Sweet winter...

Winter is sweet here. So sweet that you dont know how to dress if you go up the hill or in the "valley" of Granada. Furthermore, if the sun shows up - which happens quite often compaed with Normandy - everything look and is warmer. Andalucia, sweet Analucia... and cold or humid, this city has still a strong heartbeat, thanks to its people, wandering in the streets for the sake of chatting with their friends, seated in a bar or on some benches, down the streets, in some squares or just on some plazas.

I displayed some new pictures on the French website. As Fede - the Italian girl I met in Lapland on a bus - was here visiting me for 5 days, we went to see the Alhambra... Yes yes ! you know that place ! The astonishing arabic - more like nasrid - palace, located on the greatest hill of Granada and surrounded by a forest.

Splendid gardens, amazing arabic style, dozens of small palaces or towers - from all styles, since all the sultans who lived there built something. Granada Sultana fell in 1492, a few month before Colomb left for America. Then the Christian kings left in intact. They added their style and built some more palace, but this time in the occidental style but preserving the magnificent essence of Boabdil last palace. Boabdil was the last sultan of Granada, who " fought like a woman and cryed like a child"...

So yes ! you know that place ! The lions fontain ! One of the most simbolic plae of Andalucia ! The one which makes Versaille fontains looks like childish, compared with the way the Arabic way - so secret- of dealing with water... letting it coming in silently, without a murmur, like a magic spell... using water to make a palace looks bigger...

By the way do you know how they call those small windows - made of wood and preventing anybody to look through it from the outside - which give on some small yards and rooms ? Those windows which were only designed for the sultan women, who used them to know what was politicly going on in the Sultana? JEALOUSY ! I love the idea...

If you happen to have read Irving Washington, you may also know that place by : "The tales of the Alhambra", wrote in 1832. A poetic version of the "Arabic nights"...