Flamenco

Okay so it's been a crazy week trying to schedule classes and such but seeing as how it's friday and time to party- nothing says party like updating my blog. After long last here is the post from the flamenco show on friday night in granada. This group of flamenco dancers perform in this little cave up in a mountain in granada. If you saw my last post then you know what i mean by cave- no stalagmites to be found- just white walls and in this case all these pots and pans hanging out on the walls. The cave is a long skinny little room that has lines of chairs along the side- then as you'll see in the photos the dancers perform right in front of you. Initially I was not totally sure what to expect with this show- i had a general knowledge of what flamenco was like but I was actually really impressed by the whole experience- maybe it was the cave, maybe it was the sangria, but i'm thinking that in the end it was really just an all around cool experience and would suggest it to anyone that finds themselves in granada in the future.

The flamenco cave

The ladles, pots and pans, and white walls inside the cave

Breakin out the fan

All of us watching the show

action shot

She's into it

Las Cuevas

So this is a little out of order, but on our way back from Granada we stopped in a little cave town. Well upon first hearing that we were stop at a cave town my brain ran the gambit of possibilites: Initially i thought Mesa Verde, Colorado-style cliff dwellings, then I started thinking maybe they were more simplistic and that they were just using the stalactites and stalagmites as home furnishings (how very Frank Lloyd Wright of them) before finally settling on my cave town fantasy that was actually along the lines of homes resembling the shire and bilbo baggins' circular-doored cozy dwelling.

All of these cave homes have fronts that really make them look like a normal Spanish house that just happens to have the rest of it stuffed inside a mountain- are you gettin the visual?

 As it turns out the spanish cave towns choose not to follow any of these models that i suggested, and instead look a lot like houses built into a mountain. It's kind of a sweet deal really, the homes are modest but pretty much look like a normal house (with fewer windows). The folks here don't really have to worry about heating or cooling costs because the caves remain a consistent temperature all year round, and at the end of the day you have the benefit of getting to say that you live in a cave- which if nothing else is at least a conversation starter.

Inside one of the Cuevas, i imagine Alexa won't be too pleased that i'm including this photo but when 38 people try to squeeze into a cave house it's a tight squeeze. (p.s.- as you can see, all the walls are finished, not exactly stalagmite conditions

The little smoke stacks on each of the cave homes

In true Spanish style, even the cave towns have a sweet view

And again with this nice view- i should mention that in this picture i am standing on the lookout on top of the  cave house i just had gone inside.

In the event that you saw this post and are now considering a spanish cave dwelling, may i suggest this little gem- it may be a bit of a fixer-upper, but with a little work it could be more than just a little hole in the wall (meh- even in Spain yall are subjected to my puns)

The Alhambra

okay so this is the first of a few posts about granada- there was absolutely no way i could do it in just one and even now i'll still be cutting down my content pretty significantly, but i'll make a facebook album for folks to check out for more photos.

Not the best shot but that's the Alhambra across the way, the yellow one on the left and the furthest right are moorish, the one in the center is renaissance

 So i should start out by saying that Granada itself is an enormous city, which is to say that it covers an enormous amount of land, but that said it's not a very tall city, meaning that you don't have tons of skyscrapers dotting the horizon or anything. Instead, the largest buildings are the religious buildings, a few civic buildings, and because of it's location, the Alhambra. For all intents and purposes the Alhambra was a palace composed of 4 massive buildings located on top of a mountain. Initially this was constructed and inhabited by muslim rulers and consequently reflects the moorish architecture and decoration of the time. However, consistent with Spanish history, the city of Granada was eventually occupied by the Catholic church and with it came changes to the look of this city. In the case of the Alhambra we have very minor changes to some of the structures, but in the case of one of the buildings, the moorish structure was completely demolished to make room for a fully renaissance 'palace' for Charles V (which he never inhabited). The structure is certainly impressive but admittedly looks a little out of place beside its counterparts.

So on our way up the main tower we were able to look back down towards the part of the grounds. The maze-looking things are actually small homes for soldiers- not so much barracks as just little apartments

So this is a solid example of the outside of the moorish style, simple and plain on the outsides, during the moorish rule this was whitewashed

So in contrast you can see on the right Charles V's palace that is renaissance and in that tradition has more elaborate encrustations on the outside (a few more pictures of these are on my FB)

This is inside Charles V's palace and as you can see, it pretty much follows what you'd expect from a simple renaissance building, with its obvious kickback to antiquity.

Alternatively, this is a pool and little structure in one of the courtyards that is more from moorish influence, notice the elaborate carving above the arches

So i have about a million examples of this elaborate geometric patterning that is carved into seemingly every wall surface around the inside of the moorish structures. it just goes to show you that you can't judge a book by its cover- who would have thought those simple façades would house this elaborate interior?

Like I said, i'll post more photos from the alhambra on my facebook in an album if you're interested, and i promise my next post on here will be slightly less art history heavy.

Basilica Santa Maria

So i'll post some photos of the college campus soon but tonight i thought i'd nerd out with an art history post, so if you're not a big baroque fan consider yourself warned.

So these aren't the best pictures of this basilica but it's a pretty sweet little structure that i thought folks might want to see. This was built initially as a mosque, which isn't so out of the ordinary in spain because of the large muslim influence, but after the christian church started gaining more power this mosque was claimed by catholics and converted to a basilica. Therefore all of the main structure is the simple initial building, but all of the little decorations are later baroque additions (Megan Sander eat your heart out)

This is the main entrance below which is about as baroque as you can get. All of the movement and theatrical qualities that we associate with the baroque period are present here: you have elaborate  free-standing sculptural work all over the front, along with tons of relief sculptures, and then you have all of the gaudy encrustations framing everything, and then finally all of these columns, some simple and non-fluted and some Solomonic (which are the swirly ones that may look familiar if you've seen Bernini's Baldacchino in the Vatican) and all of them have these elaborate corinthian (i think) capitals.

First Day in Spain

Okay so today i moved in with my host family, but here are some photos from this first weekend during our tour of the city. the above image was the view from the front of our hotel, palms everywhere, and Armando one of the program directors leading us on our tour.

So this is kind of the main mountain of the city, up top you can see the fort that was built hundreds of years ago and is still standing, pretty sweet.

This is the view from the pier, right by our hotel, that's one of the other mountains and the Mediterranean in all it's glory, man it's going to be rough looking at that for sixth months