Finally I managed to bucket in some time, on its almost ever-flowing* way forward [*actually interesting, that there most probably was a "time" without time, but there always might be time in future? And what about black holes? aaaaah! Ah! Check out this great youtube channel: CoolWorlds].
Where was I? Ah, yes, time for a "new" blog post! In late February and (more) early march we were on honeymoon in southern Spain and the Canary Islands.
Why these destinations? Well, South Spain because of its amazing cultural heritage (I am really not that interested in architecture, but the stuff there... just impressive!) And the Canary Islands because of the endless possibilities for hiking and its nature.
In Spain we visited Granada, the Sierra Nevada, Sevilla, Cordoba and Ronda. Each place is special by its own! Granada has a beautiful old city centre and the amazing Alhambra, the Sierra Nevada is just fun to see, because it's so high above everything, Sevilla has the huge cathedral and is also a great place to see a flamenco show, in Cordoba you have the mosque-cathedral which is so incredibly huge that I'm at a loss for words and Ronda with its bridge over the canyon is a must see as well.
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Unfortunately, in the south of Spain I mainly used my iPhone, which produces crap pictures compared to my Nikon D700. So there are only a few to show here, those of Granada and the Alhambra.
The old town of Garanada is a really nice Mediterranean city, with lots of cute bars and cafés and gives you a nice place to stroll around if you have an Alhambra overload.
Below left is the view from the Palacio Dar al-Horra in Granada, looking north (I think). On the right is the view from the Alhambra to the Sierra Nevada.
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Among many other things, one of the main attractions of the Alhambra is the patterns on the walls, floors and ceilings. It's something you just have to see. And there are even loads of books on that topic. Books about the patterns, about the mathematics behind the patterns, about all those Arabic inscriptions, about the Alhambra in general and so on. In the official tourist shop inside the Alhambra you get all that books and lots of more interesting and nice thingies.
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With the sheer diversity of patterns, decorations and inscriptions you could fill easily more than 100 blogposts on only that topics. The Alhambra consists of thousands (!!) of square meters of buildings with such decorations.
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But -- what has been one of the actual highlights? Yeeesss, finding reptiles there. Namely Podarcis vaucheri (Südiberische Mauereidechse, Andalusian wall lizard). They are quite common in the Jardines del Generalife right next to the Alhambra.
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As said, i didn't use my DSLR much after that, unless, of course, there are atmospheric optical phenomena around! Like here a rainbow (or better fountain bow) in Sevilla at the Plaza de España. Btw., did you know that there are meanwhile picures of the 4th and 5th order rainbow??
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One thing you definitely should also do is visiting a Flamenco show in one of the small Flamenco places. We did so in La Milonga Tablao in Sevilla, and it was an absolutely amazing performance. We had three guys singing, dancing and playing the guitar, and what shall I say, it couldn't get more manly ;-)
So much in short about one week in South Spain. As said, Ronda and the mosque-cathedral in Cordoba are also highly recommended to see!
More to follow, als far as the second part of the trip, the Canary Islands, were a littlebit more in focus of my interests ;-)
PS: DeepL write suggests sooo many changes in the text. Well I'm too lazy for that now, and I can excuse myself for not being a native speaker :-P