Grrrranada

My time in Granada can be divided into two phases: pre-parental-departure and post-parental-departure.

Granada in the time of the parents:
- a 'friendly' taxi driver who offered to take us to see flamenco on our first night in town and who took the very very scenic (i.e. 30 Euro) route there and back
- getting dropped off at the flamenco place about an hour before the show started (mr. taxi driver kindly offered to take us to see the view of the Alhambra at night to kill time before the show...meter running of course. we had to turn that kind offer down) and being the only three people there while dancers warm up. It's not so bad however as we have a pretty good view of the Alhambra under the nearly full moon anyway. At the very last minute two huge busloads full of Canadian and Japanese students pull up and the place is suddenly full.
- the show is fine, the music and dancing are good, but the whole thing is so bizarre and calculated in this long narrow cavelike room lined with tourists, copper pots and pans hanging from the ceiling...I feel kind of like a john. The music is extremely percussive with a guitarist and a singer and a drummer and everyone else in the group clapping complicated rhythms and I find myself unable to not tap my feet to the rhythm and so I am shocked, shocked! to look down the rows of feet and legs lining the room and see not one single other foot or knee or hand moving in the audience. It must be like dancing for dead people. The second group of dancers is older and really very good...it includes a very old woman who gets up near the end of the set and sings and dances for us which is pretty cool. Then comes the 'audience monkey dance' portion of the evening as one of the dancers goes around the room pulling various audience members up one at a time to dance a few seconds with her. Maybe it's because these people are not wearing the right shoes but holy shit they can't dance. Not that I would have done any better but the contrast is pretty striking.
- the Alhambra monument is pretty amazing and we spend about 5 hours there wandering around the grounds and palaces and ruins and towers and beautiful gardens. There's an outdoor stairway in the Generalife area (the sultan's private garden I believe) with running water coursing through hollowed out railings and the sound it makes is amazing.
- we see the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel who, among other things, financed Columbus' 'discovery' of the Americas. Also of their loco daughter 'Joan the Mad' who really loved her philandering husband, even after he was dead....
- the cathedral is beautiful and bright and a welcome change after all the gothic grey and stone of France

Granda after the parents go back to Madrid and then Saskatchewan (bye Mom and Dad! I had a great time, and thanks for all the beer, Popeye!)
- move to a hostel in a different part of town and immediately fall into the routine of lazy lazy days and staying up till 4 or 5 am every morning
- spend the days reading the papers in a sunny square with a big fountain in the middle, watching the streams of hippies and punks and uncategorizable dudes with mullets (the mullet is back with a serious vengance here in Spain...or maybe it just never went away. it's scary, though maybe not quite as scary as Toronto hipsters with ironic mullets and hideous 80s eyeglasses that cover half the face)
- wonder at the group of three skinny formless 11 year old girls who come to the square every day with a boom box and a stack of cds and who perform a grotesque parody of 'sexy' dancing to Destiny's Child songs and bad spanish dance music when they should be in school.
- find myself at 2 a.m. in an empty bar which looks like a flamenco cave...my companions start performing impromptu spoken word and then a couple guys show up with a drum and then a bunch of other guys show up with a guitar and we hear some real flamenco unexpectly in this place we thought was going to be a reggae bar...
- standing on the roof at 5 a.m. with James Dean (who, in case you were wondering, has been reincarnated as a precocious 23 year old from Chicago) looking over the city under a huge fat bright moon and stars after drinking beer all night...

Now I'm off to Malaga. See you there.