Awesome Weekends (Granada)

We went to Granada the same weekend we went to Sevilla, and we visited the Alhambra and a flamenco show.

The Alhambra was very beautiful. There are 3 main parts: the gardens, the village, and the palace.
Here are some pics from the gardens:


This is the palaca from the gardens. The name for the Alhambra is derived from the Arabic word meaning "red", referring to the color of the walls.

This is the city from the Alhambra. It really felt like a Mediterranean city because of all of the vegetation.

The palace:



All of the ceilings and walls are covered with elaborate plaster designs, and the ceilings are designed to look like caves.

The Alhambra at night.

Flamenco:
We saw a flamenco show in a gypsy cave in an older part of the city.
To get to the caves, we walked through a famous, white-washed neighborhood in Granada that was constructed outside the city walls and was inhabited by minority cultures (Jews and Christians when Granada was ruled by the Moors and Arabs after the Reconquista)
Flamenco:


Also, while we were in Granada, the city was celebrating the fall with the "fruits of autumn" festival, and there were people selling fresh fruit and bread on the streets. Granada is Spanish for pomegranate, and fall is pomegranate season, so I bought and enjoyed a granada from Granada.
On the 8-hour bus ride back to Salamanca, we stopped at the place that inspired Cervantes to write about Don Quijote's fight with the windmills. It was very windy, rainy and cold, but there were some interesting deformed rocks from the Central Iberian mountain chain (not to be confused with the Central System in North of Madrid).
You should try to picture Don Quijote attacking these fearsome windmills.