La Alhambra-Generalife: The Alhambra-Generalife

Generalife is the summer house for the palace rulers...which seems odd since it was only a 10 minute walk back through town...but I guess if I had the choice of being on top of the first plateau of the mountain or being further up, I'd choose to be further up, too! From the other end of this photo, we could look out onto the hill and see where gypsies have made caves in the side of it and where the old wall to protect the city is still partially standing.

Why on earth is this random, dead tree worth taking a picture of...?

A love-story of course! "The story goes that this Cyprus of the Sultan was a testimony of the love of an Abencerraje horseman, and the wife of Sultan Boabdil." Apparently, the two met in this garden under the tree. It is difficult to find out the precise story, or if this translation is correct. The Abencerraje was a tribe of people including Boabdil's mother, who was the 1st wife of Boabdil's father. After her, the father had a new wife and wanted to wipe out the Abencerrajes so that Boabdil, from his first marriage, could not become the new ruler, so he killed 3o-something tribe-members, but eventually Boabdil still became one of the last rulers of la Alhambra. I don't know where the love story fits in...somewhere after this whole massacre thing, I'm sure...but it's still a love story...I think.

The next neat thing about Generalife is the waterfall stairs. Water flows from the top of the stairs along the railings. It also runs underneath the walkway to the center of each rest circle on the staircase. That is some pretty amazing plumbing for you!

This is the last shot of Generalife...I really like the way the geometries step back from each other. They are not expressive or intricate through curves and strange angles, but instead through the layering of simple geometries, they create a complex whole.