Granada and Easter

14th April - Good Friday - which, as it turned out, was very significant!

We stayed in a campground on the outskirts of Granada and took a bus into the city. Granada is well known for its Easter parades, and these occur throughout the week preceeding easter. 

 

Our first priority though was to find something to eat. We found a vegan restaurant (Hicuri Art resturaunt) quite easily (using Happy Cow App) and were pleasantly surprised to find it decorated with the grafitti of a famous grafitti artist called “El Nino de las Pinturas”.  We found other examples of his art in the same street too.

 

  

 

One of the gems of Grenada is the streets paved in stones, slightly differently to thst of other cities.  Some of them are actually tiled, a feature which bought me to my knees (literally) later in the day when I slipped on them and fell. 

 

 

Our second priority was to see the Alhambra palace, the last stronghold of the Moors who took over from the Visigoths in 711AD. The Catholic monarchs took over in 1491 after an 8 month seige. The muslims agreed to surrender provided freedom of religion continued. 

 

The palace is of course opulent,  but we were unable to see the best bits. You need to book your tour a month in advance, and this simply doesn’t suit our kind of travel. But we saw around the perimeters of the palace and some museum displays. But first a long climb up countless stairs (we later found we could have gotten a bus)...

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

Down we went into the city in the late afternoon to find it transformed. The streets were packed with people, waiting for the parade. 

 

  

 

We found a corner and waited. The crowds continued to pour in until there was standing room only and nowhere to move to. Then the parade started to come, ever so slowly. The first section was the people in pointy hats. We thought they looked like the Klu Klux Klan, and we wondered whether this costume had anything to do with the inquisition. 

 

 

 

The marchers were quite anonymous, and very serious indeed. There were at least hundreds of people in this costume. Some of them marched in bare feet, and at least one was unable to continue on the cobblestones in his bare feet. We don’t know the significance of this - something to do with suffering?

 

Then came a large float which received the adulation of the crowd, including shouting, reaching out to touch it, obvious emotion…..

 

 

This was followed by women in black lace...

 

 

The whole procession was very slow and stately.

 

Unfortunately I was unprepared for the length of time I would be unable to  move about, and my bladder was screaming! We were forced to crash through the parade and out into a side street to look for a toilet, and this was far from easy to do! Eventually we found my “saviour” - a young lady sitting in the doorway of her apartment watching the crowds. She very kindly let me use her toilet- I don’t know how to thank her enough!

 

We learned from this experience to keep away from the cities until after Easter weekend!