36 - North Shore News — Sunday, April 9, 2000

Night and day in Granada

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interpretation to the dance. His was an aggressive role. The drumming of his feet and the sheer arrogance of his movements incited the audi- ence to cheers.

There are two ways to see the old Muslim Quarter; by day and by night. At night lanterns cast golden pools of light in otherwise dark alleys and the shadows of trailing geranium, like spiny fingers, imprint a ghostly silhouette on white-washed walls. At midnight we joined a walking tour at Los Tarantos and strolled .with our guide through an Albaicin touched with magic.

An hour later our party

. emerged from a dark passage into a plaza filled with pave- ment diners, the music of clas- sical guitars and the Alhambra across: the ‘valley bathed in “moonlight.

... By day a whole new world

is revealed. For the less agile,

. mini-buses leave the centre of

town for the Albaicin every twenty minutes or so. Take an

‘afternoon walk in the old.

‘Muslim’ Quarter and you can . . glimpse. through ornamental

gates, gardens in . miniature |

where children play beneath

pomegranate trees. © There ‘are churches to

explore; museums, Palaces, -

convents, and the 11th centu- ry Arab baths. Then when you are too hot to go any further, sit under an umbrella and sip a glass of wine at a pavement cafe.

We rested at a bar in the

_ Plaza de San Miguel Bajo and whiie sampling a traditional ‘dish, Haba con Jamon (Ham

with Lima beans), we enjoyed a concert. by a tipsy singer whose fingers, in spite of ine- briation,. plucked - intricate

melodies on his guitar. - Nearing the city centre as we made our way down hun- dreds of shallow steps and along cobbled streets we came upon a hippie enclave. There were dozens of stalls lining the alley. Among them a middle-aged “pirate” with head-scarf, golden <ar- rings and long. black bocts was telling fortunes with a pack of tarot cards. His lady friend close by was selling

Indian jewelry. A few steps away a Muslim in white tur- ban wrote for a fee the names of passersby in Arabic script.

And then to the Alhambra. As you wander through the fortress of La Alcazaba, the Mexuar and the Palaces of the Sultans, the majesty of the fives of those eastern potentates was revealed in all its splendour. Passing through room after room. of exquisige Islamic

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carving, once __brilliantly- coloured but with age faded to a pearly grey, I slid my fin- gers on smooth tiled designs and peeped through. carved cclosias where the ‘hot Spanish sun filtered through,

dappling the walls with < pat-.

tern of light. I found the Generalife with its secluded courtyards,

patios with patterned cobbles:

Sze Water page ST -

HIPPIES in Albaicin, Granada’s old Arab quarter. Altogether twenty Moorish kings ruled the region before the Nasrid dynasty fell in 1492.

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