Granada

I guess I don't get out much; nothing I had seen before prepared me for Granada. The oldest city I have ever been in - 584 years old this Dec. - the streets are more than wide enough for horse-drawn traffic and the buildings come right to the edge of the narrow sidewalks. My first impression from the taxi was as if the buildings had suddenly clustered up and walled out the openness of the countryside which I had grown used to, and within seconds I was lost. There are no street signs, and no business signs not painted on the face of the building where each exists. There are no modern buildings. Many of the existing ones have not been painted in a long, long time, and the roofs are of ancient tiles over bamboo and wooden beams. The gutters are deep, to handle rainy season, and the sidewalks sometimes quite high for the same reason. The outer walls of the houses present few windows, but many high doors, most closed and guarded by gratings or panels that were new a century or two since.

Only rarely do I get to experience the sensation of being cut loose from everything I know. Sometimes when I am reading for the first time a very well written book, (just about anything by Dave Duncan, for example) and the author has a tightly constructed fictional universe, a mild version of what I felt on first encountering Granada will persist until I figure it out. In fact, that is often the mark of my favourite books. Suddenly I now had no valid points of reference, and it was like living in all the best books I have ever read. Small wonder that I enjoyed this city so much.

The taxi driver had to ask for directions to the Hotel Colcibolca from people on the street, as he thought we wanted the Hostel Colcibolca. (Later on another taxi driver thought we wanted the Hospital Colcibolca.) He pulled up in front of a typical Granadian building, and then I discovered the next truth: those same structures that present a worn face to the world can open up inside to clean ceramics and antiques and polished wood, to high ceilings and fresh paint and plant-filled courtyards and fountains and gracious service. After we checked in - and staff agreed that the web-site listed prices were in fact still in effect - we got cleaned up and went out for something to eat at the Zoom Bar, a favourite place of Geoff. The food - Nicaraguan variations on North American staples - was excellent, and I had my first Tona, a beer that is miles above every other one which in my limited experience, I have ever tried. (I cannot get the computer to put the little accent thing above the n; it is roughly pronounced Ton-ya.) Here we got to see our first Dog of Uncertain Parentage. But not our last.
Then we walked around the streets, before returning to the hotel, and I don't think I ever lost my bemused expression.