At Home, part 21

A couple weeks later we had a Monday holiday, so we decided to take a long-awaited trip to Granada. The Alhambra, the beautiful 14th-century Moorish palace, was one of the most important sites in Spain, and we had been looking for the right moment to go there. Ana, whose family came from the nearby Alpujarras region, had good advice for us.

“Be sure to go to the Alhambra first thing in the morning,” she said. “The crowds get very bad later in the day, and at a certain point they just cut off the line and tell people to come back tomorrow. If you go right when it opens, you will have plenty of time and space to see everything.” So we decided to drive down on Saturday, visit other parts of the city, and then get to the Alhambra first thing Sunday morning.

The drive down to Granada, on the southern coast, took only four hours, but we rushed all the way, because that Saturday was the wedding of the Infanta Elena. Daughter of the king and queen of Spain, the princess was considered a bit homely and a little old, so the country had been delighted to learn of her engagement a few months earlier to a capable young man from an aristocratic family. Elena would be the first of her siblings to marry, so the wedding was much anticipated throughout Spain.

We checked into our glitzy hotel just as the wedding was beginning, and the first thing we tried in our hotel room was the television, to make sure we would have a good picture of the ceremony. “Ooh, she looks nervous!” Julie said when the TV showed Elena in close-up. We sat immobile on the bed, watching the solemn Mass, the proud parents, and the uneasy bridal couple.

“I think I saw the king yawning!” Lisa said, rapt. We stayed glued to the TV right to the end, and we were as proud as, say, cousins when the event was over.

Now we were free to walk around Granada a bit. The guidebook mentioned a hilltop plaza with fine views of the city, so we started there. We passed walled white villas and houses. “That says ‘Hakuna Matata’! From The Lion King!” Julie said, pointing to a handpainted sign above the gate of one of the houses.

In the cobblestone plaza we found friendly Gypsy women selling castanets, which were irresistible to the kids. We bought Julie and Lisa a pair each, and the Gypsies showed them how to make the rapid clicking sounds. It took some practice, but Julie started to get the idea pretty quickly. “Look, I can do it!” she said, beaming while Lisa struggled with her castanets. Unlike other Gypsies we’d encountered, these women were pleasant and helpful, apparently enjoying the kids.

We walked down through the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter with typically tiny, winding streets, and on to the Capilla Real, where Ferdinand and Isabella were buried, and the neighboring cathedral. After our long day of driving, wedding attendance and sightseeing, we were too tired to wait till the Spanish dinner hour, so we had an early Chinese dinner down the street from our hotel.

The next morning we were near the head of the line when the Alhambra opened at 9. More than a palace, the Alhambra was a large compound that covered an entire plateau. It included a fortress, a palace, a summer palace (the Generalife), and expansive gardens. We took our time and walked through all the buildings, but we were disappointed that the Baños Árabes (Arab Baths) were closed for restoration.

The royal palace alone, though, was worth the entire trip. In my Spanish art history class, Everett Rice had showed us slides of the gorgeous rooms of the palace—the Court of the Myrtles, with its long pool surrounded by shrubs; the Court of the Lions, with a fountain and twelve lion statues; and the Hall of the Two Sisters, dripping with intricate plaster ceiling designs. But it was so much more dramatic to see them in person. The harmonies of the architecture, the extravagance of the decoration, the effects of light and shadow—it was a breathtaking experience. Even the kids were impressed.

I reminded the girls of one of Mike’s early Spanish-language gaffes. “Remember when Dad told Marino he was looking forward to going to Granada?” I asked. “He said he wanted to see the famous alfombra (rug) instead of Alhambra!” By now they knew enough Spanish to get the joke, and we had a good laugh over Mike’s mistake. “But what about you, Mom—iron the cheese!” Julie teased. “Pig’s ear! Pig’s ear!” Lisa shouted, recalling my eating error in Badajoz. It was enough to keep us giggling for half an hour.

On Monday we drove home through a couple of villages mentioned in the guidebook—the unremarkable Baeza and the lovely Úbeda. I could imagine myself living in Úbeda, with its quiet streets and plazas and its sunny, whitewashed little houses. Then we went on to Cazorla, gateway to a wild national park that ran along a river. We entered the park, drove in for a while, came upon a fish hatchery, and then moved deeper into the hilly country. The rolling land was covered with pine trees, and the road switched back and forth as the land rose and fell. It was beautiful scenery, and we watched peacefully for a long while, but then I began to have an uneasy feeling. Clouds had rolled in, and the sunny day was gone. There didn’t seem to be any side roads or exits to take us out of the park and back to a main highway. Though the book said the park was 50 miles long and 19 miles wide, we had been in it for an awfully long time. Those 50 miles were not an hour’s driving, clearly, with the winding roads and the slow speeds they required.

“I’d like to get out of here,” I said to Mike, feeling lost and far from home.

“Me, too,” he said, “but I haven’t seen any road signs. We’ll leave as soon as we find a way.” But the road went on and on. We didn’t say anything to the kids, but we were feeling plenty nervous.

It was after 4 when we finally saw a sign that read Salida—exit. Feeling relieved, we followed it and left the park.

Though we had made some northward progress, there was still a long way to go to reach Madrid. By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the city, we were right in the middle of the end-of-holiday traffic.

“My nose is stuffy,” Julie said as we crawled along the highway that ringed Madrid.

“Are you getting a cold?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think so.”

We inched around Madrid and finally made it up to our own highway, the A-6. “We’re almost home now,” I told the kids.

“Good,” said Lisa. “I want to tell Kelly I saw the princess’s wedding.”