'A good traveller has no fixed plans.' Tao Te Chiang
The gardens of the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos, in Cordoba, Spain - set within the medieval walls and towers of a palace that the Catholic monarch Alfonso XI built in the 15th century upon the site of Visigoth and Moorish forts - have that 'Cordoba quality' I mentioned in an earlier post: a sense [...]
This portfolio of black and white images of Cordoba includes one image in colour - a quiet corner, two buildings intersecting, and a tree and its shadow intermingled. And then there is that splash of red, like blood.... I could have done it in monochrome, but suffused as it is with the afternoon light it [...]
I think our first evening in Cordoba pretty much did it for us. We had driven up from Granada, in our hired baby Mercedes, taking a road less travelled through miles upon miles of hills and olive groves, and dropped off the car, and found our hotel - a still oasis in the soporific heat [...]
Small-town Andalucia - those slightly run-down settlements you find on the road from Granada to Cordoba, for instance, places that are not on the tourist route, that are a little hard-scrabble, impoverished - still surprise, with their Moorish keeps, their sense of history. But it is a pre-democracy Spain you sense here - the Spain [...]
Set against the vast and empty Plains of Camdeboo, abutted by the Valley of Desolation and surrounding mountains, the small Karoo town of Graaff-Reinet seems dwarfed, vulnerable, a fragile human outpost, more so when storm clouds gather. Yet there is a beauty in the landscape, something stark and wonderful. Storm Clouds over Graaff-Reinet Valley of [...]
The Alhambra sits high on a hill - opposite, below, is the heart of the old Moorish city of Granada, the Albaicin. At night, you look up, and there on the ridge is the looming bulk of the great fortress and citadel - perhaps with the moon rising behind it. The Alhambra by night A [...]
Fortress and Palace The Alhambra in Granada is both fortress and palace - and, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a custodian of memory, Spain's rich history and the history of civilisations physically embodied in tiles and script, archways and gardens, the quiet flow of water and ceilings that mirror the star-studded sky. It is [...]
Wishing everyone a Happy New Year - a year of tolerance, respect, and care for our planet.
