It's Flamenco time in Spain! What timing! I check in and then check out the city. I walk up a steep narrow hillside street, past the hookah bars, the Moroccan style restaurants, interesting shops, lanterns, glass, perfumes, exquisite bottles, and brightly coloured fabrics. This time, I’ve done a bit of Pinterest research. I’m heading up to the Mirador de San Nicolas for an Instagram view. It’s a steep climb but as I turn a corner, I suddenly see a woman, in traditional Flamenco dress. She looks like some exotic sea creature, her black dress, spotted with various ochre coloured circles, is frilled and edged with white. As she flounces down the street with hair on high and a garland of flowers on her head, her dress undulates as if she’s floating in water. I follow behind her, taking photos as she walks. Somewhere someone is playing guitar.
The whole scene is magical, the heat in the sun, the guitarist; I shoot a photo of her as she passes a building of white stucco, the bottom half turquoise, graffiti on the walls. I want to be her! I want to be able to dance the Flamenco, to wear a tight dress with frills and a crown of flowers on my head. I read a book before I came here about a woman who was working in a dress shop, who dreamed of living in Spain and learning to dance. It was a real story and I can understand her need to pack everything up and arrive with hardly any savings, to get herself a job and live and breathe dancing. I have a bit of back healing to do before I can start to dance again but I put it on my mental to do list.
I make it to the top. More music drifts on a gentle zephyr- like breeze that is activated up here. I look across and see the famed Alhambra palace across the valley, and beyond that, the snow capped mountains. This is why I came here, another place that I had studied at school. I find a bar on the hilltop, have a mint tea and stare across at the palace. I’ve booked a tour of it for tomorrow. The pine trees punctuate the scene in front of me, and they’re swaying slightly in the breeze. I take a video and instagram it with music. It’s a first for me and I’m quite proud of myself.
On the way back down, I stop and buy a tiny round bottle of the famed orange oil from the many orange trees I see everywhere. The man who sold it to me says he’s from Pakistan and was once a cricketer. Everyone has a story.
I walk back down the steep cobbled streets and choose a restaurant called Kasbah Temer where I watch people smoking the hookah and I have a three course feast for ten euros. Amazingly tasty hummus flavoured with cumin and fresh bread, a fish tagine spiced with coriander and tomato and pistachio baklava and rose wine. As I continue to walk back to the hotel there are women and children everywhere with the wonderful figure hugging dresses, frilled from just below the top of their thighs, the back cut low in a V shape, everyone with gorgeous fabric flowers in the hair and fabulous earrings. I wish I was Spanish. Imagine growing up as a child and being apart of these incredible traditions. The men and boys are also dressed in suits, with boleros and hats, the sound of shoes clicking in the street makes me smile. I walk between groups of these exotic creatures until exhausted.
It’s as I’m having breakfast in the lovely open courtyard of the hotel, with plates and bougainvillea covering the walls, that I realise I have tailored my life to accommodate my anxious nature. I make sure, in most circumstances, that I have nothing happening that will create tension. I have booked too much today. A Hamman for the experience, The Alhambra palace and a Flamenco performance. I couldn't sleep worried about getting enough sleep to get through the day. How ridiculous! But how overwhelmingly true it is for me and has been, I realise, for most of my life. Funny how unconsciously you set up these safety methods to get you through.
Hamman al Andulus is beautiful. I’m shown into a maze of different spaces. I undress and put my swimmers on and then am shown into a labyrinth of pools, all different temperatures. Mosaics everywhere, little alcoves with candles, star cutouts in the ceilings with gentle half light and pure silence. You dip yourself into the pools and drink mint tea in between. I do the rounds about five times and then find myself bored and wondering when they will come to get me for my rose oil massage. I’m not good at relaxing. That’s something I know about myself. They finally come for me and I am gently massaged and then made to sit on a circular marble bench that has been heated. I sit quietly, do some deep breathing and then make my way back, relaxation is hard work!
I walk back and grab a quick lunch and as I leave, I run into the perfume oil seller, who asks me to join him but I have another appointment to rush off to. The Alhambra. Even the name conjures up secrets - harems and shoes that turn up at the toes. I decide to walk to it, it’s up hill after hill but through an exquisite forest of the most delicate, translucent leafed trees with candelabras of creamy and rosy hued flowers. The scent of pine, of freshened air after days of being in cities, is gentle on my skin, nose and mind. I wander up and up and come out an hour too early for the tour. This time I ask a lot of people about where to meet the operator and we connect and it's in English.
We start with the gardens. Glimpses of paradise were important in the muslim culture. Roses perfume the air, they climb bowers, there are lillies, an endless assortment of cottage flowers and scents, pungent in the hot air as we walk through different gardens and mazes, all with superb views across to the other section of the Alhambra that was half destroyed by Napoleon’s troops when they were defeated and driven out of Granada.
The Sultan's palace is mind blowing. We have a glimpse at the baths for the women from a balcony where musicians played for them but were blinded so as not to see women bathing. The fretwork and mosaics are beyond belief. It's a 13th century extravaganza of beauty. We pass beautiful perfumed Mock Orange trees, the guide tells us she ate mock orange blossoms when she was young as they were sweet and free.
I’m exhausted as I walk back down and tonight I have the Flamenco booked. I go back to my favourite restaurants, young people are gathered and smoking the hookah. A stunning girl who knows she is beautiful, flings her head back and laughs and every male’s eyes follow her. Oh, to have had that sort of confidence at that age. What I could have done with that but I was the shy one, the wallflower, the introverted poetess that didn’t see the light in men’s eyes, who sat at home alone. Waiting.
The Flamenco dancers are so intense, their faces contorted with concentration, with the passion within the dance. I take away the echoes of their tapping, the hard lines of their movements, the twists and turns, the sweat, the dedication, the wild soulful sounds of the singers, the tortured look on the man’s face and the woman’s hips undulating, separate in their dance.
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