Be sure to click on the photos to view a slideshow.

We spent New Years Eve and our two-year wedding anniversary wandering about the fabulous city of Granada.

Rundown on the history of Granada:

The name Granada comes from a similar sounding but totally different word given to the place by 4th century Jews.  Before the Jews there were various peoples as far back as 1500-2000BC which I would've loved to learn more about but about which local historians and tour guides could, to generalize, care less about.  History in Granada seems to have started with whoever impacted currently visible architecture the most, the Moors, with only the Jews given mention since they gave name to the place.  The Islamic Moors took over Granada for a few hundred years, successive generations of leaders adding and building onto the grand Alhambra palace which is now a huge series of buildings with visible history.  Ferdinand and Isabel, fierce Catholics, took over Granada (the last Islamic stronghold in Spain) in the 1490s and moved into the Alhambra Palace, believing the take-over of Granada to be their grandest acheivement.  They immediately kicked out any and all Jews from the city, (because, according to one tour guide, Jewish lenders had loaned Izzy and Ferdie the funds to pursue the seige against the Moors, but had little interest in paying them back).  Ferdie and Izzy gave the Muslims an 8 year grace period before they began forcefully baptizing them with buckets of water from towers.  Classy.

"Gypsies" (it's a slight simplification, it seems, to use that term, but it's what's used) came as metal workers with the Catholic troops and settled in caves in the Sacramonte area of the city, and their descendants remain in the area today.  We visited the museum and cultural center dedicated to cave dwelling livelihoods, quite interesting and a botanical garden, too! 

For all I "know" about the history of Granada, I was just there and know little about the economic enterprises of Granada-ians today, excepting the huge tourist economy.  Today Granada is a huge tourist draw with it's dramatic history.  And a large "hippy' population too, wandering about in huge poofy tent-like pants with dreads on their heads and dogs on their heels (it's like one dog to every hippy, I swear).  They hang out on every street corner, passing bottles of wine, yelling at their dogs when they start mating or fighting.  There are areas in the Albaicin where hippies sell their craftwares.  The modern-day business aspects of Granada are in a different section of the city, the "new part" despised by hippies and expats living in the historic quarters.  There seems to be a thriving economy -- I didn't really find out what it's based on.  The Albaicin quarter is still heavily Arab, with Arab wares for sell on every corner, and falafel and schwerma shops on every other corner.  We got to know a certain shop run by Palestinians and met a different young Palestinian man working each time we went for lunch.  Yes, coming from Egypt, we still ate falafel sandwiches for every lunch. Don't judge, it was the cheapest lunch we could find.  We also ate Indian food more than I care to admit. Once again, don't judge. It was fabulous.  And you don't visit Granada for the (porky, pig-filled) food.  An interesting legend is that the reason every Spanish meal contains some part of a pig is for Catholics to prove their Catholicness in contrast to Muslims and Jews.  This was what, 500 years ago?  And look what's happening in Gaza today.  I can't write more without getting spitting, raging angry.  And sad.

We celebrated our anniversary on the 30th by touring the Alhambra, which was wonderful to explore.  We spent New Years Eve on the city square where New Years festivities centralized with fireworks and a live band.

We very much enjoyed our time in Granada and were super sad to leave.  We headed to Madrid for one night (spent in a hostel in different rooms, haha a great end to an anniversary trip eh? We just needed a cheap place to sleep for a few hours) and flew out the next day!