very stressful but it worked out in the end and we got on the ferry. It was much less crowded than I expected, just a smattering of people. Spanish passport control was on land but Moroccan passport control was actually on the boat, so not only did I get the “entry by ship” passport stamp that I coveted, I actually got it on a boat, which just takes the cake.And then it was time for the ferry ride! I was so excited about this. A large part was the mystique of arriving at a new continent via ship. The first and only time I ever went to Australia I went by sea. Bermuda, too, arrival by sea. It’s the best way to travel. This was not my first time in Africa of course but first time I got to arrive by ship. Just the utter magic of it, departing one place and traversing the (narrow strait of an) ocean to land upon a whole world of new experiences.

Gibraltar.
Can’t resist a sailboat.

I have actually thought about this particular Strait a lot. I used to be on submarines and a number of submarines have collided with merchant ships in the Strait. So we hear about it. The reason the Strait is a submarine-magnet is because it is a relatively narrow body of water and all the ships line up. Submarines can’t really “see” well directly behind them, which they overcome by maneuvering. Since you can’t do a whole lot of maneuvering in the strait, and because merchant ships go pretty fast actually, submarines can get pretty literally run over by merchant ships sneaking up behind them. The fact the submarine is underwater doesn’t save them, because they can get sucked up into the merchant ship via Bernoulli’s principle. And then on top of that, the Strait of Gibraltar has the ferries criss-crossing it all the time, and ferries themselves are kinda submarine magnets, because they go in unexpected directions and are faster than you think and if you’re worried about merchant ships sneaking up from behind and running you over then you might miss the ferry coming at you from the starboard quarter. All that to explain that I was very excited to keep an eye out for submarines and maybe crash into one, which I think would have been a lot of fun for me, personally.

So while we were on the ship I spent as much time as possible up on the deck checking everything out. It was a gorgeous day and an easy crossing. The line for the passport stamp was a bit long and I was longing to look out a window. I did get to look out a window for a little bit while in that line and during that time I saw a dolphin jumping about which was just magnifique (a challenge of this part of the journey is we had to switch over from Spanish to French, and while I have been taught both languages I have learned neither and kept mixing them up, though really the whole time we got away with English and just peppered in some poorly pronounced phrases from each other language). Up on deck I was just dazzled. I suppose I knew the Strait was narrow (you know, like a strait), but I had imagined that you might be able to glimpse the distant shores of one continent from the other, not like, you had a really nice clear view of TWO CONTINENTS, each imbued with their own mystery and history, from your comfy viewpoint atop a ferry. I mean wow! I had a blast. I was taking so many different pictures of boats and looking up the AIS data and verifying that the ship I was clearly seeing with my own eyes really was a ship and now that I look at the pictures they look silly because the ships are tiny little dots on a vast horizon but again man! The Strait of Gibraltar! History! And not to mention it was cool seeing Gibraltar itself! Now we want to go someday. It was a great boat ride and took a little longer than expected but really a very luxurious way to travel, in my opinion!

Ferries that sadly didn’t run over any submarines.
Merchant ships that didn’t run over any submarines, either.

Eventually of course we docked in Morocco, the second country in our honeymoon trip. Since we left from Algeciras we arrived in Tangier Med, requiring us to somehow get to Tangier Proper (this was our next destination). We could have taken the bus but decided to live a little and take a taxi. Being experienced travelers we were going to ensure we had agreed upon a fair price before getting in, but that simply did not happen because the man loaded up our bags and off we went. He charged us a fair price in the end so no harm no foul I guess. And then we got to enjoy the ride to Tangier.

As I got my first glimpse of Morocco my overriding thought was that it was greener than I expected, which is stupid. Clearly I had thought you cross the Strait and suddenly it is men on camels in the Sahara. Instead it was grass and shrubland and a few trees, or maybe big shrubs, I couldn’t tell. There were rolling hills and as we drove along the coastline there were gorgeous views of Spain. I also realized I had seen a couple setups where people had like, espresso machines installed in the back of their cars where they were selling espresso, and, like, neat I guess. We passed a Navy base along the way and the Poste Connexion Electrique Maroc-Espagne, which was really just over-the-top as far as stuffing in all the things I like into one day. We also saw a good number of cows, a horse, and a whole herd of wooly goats so that was neat. And a donkey! Then, finally, after a long day of travel we approached Tangier. Arriving the way we did my first impression is that it resembled more Sarasota than anything else, seeing modern high-rises abutting the water. That impression faded away as we entered the old city to arrive at our hotel, and I guess I also don’t recall people offering pony rides on the beach in Sarasota, as they were doing on the beach in Tangier. For dinner instead of going out we enjoyed a to-die-for I think French fusion restaurant in the hotel and then pretty much collapsed asleep.

Spain XIII: Shop ’til You Drop

Fear not, loyal readers, after three months’ worth of blogposts (all backdated) we are nearing the end of our Spanish adventure. Not our honeymoon adventure! But our Spanish adventure. Our last full day in Granada was our last full day in Spain. And we spent a large chunk of it shopping.

The first thing we bought was donuts. Actually now that I am thinking about it we might have ducked into a little cute random shop we saw and gotten like a pomegranate thing? I don’t recall, which leaves the first memorable thing we bought being donuts. The place we went was called Odeimos and appeared to be run by a couple and they made fantastic somewhat elaborate donuts. I say “somewhat” because they were elaborate but not gimmicky. Back in New Haven we used to go to Donut Crazy, which was good, but gimmicky. These were not that. Nothing is ever as good as the donut shack in your home town of course, but for Granada I recommend Odeimos. I got cheesecake donut and a lemon meringue donut and a coffee to boot. But enough about donuts (there’s never enough donuts). We were fueled up so shopping we went! My super amazing wife got a scarf for her mom and we got a big colorful tile for a trivet and then my super amazing wife also got some tea. Later in the day I got the print I told you about last time.

Okay I mean I titled this “shop til you drop” but we had to have interludes and the first of those was the Casa de los Tiros museum! The museum is named that because it has guns sticking out the top because it used to belong to some army dude. I suppose I admire a particular decorating theme. Inside is a bunch of different Andalusia stuff. It was actually pretty cool. They got a nice little courtyard and when we went there was a whole special exhibit on Washington Irving. Upstairs they had popular art and then some fine art and conveniently a picture of the chapel that I wasn’t able to show you in our first post on Granada:

The next part of our whirlwind final full day was to get a full belly via lunch (for shopping, on our way we popped into another gallery of shops and bought some jamón). Granada is a city of tea and while others are extremely good (I am referencing our first day again, when we went to the Teteria del Bañuelo), none of the tea houses we went to were as soaring in their achievement as Abaco Té. The joke I am making here is that it was way up the hill and we had to hike up there. Also there are like three stories to the place and we had lunch way up in the tippy top with just amazing vistas of the city as it sprawled out below with the mountains in the background and the Cathedral as the solid counterpoint to the domineering Alhambra. Plus the food and tea was really good.

The Alhambra is off to the left, you can see both from the place I promise.

Plus plus they had a super cute and super friendly grey cat snoozing comfortably atop a cushion:

After hiking up a hill and then getting very full on a rather large lunch actually my next suggestion was even more hiking. We went out to the absolutely fantastic Museo Cuevas del Sacromonte. Sacromonte is the neighborhood on the eastern edge of Granada and used to be where a variety of marginalized communities lived. A unique part of the neighborhood out there is that many people constructed homes by digging caves out of the hill. These days some people still live in caves but not so many, so the museum is there to document and preserve some of that way of life. I suppose you can take the bus or a taxi but we hiked out there and then hiked up the hill to the museum but once we got there it was all worth it. It was really cool! Neither of us really knew what to expect (despite the fact that I suggested it), but along the way the views were gorgeous and the dwellings were super cool. They had various caves set up for various functions, including a bedroom and a barn and a ceramics studio and even a blacksmith shop with an elaborate chimney. My super amazing wife would have been satisfied with just the ceramics but they also had a whole textiles cave so she was just in heaven. It’s a real gem of Granada so if you’re in town you gotta make a beeline for it.

The caves are all next to each other along the base of the hilltop.
Cozy bedroom/living room area.
Blacksmith shop!
The outside of the blacksmith shop; check out the chimney jutting out from the hill.
Textile heaven.

We were shopping, museum, shopping, museum, and so now back to shopping. And another hill. Like I just said my super amazing wife loves ceramics so another thing I spotted in the guidebook is that there was a ceramics place that had been in business since 1640. We were hesitant to go at first because it is on top of another hill but it was a cool walk there by and through the old city walls and the views and the shops and the streets remained very pretty so why not take the walk. The place is called Fajalauza and they have a factory somewhere but the place we went into is “just” the shop but they have tons of cool ceramics stuff. I got a tiny little ceramic pitcher thing and some small tiles and my super amazing wife got a mug stamped “since 1640” on the bottom which is just neat.

By this time we were really actually starting to lose steam. Good thing we were at the top of the hill so it was downhill all the way back to the hotel. We just had one final task which was to pick up some convent cookies. In addition to the tapas, this is another thing you can do in Granada (and elsewhere), which is support a convent by buying some of their sweets. The Convento de Santa Catalina de Zafra was right near our hotel and we had tried on our first day to buy some stuff from them but no one answered the bell when we rang. But we gave it another go this day. I know this sounds lame but the thing about these convent treats is so the nuns don’t have to look at your ugly mug you do the whole transaction via this rotating door thing, where you put money down and then the nuns spin you around some treats. We got tea pastries, which were really good, and a lifesaver the next day when we didn’t have an opportunity for lunch. Neat to buy some cookies in a unique way and they were pretty delicious to boot! And that, besides dinner, wrapped up our final full day in Granada and Spain. A nice country! I recommend visiting.

The nuns’ finest.

Spain XII: The Alhambra

Reading this week:

  • On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World by Philip Gooding
  • Weyward by Emilia Hart

When you’re in Granada, of course the biggest thing you gotta do is go see the Alhambra. And so we did! We dedicated the whole day to it.

First we had to get there of course, which we did by hiking on up the hill. You would think you couldn’t get lost on the way to the Alhambra, it is right there on top of the hill you can see it from everywhere in Granada, but we couldn’t even quite figure out where the front door was. We wound up entering via the Puerta de la Justicia, which felt like we were sneaking in the back. We had tickets for the Alhambra, which all the guide books recommend you get well in advance, but it wasn’t immediately clear how the whole complex worked. We had thought like you just have a ticket for the complex and then wander around. Turns out you can just walk into the Alhambra itself, but if you want to see the various compounds within the Alhambra, that’s what requires tickets and your one ticket lets you into all of them, but like once. That eventually became clear but in the meantime we were confusedly peripatetic.

The first place we wandered into were the Generalife, which despite the name is much more specifically a complex of gardens (and a palace). And then even more specifically it is apparently a summer palace, which confuses me. Like it was a countryside retreat for the Sultan, but it is like a five-minute walk from the court? This is like the US president having a summer home over in Foggy Bottom, isn’t it? I don’t get it. Very pretty though! I loved all the water features and fountains and everything. I liked that water would flow out of fountains and then into little channels before finally emptying into pool surrounded by bushes and trees and flowers. To get water to the Alhambra they had a canal running from way upstream on the Darro which I find super cool and apparently which you can still see remnants of, though we didn’t manage to hike all the way out there. They had other stuff that must have been designed to impress me, specifically, including espaliered orange trees, which I didn’t even know you could do to orange trees. The palace of the Generalife was also our first taste in the Alhambra of the absolutely luscious ceilings we would see throughout the Alhambra. I know I raved about the Mezquita but the farther south we went the more intense these ceilings got. They are meant to inspire a recollection of the cave of Hira. I think I might have a lot more revelations too if I got to hang out in such a palace all day.

The Water Garden Courtyard of the Generalife palace.

Having wandered the Generalife and subsequently picked up a guidebook in one of the several gift shops in the complex, we had gotten our feet under us, Alhambra-touristing-wise. Although you could go into the other compounds at any point on your general Alhambra ticket, we had timed tickets for the Nasrid Palaces, and it was now that time, so off we went. Running out of words to describe the result of centuries of accumulated majestic architecture, I noted in my journal that it was “again stunning, over the top, beautiful, out of this world.” This is where mosaic tiling really shines and my super amazing wife later bought a whole book about it. There were so many different motifs and later we were to see the labor that goes into it and I can barely believe it. I think they worked really hard at the Alhambra to stick in every type of tile work imaginable. I think my particular favorite were interlacing star wheels based around what I think is a zellij pattern. But really it’s impossible to pick a favorite and that’s why they try to stick in every single type I assume. We were also overwhelmed by more and more and more fantastical ceilings and various mind-bogglingly complex stucco’d walls. I think the most famous space in the Alhambra is the Court of the Lions, which is neat and all, but as you can see in my picture of it below my neck was craned firmly up. Not to say the palace didn’t have some absolutely rocking courtyards; although I bought a print of the famous lions it was the courtyards full of trees that I enjoyed the most in-person. Oh, to be the less-important son of a sultan, lounging in courtyards writing absolutely execrable poetry.

Ceiling envy.
Court of the Lindaraja

After the palaces we visited the next most exciting place in the Alhambra, which was the wonderful wine stand fittingly near the Puerta del Vino. A wine stand! In a national park! The Spanish are wonderful. We actually forewent the wine but had some bocadillos for lunch as we perused that guidebook we had purchased. Fortified we went on into the Alcazaba, which was also fortified, being a fort and all. The experience in this section of the Alhambra was damped (and dampened) by the fact that just as we reached the tippy-top of the tower with the gorgeous views of both the city of Granada and the Sierra Nevada it started to rain. A cold rain too! Fitting for February. But we scurried back down into the tower and huddled there with some other tourists. We hadn’t brought any raingear or an umbrella, which made wandering around the Alhambra less desirable. So we decided to at this point pop into the Palace of Carlos V.

Kursi used as the Nasrid throne since circa 1380.

Carlos V was the grandkid of Isabella and Ferdinand which is why he was in a position to build (or have built, he didn’t do it himself) a big imposing square palace with a round middle right in the middle of the Alhambra complex. Since he wasn’t using it anymore these days they have stuck two museums into it. The first one had artifacts from the Alhambra and also quite a lot about tilemaking. Maybe tilemaking was only a small part of it but after all the gorgeous tiles in the palaces it was what I was most interested in so it’s the bits I remember. But I was also impressed by the above chair because that sucker is like 640 years old. With the palace in Madrid I liked to imagine all the armor they had was just sitting in storage for a few centuries and I have to imagine the above chair was the same which just tickles me pink. A very nice chair! I gotta get one. The other museum in the Carlos V palace was a Museo de Bellas Artes and what I wrote down in my journal is that the Artes were indeed Bellas so that should be a good enough recommendation to visit yourself.

Courtyard of the Carlos V Palace.
Washington Irving and me (right).

At this point we were pretty pooped from seeing just centuries upon centuries of art and history and so we head out. Our last big adventure for the day (besides some souvenir shopping) was to hike up to a viewpoint so we could see the sunset over the Alhambra. This was enjoyable for the small winding and pretty streets that meandered up to the viewpoint, full of pretty tilework and with a smattering of pretty cats, though a bit of a bust sunset-wise because of the clouds. But as sunset fell upon our first full day in Granada we were looking forward to seeing even more of the sights (and eating more tapas).

Sunset over the Alhambra.

Spain XI: The Big Pomegranate

Our time in Córdoba had sadly drawn to a close, but no fear, we were off to bigger things: specifically, Granada. We spent our final morning packing, with pastries again for breakfast. Then it was off to the train station, because we got to take another high-speed train, which I was again excited for. We again got to admire the beautiful landscape of southern Spain. The castle we saw this time was the Castillo de Almodóvar del Río, though the more exciting sight was that of Archidona. First off, you know, so picturesque, the white buildings spilling down the hillside. But then you look it up on Wikipedia and find out the site has been settled since Paleolithic times and wowsers, talk about history. Bonkers. Another note is that in addition to the olive trees we saw on the way to Córdoba, we also saw a number of orange groves which was cool. Upon our arrival in Granada I was delighted to see that there as well the trend of orange trees continued, despite the city symbol being the pomegranate. Just can’t keep a good fruit tree down.

After dropping off our bags at the hotel we went off to wander Granada and man it was gorgeous. All the little streets and ancient history. Our hotel was right on the Darro so we were in the thick of it as soon as we walked out the door. We had gotten lunch but were still up for dessert so after getting our bearings a bit the next place we visited was the Teteria del Bañuelo which my super amazing wife rated as the best experience she had then had on the vacation. It is run by a lovely I assume Turkish woman, and besides having a gorgeous balcony with a view of the Alhambra, it also had a wonderfully friendly big ole café cat that was napping in the sun when we arrived but who soon enough swung by for some scritches. The tables had tile and the sun was shining and the excellent tea was served in cute little Turkish teapots and little Turkish teacups and the chocolate baklava and a “bird nest” dessert was to die for and it was great. Highly recommend.

Alhambra views.
Café cat.

The first real touristy place we visited in Granada was the Archeology Museum. It was small but with an admission price of a whopping 3€ it would have been a bargain at twice the price. The small size was actually an advantage for me; the archeological museum in Madrid was big and so full of stuff but I didn’t know what was going on so it was hard to keep track of it all. Meanwhile this was smaller and easier to understand. Plus according to the handy museum map, it was one of the first to be founded in Spain, having originated in 1842 as an Antiques office before getting a Royal Order in 1879. Neat! The building it is in is from 1539, or the façade is anyway. The sign near the door says it was built by Hernando de Zafra’s grandson, it is called the Casa de Castril, and is “decorated in a Plateresque style with an allegory that represents the lord of the house as a Christian hero hoping his victory over death.” Neat I guess.

I just said the archeological museum was small but boy does it pack a punch. They had some really cool stuff! There were perfectly preserved 7000-year-old woven grass sandals, which is crazy! Amazing stuff sticks around that long! Some dude or lady from 7000 years ago wove some grass together so their feet wouldn’t hurt so bad and here and unfathomable amount of time later we get to admire their work! Even older were some 1.5-million-year-old humanoid remains. Also extremely cool was a stone mold for bronze casting, and I had never seen that sort of thing before. And, of course, my absolute favorite (though actually I am still blown away by the sandals, I am a simple man that likes old things) was an astrolabe! Here’s another Google Arts & Culture thing of their collections so you aren’t limited to my silly pictures, very worth a perusal.

75,000-year-old-skull and a hand axe!
7,000-year-old sandals, still stylish!
Metallurgy!
Astrolabe! Of Ibn Zabal, 1481!

Despite how great it was the museum was still rather small so, still fortified from our tea and desserts, our first partial day in Granada was still far from over despite being very full already. Our next destination was the Capilla Real! Look man I was really bad this trip at figuring out what was going on with Spanish royalty. There I was back in Córdoba, rather stunned to discover that I was in Isabella and Ferdinand’s old pad, and now here I was in Granada, stunned to discover that the two of them were like a couple blocks from where we were staying! They were staying there permanently of course, because they are dead. Still very cool to see! No pictures again, sorry, you’ll have to go yourself. You walk in and see their big ornate crypt topper (I dunno it’s on top of the crypt) that is statues of them inside a big ornate chapel, and then you can descend a little staircase to see the sarcophagi themselves. You got Isabella and Ferdinand down there of course, but you also have Juana la Loca, which is a mean name, and Philip the Handsome, which is a PR job if I ever saw one and I really oughta hire that same PR guy frankly, and then finally poor little Miguel da Paz. Very cool to see and then as a breather you get to walk through a little museum of some religious iconography and if I recall correctly some monarchial paraphernalia, before exiting through the gift shop. That was a nice little surprise because most museums we had been to didn’t have gift shops and so I had no chance of getting a lapel pin, but the chapel had both a gift shop and a lapel pin for sale.

This is the cathedral, not the chapel, but I dunno man same same.

Okay with the royal visit out of the way, now our first day in Granada was winding down. After the chapel we poked our head into the madrassa across the street but there wasn’t much to see, and then wandered into more gift shops where we got some Turkish delight. What the guidebooks tell you about Granada is that it is the rare place in Spain where the bars still give you free tapas, so we were off to experience that. The place we chose was the Bodega Castañeda, I think. One thing I have really enjoyed about Spain is that you can just order a category of stuff. At bars I could just order a beer and receive a beer, no further discussion on brand or type or whatever required. At the train station coffee place I just ordered a “coffee” and the only question the lady had was if I wanted milk. Despite having enjoyed that, it was my super amazing wife learned the lesson better than I did; this bar we were at was known for its vermouth and when it came time to order I was paralyzed about what vermouth to order but she just asked for “vermouth” and lo and behold vermouth appeared! And tapas! It was great! Astounding and excellent. Vermouth in hand I then proceeded to bore my super amazing wife with my various thoughts on the economics of free tapas, like: How do you choose was tapas to serve? Do you try to avoid losing money on every drink or do you occasionally put out a fancy tapas so people feel like they are gambling and might order more drinks? If you wanted to forego free tapas, like as a bar if you wanted to stop giving out the tapas, do the other bars condemn you to keep you in line? I wonder.

But anyway that pretty much capped off our night and then all we had to do was head back to the hotel to rest up for the next day’s big adventure.

Decorations in the bar.

Spain X: Still and Unstill Life

Despite all the things we had already seen, the day was not over. A remarkable and unexpected gem of Córdoba was the Museo Julio Romero de Torres. We had never heard of Julio Romero there, and I think what we were really trying to do was to go to the Museo de Ballas Artes next door. But they have the same entry way and the lady at the ticket counter I think was trying to ask us which one we wanted to go to and we didn’t understand and we wandered on into Julio Romero’s former home there and I am glad he did. Quite an interesting painter!

Unfortunately they did not allow photos inside the museum so instead of my crappy photos you’ll have to instead rely on the higher-quality ones that Google took. I keep harping on our lack of context as some cultural self-flagellation, but of course we were walking into this museum blind as well. There’s not a whole lot of explanatory text that I recall, and one of the first things they have you do is watch this uh artsy video. Very informative. One thing becomes very quickly clear about Julio Romero de Torres as you walk through the museum though: the man liked women.

The museum is not particularly large, featuring just a few galleries with a number of his generally pretty large-format works. Most of the paintings are about women. A large number of those were of perfectly normal women, as in like, this is a painting of a flamenco dancer. But I thought the most interesting paintings were the gender-swapped ones. The single most intriguing one was of the Archangel Saint Raphael. I suppose I am not deep enough in the cannon as to understand if angels are men or women, but I am pretty sure Raphael is usually depicted as a dude so making him a her is a choice and I wonder what he was trying to say. This was a theme of his, switching up your normal religious iconography. Here is the Pietà, but, you know, sexy. This dude should be way more popular on Tumblr, tell you what.

Alongside a note that the frames were big and ornate, other paintings I wrote down as thinking they were especially cool included:

I wrote down in my notes that I thought Poema de Córdoba was probably my favorite overall for what it is trying to do with myth and metaphor, but one that caught my super amazing wife’s attention was Naranjas y limones. She noticed that the painting only depicts oranges, making the lemons a metaphor, if you catch my drift. Wikipedia agrees with her, so that’s a point for my super amazing wife’s super amazing art analysis skills. The museum did not have a gift shop, but the little shops across the way did have prints, and much to her chagrin I bought one of Naranjas y limones. Speaking of oranges, I know this is just standard in Córdoba but I still love it, so I will note the museum also had a lovely little courtyard with lovely little orange trees and man I think that is all I want in the world:

Although we had already experienced quite the day full of culture and history, there was one more thing to do: flamenco! I mean first we had to get dinner, we went to an Italian place, or Italian-inspired anyway, always interesting to see a culture interpreted through a third culture, especially if it’s a different third culture you’re not used to seeing it interpreted through. Such a mix! Oh and also there was even more souvenir shopping, we got a cute little model house. But then, for real, flamenco!

This was my super amazing wife’s first experience with flamenco, but it was not mine. You see, as part of our education to become well-rounded Naval officers, the Naval Academy made us sit through various cultural events. I saw the Russian National Ballet Company put on Swan Lake and lemme tell you, I hated it. A much more popular event though is when they had us sit through a flamenco performance. They had the Academy’s etiquette instructor give us a lesson on flamenco etiquette the day before which annoyed all of us, because it went over schedule making us late for classes (which we could get in trouble for), and she made the other mistake of telling us that it was a complement to shout olé! a lot, so during the actual flamenco performance itself, which I remember being really good (way better than that stupid ballet performance) (this is not a “Russia’s invading Ukraine” opinion by the way, I’ve been hating on this experience for a decade and a half now), we all got to obnoxiously shout olé while in fact being square down the middle of appropriate etiquette. Anyway I was looking forward to seeing flamenco again.

It was really good! We of course went to one of the nightly flamenco performances that caters to tourists, but I read online that most flamenco is for tourists now anyways, so really when you think about it this was the most authentic type of flamenco. Entrance came alongside a drink ticket and we both got sangria (a dangerous drink for me). We settled in and waited for the show to begin. I was really impressed by the guitarist, who managed to look between bemused and bored while strumming out just extraordinarily complex music that these women (and one man) were dancing to. Vocals were provided by a lady who happened to be pregnant, making it all feel like a family affair. My super amazing wife was particularly impressed by the footwork, having experience in Irish step dancing herself. It was all really expressive and I wish I knew more about the subject as to have been even better able to appreciate what it was. I was stunned when 80 minutes had gone by and it was over, despite an encore. A very full day behind us, we finally head back to turn in for the night.

Spain IX: Cattle, Caliphs, & Columbus

Reading this week:

  • A Residence at Sierra Leone by Mrs. Elizabeth Helen Melville and edited by Mrs. Norton

Although the Mezquita was large by the time we finished the day was still young and there was so much more to see in Córdoba. One of the places I wanted to go in Córdoba was the bullfighting museum. Being an American who’s main exposure to Spanish culture is Hemingway, I am into the concept of bullfighting. When I went to Cancun on spring break one time I did actually see a bullfight. I would call it a pastiche of one but they did actually kill the bull. The opening act was dancing and cockfights (not to the death, though I later saw those in Guam). I have a poster from it as an homage to a poster my dad has from a Spanish bullfight we went to. All that to say that if it was the correct season I would have dragged my super amazing wife to a bullfight while we were in Spain, but it was not the season, so the next best thing was dragging my super amazing wife to the Museo Taurino de Córdoba.

Honestly it was a little bit disappointing. Maybe I didn’t know enough Spanish to really appreciate it for what it was but mostly it was just a bit small. I guess I am spoiled, or maybe I was expecting to be fed context that the museum already expected you to have. Again, being a reader of Hemingway I know a thing or two about bullfighting, or think I do, so I could understand some of what was going on but the treatment of bullfighting in the place seemed a bit light. There was some cool stuff about the history of bullfighting in Spain reaching back to ancient times, and the main focus of the museum I think was on some of the more famous matadors, the “Five Caliphs” of bullfighting. I was hoping for more that explained the art of bullfighting, maybe a more intricate cultural history, something like that. Nonetheless it was probably worth the price of admission, but not a place to spend the whole afternoon.

Almost the whole rest of the day in Córdoba was spent poking into interesting little place we more or less stumbled upon. After the bullfighting museum and even after some additional souvenir shopping we had plenty of time so when we stumbled upon the Baños del Alcázar Califal (Caliphal Baths) it was worth wandering in. Here’s the virtual site map, though maybe the Spanish Wikipedia page is more useful. It is a small museum built into the ruins of a hammam built in the 10th century by the Cordoban caliph al-Hakam II, Wikipedia tells me. They were used for a couple centuries and then destroyed when the city was taken over. There’s not a whole lot in the museum, mostly a guided path through the old rooms of the place. Once again lacking context for much of what was going on I didn’t really understand what I was looking at most of the time but I guess neat to wander around. The thing I was most interested in was the heating system for the hot room; apparently there was some cool pipes and there would have been a boiler (I love boilers) but I couldn’t really tell what I was looking at unfortunately. Oh well.

Two places wandered through, it was on to the next location: the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos. This is the thing I am most embarrassed about not realizing what it was. I am going to go on and on in this blog post about my lack of context and like, some of that is not my fault. If I grew up in Spain a lot of this stuff would resonate on a deeper level than “cool” or “aesthetic.” But a large chunk is my fault. Like I knew Córdoba was apparently an important city or whatever, but I didn’t realize how important. We had popped on into the Alcázar because it was supposed to have some pretty gardens. And pretty gardens it did have! Super pretty. You had to wander around some throne-room looking thing (reader this is foreshadowing) before getting to them, and we skipped going up the tower because the line was too long, but man the gardens are great:

Huge, too. Several levels, multiple water features, including really cool ones where there are like little water channels that empty into ponds and stuff or go around and all sorts of things. I love any kind of fruit tree, every garden should be full of fruit trees, and this place had a whole orchard of orange trees. In the middle was also a statue of a Columbus-looking guy. Weird, I thought. They also had a section with a bunch of stray cats, each of which was extremely cute. Besides the large garden there were little courtyards with more orange trees. It was calm and peaceful and beautiful.

Walking out, I finally looked up what the place was on Wikipedia. And like, oh. The Reyes Cristianos. Turns out the place was a primary residence of Isabella I and Ferdinand II! The statue of the Columbus-looking guy was because that was Columbus and this was the spot where he had his first audience with Isabella and Ferdinand in order to get support for the whole “journey to the new world” thing! A lot of important stuff happened in this spot and I thought it was just weird there was a throne room attached to the pretty gardens! I felt very silly. I could have really absorbed some history, even some nasty bits I guess. But hey the gardens were cool no matter what.