More beach - the last post from Portugal

Since the beach is a main attraction in Albufeira, we spend as much time as is feasible there. Consequently, there are lots of beach scenes, many good ones.

So here are some more:

Small boy
Soccer on the beach
Wave on rock
Boy with dog
Last day

Lionel - the stone scuptor

We visited our stone carver friend, Lionel, once again and asked him to make another small sculpture for us. When we went to pick up the final version he had not yet placed the eyes in the dolphin so we spent 45 minutes watching him work and learned about how he started stone carving.

He had done wood carving in the past, but in 1999 he and a friend, a painter and sculptor, spent a summer on the beach near Albufeira where he learned stone sculpting from his friend. Because he loves it, he has been doing it ever since. He gathers the rocks from the beach at low tide and carts them home (John and I saw him by chance one morning on his way home with a large stone in a yellow plastic bag).

As he earns little from it he supplements his income doing house painting jobs in the area.

More beach

Second set of beach photos.
R

The beach

As always, click on any photo to see a larger image.

A few photos of some beach scenes in this and the next post.
The first set is children with or without parent; the second set in the next post is just, well, beach stuff.

R

What we do

We spend our days with very limited objectives. We walk a lot, usually 8 to 10 kilometers a day but sometimes as much as 15 or more. We have no car so we walk pretty much wherever we go. As we have little food storage facilities in refrigerator or cupboards, we shop for groceries every couple of days or more. It is about 3.5 to 4 kilometers to the supermarket and back. We buy our bread and wonderful Portuguese treats at a separate bakery about 10 minutes from our rooms, and the wine store and the internet cafe are a 20 minute round trip walk.

I have been getting up around 7 am when I do a bit of organizing of photos and blog preps. Then I spend a bit of time trying to learn some Portuguese. John and I walk every morning from 8:30 to about 9:30; then we have breakfast. Ruth and I have been walking the beach to "old town" mid morning, depending on the tide, where we just stroll around or go to the post office, pharmacy or do a bit of shopping for our grand children (or ourselves), have a fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee or beer at Sir Harry's bar or elsewhere and return home when we feel like it.

The afternoons are time for some photo shoots, water colour painting, reading, naps and general relaxing. Drinks down by the water may happen around 4 or so. Again, depending on the tides, we have been walking the beach again before supper.

In the last few of days Ruth and I have visited a couple of art exhibits in "old town" and at the public library.

Over the next few days we are more heavily scheduled. Tonight we are going out for dinner to one of the nearby large apartment-hotels. On Saturday we are off to the town of Loule, about 40 minutes away by bus, to do the Loule farmers' market, then to a concert at the Municipal auditorium in Albufeira in the evening. Sunday we are going for lunch and music at a local Saxophone Bistro about 5 minutes from our rooms and Sunday evening another concert at the Municipal auditorium.

Plans are developing for a visit to Faro, the capital city of the Algarve province, about 50 minutes away by bus.

The photos are:
1. We walk,
2. We eat or drink,
3. We walk,
4. We eat or drink,
5. We shop.

But we also read, paint, take photos, visit art galleries, the library and the used book store and we go to a concert or two.

It's tough work but we are handling it well and the days too easily slip away.

Albufeira

The next couple of posts will deal with the mundane - first, something about the town where we are staying. Someone asked us what we do here for a month so, in the next posting, a bit about what we do to pass the time here when we are not on a trip to Spain, for example.

Albufeira was once a fishing village but is now essentially a seaside tourist area with a winter population of about 20,000 people and a summer population of perhaps 100,000. Tourist related development is rampant in the area but there are still lovely beaches backed by low level cliffs and the scenic old town spreading up the hillside. And in March the beaches are definitely not crowded. They say that the name Albufeira derives from the Arabic al-buhera meaning castle by the sea, but in Portuguese it means "lagoon" or "dam".

Visitors, especially at this time of year, are predominantly from the UK but there are many from Holland, Germany and Canada. The "old town" retains some of the character of the old village with narrow winding streets, low white buildings, fisherman's beach (a couple of years ago there were colourful Portuguese fishing boats pulled up on the beach, but unfortunately, no longer - they are now hidden in an area enclosed by man made breakwaters) and some excellent walkways and restaurants overlooking the ocean. We have also learned that there are some charming bed and breakfast places to be discovered in unexpected places along the narrow streets on the hillside above the town square. The businesses in the old area are essentially eating places, bars and stores pretty much geared to the tourists.

The photos are:
1. Old town square. On all sides are shops, restaurants, bars and, on the far side of this photo, a very nice little art gallery.
2. Old town, including the square, from a balcony of a charming bed and breakfast place we looked at.
3. Ruth and John on a characteristic narrow street bound for a restaurant for a drink.
4. One of my favorite gates to a Mediterranean style house overlooking the ocean.
5. Characteristic tile roof tops.

More Cordoba

As I mentioned in the previous post about Cordoba, in part of the 14th century Jews, Christians and Muslim apparently lived in peace and harmony in Cordoba during that part of the reign of the Moors. There remains in the city an area of narrow streets with grilled windows and doorways that open onto whitewashed patios and gardens; this street is called "Callo de los Judios" in what was the Jewish neighbourhood during the 14th century. On this street there are also the remains of a very small Jewish bath and Synagogue.

Cordoba was also the birthplace of the philosopher, physician and humanitarian, Moises Ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides. There are at least two statues of Cordoba's famous citizen in the area that we visited.

On our way from Granada to Cordoba we traveled through the largest olive growing area of Spain (the triangle created by Sevilla, Granada and Cordoba) where there are seemingly endless fields of olive trees. We were told that the olives are harvested by placing large sheets of material, now plastic, under the trees then shaking the tree. In earlier times and still on the smaller "farms" the trees were shaken "by hand" with sticks (hard to imagine this process with so many trees); larger growers now use a motorized tree shaker. One reason that some of the smaller growers use the old method is that studies have shown the the mechanized method shortens significantly the life of the trees which, under the old methods of harvesting, live for centuries.

There are in this post another photo of the mosque/cathedral (this one at the junction of the transept and the nave - these arches are likely not of the original mosque), the Synagogue, a couple of the Hebrew neighbourhood we walked through and one of the fields of olive trees.

After a few hours in Cordoba we started on the long bus ride back to Albufeira, Portugal.

Cordoba, Spain

The main focus of our visit to Cordoba was the very large mosque in the middle of the city.
Cordoba is an ancient city settled well before the birth of Christ but with an official "birth" around 152 BCE. The Romans conquered the city in 575 AD, followed by the Visigoths for period before the Moors took over in 711. During a period of 100 to 200 years the city, ruled by the Muslims, Muslims Christians and Jews lived peacefully while the city prospered and grew.

In 785 the Muslims began construction of a mosque on a site that is thought to have the location of a Roman temple then a Visigoth church. In any case, the mosque they created on this site, and apparently the only mosque that remains in Spain, is extremely large, the biggest in the world it is said. The size quoted is 175 meters by 128 meters (22,400 square meters) or about as big as two Canadian football fields.

It is considered by some to the "most important Muslim monument in the western world, though there are those who say the same about The Alhambra.

In 1236 the city was taken by the Christians and the mosque was declared a Christian monument called Cathedral do Santa Marie Madre de Dios. But the new Archbishop was apparently not happy with the Muslim style temple so ordered the construction of a more traditional Christian cathedral inside the mosque. This created a bit of a stir with some very opposed to such serious modification of this unparalleled structure. In spite of the opposition the Archbishop pressed on with the approval of the Christian King, who had not yet seen the mosque. After the Christian cathedral was well under construction, or possibly completed, the King finally decided to see for himself. When he saw the mosque and what had been done he was apparently not pleased and is quoted to have said, "You have destroyed what cannot be found anywhere else and built something that can be seen anywhere".

Inside, the mosque is overwhelming in size with red and white arches seemingly everywhere. It is so huge that the cathedral, while not unnoticed, occupies only a portion of the mosque. A great deal of effort seems to have been made to integrate/merge the two very different decorative characteristics, some of which I have attempted to show in some of the photos. A note about the photos - it is very dark and the lighting patterns vary so, without a tripod it is difficult to get clear and accurate photographs. Hence the variation in color and light.

The photos are the wall around the mosque including the Tower for calling the faithful to pray, the Christian cathedral inside the mosque, the arches inside the mosque and a couple showing the integration of Muslim and Christian architecture.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, if you have seen the documentary, "When the Moors Ruled Europe", you will have seen and heard much more about this mosque.

It is very impressive, but for my taste, does not match the Alhambra.

There is a bit more about the visit to Cordoba in a future post.

More Alhambra

A bit more about The Alhambra

The walls are not only beautiful tapestries of decorative motifs in stucco, they are also lined with arabic calligraphy of quotes, some short (like the Nasrid dynasty "motto" - "The only conquerer is God"), some longer as in "You conquered Algeciras with the might of your sword opening a secret doorway to our victory" and some much more extensive including a complete poem, as in the room shown in the first photo (though you can't see it).

The second photo shows one of the cupolas in which complex decorative patterns create an eight pointed star. Light enters through 16 windows near the top of the cupola. It is not easy to appreciate in this photo but there are beautiful subtle colors included throughout the decorative elements of the cupola and the sculpting includes elements that mimic stalactites. They appear in several areas of the Alhambra (see the second photo in the first posting on the Alhambra). The inclusion of these latter elements apparently has a religious connotation throughout the Islamic world. It is based in the belief that Mahoma (Mohammed) received his inspiration for the Koran directly from the Archangel Gabriel while in a cave in which he had sought refuge while fleeing from his enemies. The stalactite decor in places like the Alhambra are a celebration of this event and the cave has become an important place of pilgrimage for Muslims on their way to Mecca.

The third photo is taken from the Throne room looking through an entrance onto the reflecting pool. Not sure where the fourth photo is from but the fifth is from a room called the Mexuar Oratory which looks out over the Albaicin (the area of the old city of Granada). This room was severely damaged by a gun powder explosion in the valley below in 1590. Restoration was begun immediately but not completed until 1917! Much of the Alhambra has been altered or restored over the centuries such that is often unclear how the current structure resembles the Alhambra of the Nasrid period. What seems clear, to the untutored eye, is that the restorations appear to have been superb in terms of the quality of the decorative features.

In the first Alhambra post on March 6 - (note the order of the posts is newest at the top) in the fourth photo from the top the dome shaped inscription above the epigraph on one of the walls of the reflecting pool area is referred to as the "Tree of Life", an allusion to an inverted tree that sustains all life and buries its roots in paradise, which it seems is up.

It is said that the north south orientation of the buildings and rooms is such that they receive more sun in winter than in summer and the orientation is so precise (apparently within tenths of a degree) that the all columns serve as the hands of a sundial. The orientation and nature of the construction plus the exquisite control of the flow of water for pools and fountains are designed to control temperature for maximum comfort. The water, of which there was plenty from the Sierra Nevada mountains, was controlled by a sophisticated system of aqueducts and channels with varied dimensions and, in some cases, short areas of uphill flow to adjust flow rate according to specific needs, i.e. quiet pools, gardens or active fountains.

R

The Alhambra in Granada, Spain

As always. click on any photo for a larger image.

The main reason for visiting Granada is to see the Alhambra, said to be one of the most important architectural structures of the medieval period and the finest example of Islamic art left to us in the western world.

And it does not disappoint - it is truly mesmerizing in every way - from the overall appearance to the exquisite carved and molded art work in the walls and the colorful tiles and patterns on the walls and floors. The structure began with the building of the Fortress, the Alcazaba in the 9th century. The Alhambra itself was not planned from the start but "grew outward over the centuries from the Alcazaba, increasing in splendor over the years". In the 14th century during the reigns of Sultans Yusuf I and Mohammad V it was at its peak, when the Alhambra was not just a palace but a small city.

The outer walls of the buildings are relatively plain in contrast to the extreme beauty that lies on the inside. This pattern of an unadorned exterior with exquisite interior is apparently characteristic of the Moors' approach; the splendor of Islamic palaces was always on the inside. And there seemed no attempt to build for posterity as beauty was created using basic materials; pebbles, tiles, brick, plaster and stucco. When the Christians conquered Granada in 1492, very few could have anticipated the beauty that they would find within the walls of the Alhambra. Over the period following the Christian conquest the Alhambra gradually fell into ruin though it provided refuge for gypsies, homeless and others who chose to established residence there. In the mid to late 1800's Washington Irving visited and stayed for a period in the Alhambra and subsequently wrote a book, "Tales of the Alhmmbra" which apparently played a major role in bringing world pressure on the Spanish government to rescue and preserve this place of remarkable beauty and history.

I will put a few of my photos here but keep in mind that we were quite restricted in what we saw and what I could photograph. We were in the Alhambra for less than two hours, visited only a small part of it and it was pouring rain which kept us from seeing the gardens or taking pictures in the open courtyards. I recommend that you check the Wikipedia write up and photos at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra
The view of the Alhambra from a distance is not my photo but I thought it would give an overview of the entire place.

I have not indicated where in the Alhambra these photos are from but rather included some of those which attempt to give you some idea of the beauty we saw. I have several more that I will put up later but I am only allowed 5 photos per post.

In the evening of the second night in Granada we went to a Gypsy flamenco dance (no photos), and then on a short walk in the Albaicin and Sacromonte areas of the city through very narrow winding streets to a spectacular view of the city and the Alhambra at night. (See photo here and on Wikepedia)

On Wednesday we left to Granada for Cordoba.