Granada, Spain

 The city of Granada, Spain, is well known for one main reason: the Alhambra, Spain's most visited tourist sight. And while Granada is a pretty Spanish city, probably the only reason you'd come here and not visit the Alhambra is because you didn't book your tickets ahead of time, and it was fully booked during your stay. We booked our tickets almost three months in advance, and even then, there were already a number of tickets bought up. We had read about this on pretty much every site talking about Granada, and yet we still met people who were trying to get tickets upon arrival (lady in the ticket office who was incensed that she could not buy tickets for the following day; two young backpackers who were walking up the hill after noon while we were on our way down).

Granada is attractive enough that it wouldn't be a total disaster if you missed the Alhambra, but let me be clear: Do not miss the Alhambra.

After a GPS mixup and a strong helping hand from Miguel, our apartment owner, we rolled into town in the early afternoon and managed to find a parking spot a few minutes walk from our flat. It was tiny, but it was perfect.

Living/bedroom of our apartment, patio out the door to the left. Yes, that is the Alhambra in our living room window.

We did a nice walk around the city, getting our Alhambra tickets for the following morning, supper in the main square, and retired early so that we would be refreshed for our early morning arrival at the Alhambra (I really like saying that word).

There is a back way up to the hill to the site and while it's not a long walk, it's a continual uphill walk which is pretty tiring for some people, so don't do this if you're in a hurry and are budgeting your breaths.

But it's a glorious walk all the same, past old stone walls and through picturesque gates.

We arrived before the doors opened, so we had a chance to mill about and have a look over all of Granada, exploring the older parts of the fort.

What a glorious morning

Then our time came to visit the main parts of this old Moorish estate/castle/palace. I won't bore you with a description of everything, just know that this sort of detail was a Moorish specialty, and there are few areas that remain unadorned. It is beautiful, and it is spectacular. Book three months ahead of time, remember.

Maybe it wouldn't be quite so amazing on a dull, cloudy day, but we didn't have to worry about that.

Up the hill from the Alhambra, and included in your visit, is the Generalife, a sort of gardeny summer home for royalty that is more or less next door to your main palace. 

Gate at the Generalife

View from the top at the Generalife

We spent the afternoon and the following day getting to know our Granada better, visiting several shops with a dizzying array of merchandise, discovering lost plazas, busy streets, and quiet lanes, and walking centuries' old cobblestone streets on our way to dinner.

The red, black, and white poster is for a meeting about "employers who are wanting to make slaves of workers in the hospitality industry." I expect I would have enjoyed attending.

One of the most pleasant things to do on a sunny afternoon is visit Mirador San Nicolas, the square where everyone gathers to sit and relax, sell their wares, or just enjoy the view. It has a real backpacker vibe, with lots of characters, some who look like they were just travelling through and managed to stick around for a few years or decades. The view is worth an extended stay.

There are quite a few attractive spots like this around the Albacin, the older area of Granada that sits on the hill to the north of the Alhambra, and it's fun to wander and explore in an attempt to find them all.

View of the Alhambra (right) and the Generalife (far left) from Mirador San Nicolas

Broader view of the plaza that draws a crowd throughout the day.

And at the end of every day, we'd wander back to our apartment, sometimes even in the middle of the day, to sit on our patio, put our feet up and enjoy our own private view.

Sadly, this little gem of an apartment seems to no longer be available, but there are loads of great ones that are. Just remember that no matter where you decide to stay or when you decide to go, book your Alhambra tickets early.

UPDATE: This is the place!

We'd originally found it through VeoApartments but these are the only Granada apartments they have available now (Oct 2021). One is quite pricey, but the other two are much much cheaper and both very cool with great views of the Alhambra.

Prints of some of my Spain images can be purchased here.

Find more Spain here, and more of the world here.

Books about our travels can be found here.

All Those Books

It has come to the attention of my agents and entourage that my many books and book titles are confusing people. While I enjoy a good practical joke every now and then, it was not my intention to have people buying more books than necessary.

So here is a primer on all the books available from 275Days.

We'll start with the most recent…actually, no, that's probably going to be more confusing and not very helpful. Let's start at the beginning, maybe that will clear things up. The real beginning, for me. For this story, at least.

A bunch of years ago now, we had a super cool opportunity, and out of that, we took some time off to travel around the world with our two kids for nine months. Before we left home, I was thinking about how to keep family and friends informed of what we were doing, and a blog was the best I could come up with. Nine months is pretty close to 275 days, so that's where the name of the blog came from. (Actually, if you subtract our departure day and our return day, we were gone for 275 days.) What I did know was that I would take lots of pictures in lots of cool places, and people would probably be interested in that. This was 2007, so youtubing while travelling was not really a big thing, and I didn't want to be spending the trip videoing everything and then being glued to a computer during all of our down time. 

I won't get into the details of the trip here, but the low down is this:

One month in Italy

Five weeks in Greece

Four weeks in Turkey

About two weeks each in 

Syria

Jordan

Egypt

Eleven weeks in India

And the final two months for a rush job of 

Thailand

Cambodia

Vietnam

and Laos

I started writing before we got to Rome, the first place on our itinerary, and did not let up until we left the airport in Incheon, Korea, on our way back home. 

I ended up with a couple hundred posts, with more than thousand pictures on the blog. That's just a guess. I never actually counted how many pictures I included, but it was a fraction of the twenty thousand I took. And those two hundred-plus posts clocked in at over 150,000 words. Yikes, what a mouthful.

I spent a couple years preparing for an art show in 2010, and then had more time to think about the value of all those words and photos. It seemed a shame to just have it sit on the computer in our house, only to be seen on anniversary dates of being here or there, or when we (I) were feeling particularly nostalgic. But as I reread the blog, two things were clear: there were a lot of great stories lingering in that mass of words, and; it deserved a far better fate than to simply disappear in an electronic recycling depot. A book seemed like the logical answer. After a bit of editing and a lot of designing, I came up with a book so massive that it required two volumes. The online printing service, Blurb, had a page limit and I was well over. At this point, two more things were clear: it would need considerably more editing, and: it was beautiful. This could work.

Windows of Kolkata

There was something about this particular Kolkata window that seemed absolutely transcendent to me. The exposed brick, open shutter, the sheet, the bars. Every element in the image added up to something I could not explain, but could feel connecting deep within me. Perhaps the ten weeks of travelling around India by that point had something to do with it, as well as the way were travelling around India. We were embedding ourselves into a society in a fundamental fashion, but also from a perspective that allowed us the freedom to exit at any point should things go awry. That freedom allowed me to examine society with a micro lens while forever keeping a distance between us. I'm struggling to explain the way that distance impacted my feelings about India, or perhaps whether that distance means that I could never have a true understanding of India.
Regardless, this window made me understand how India is so much more than the sum of its parts.

It Speaks to Me
Water soluble graphite on paper
Sold

Distance
Oil on board, 24 by 48"
Sold

Another Kolkata window -

Skin Deep
Water soluble graphite on paper, 17 by 22"
$700

A Day in Casablanca

We spent one day in Casablanca at the end of our Morocco trip, arriving Friday around noon and leaving at dawn on Saturday morning. With a number of the things we wanted to see being closed, we had a fair bit of extra time one our hands. Which is okay because we like to take the time to wander.

I had resisted all pleas from my wife to check out Rick’s Cafe, but given the current situation and our proximity to this “legendary” spot, I relented. It was kind of hard to find as we figured it would be noisy and packed with people. I think we actually walked past it a couple of times before google maps politely informed me that this quiet unassuming door was indeed the place we were looking for. Laura was thrilled. For months in advance I said there was no way I was going in this snakky little tourist trap. And now here we were, entering the fabled cafe that had set her mind to wonder since she first saw the movie. That magical little bar that has become an icon in the world of movie sets. That little place that has a sign on the front door saying, “Closed for private function.”

So we went and toured the medina instead. I think I enjoyed that much more.

Before checking out Rick's Cafe, we inspected the mosque as closely as we could without going inside.

The buildings above were very familiar to us, and after walking around and through them, we realized that they were used in the movie, A Hologram for the King. It was weird because everything was finished, but they were clearly unoccupied.

All things considered, Casablanca didn't have much to offer us, especially given that a number of things we wanted to see were closed. As it was a Friday, the mosque was also closed to us as non-Muslims. We knew that ahead of time, but it was the only way we could work our flights and squeeze in as much of the rest of Morocco that we wanted to see as well.

But for a two-week stay, I'd say we did all right. Asilah, Chefchaouen, Fes, Meknes, and Rabat.

For Canadian travellers, Morocco is very convenient what with direct flights from Montreal to Casablanca.

Here's a short video of some of our time in Morocco.

Find more travel content at 275days.com.

The Wonder of Travel

I don't know how much Gokarna, India has changed in the last twelve years, but back in 2008 it was wonderful, everything one could have asked for. From the landscape to the people to the beaches to the restaurants, it was all literally full of wonder.

We walked these headland paths between Kudle Beach and Gokarna Beach every day for two full weeks, twice a day - in the late morning sun after managing to extricate ourselves from the comfortable rooftop terrace and perfect breakfasts at Mahalakshmi Restaurant, and again hours later heading back home, as the sun began to sink into the far edge of the Arabian Sea. More often than not, we’d clean ourselves up in our room, then walk back to the centre of town for dinner at the Pai Restaurant. A truly enjoyable thing about staying in one place for an extended period of time is getting to know where you are, getting to know its people, and of course, becoming more and more acquainted with its food. Both the Pai and Mahalakshmi served exceptional dishes, and each day it seemed, we were greeted a little more warmly, a note of recognition in the eyes and smiles of the people there. Mahalakshmi’s owner was usually the one to greet us inside the front door, and I remember that first day how he guided us through his building, out the back door, and up a set of stairs to the rooftop. I was skeptical at first as to what we could possibly find out here after what we witnessed on the inside, but this view…and the food. After that day, he merely waved us on through, allowing us to find our own way up stairs, and he would follow along with the menu minutes later.

After about a week of walking the seaside path to Kudle Beach, we somehow discovered a tiny bakery hidden in the bushes, up the hill, out of sight. Cinnamon buns were added to the daily routine.

Part of the fun of travelling for long periods is meeting other travellers on more than one occasion. On an overnight trek to sleep under the stars in Jordan’s Wadi Rum, we met a British couple, Allan and Maggie. They had been to India numerous times, and as we talked of our future plans, they had some recommendations for us. “If you want to see Goa like it was twenty years ago, go to Gokarna. You won’t regret it.” A full month later, we bumped into Allan and Maggie four thousand kilometres away on Kudle Beach and spent a couple days hanging out together. 

This photograph conjures all of that and more. The endless sunshine. The warm salty water. Beautiful coastline. Green as far as the eye could see. Gokarna itself, but also the possibilities that travel represents. The opening up to new experiences. Discovering these amazing places that we’d never heard about before. Seeing life played out in a way so different from our own back home.

I think we would say that Gokarna was one of our favourite places in all the world.

After our last breakfast at Mahalakshmi, we told the owner that we would be leaving early the next day. After a few words to us, he leaned forward and looked into our kids’ eyes. “We’ll see you again someday.”

What are some of your favourite places?

The State of the World

I've been thinking for some time now that I need to revisit my favourite travel photos and talk about what makes these images powerful. Sometimes it's just a reminder of what travel means to me, others are a moment in time that is irreplaceable. It's a long list of things that can make a photo stand apart in my memory, so considering the state of the world today, not just the travel industry, I figure now is the perfect time to reflect on the wonder of exploring our planet.

Let's start at the beginning. Anticipating a trip can be almost as much fun as the trip itself. When you are in the planning stages - narrowing down where to go, looking for places to stay, things to do - the energy created is a magical thing. Opportunities are seemingly endless, and the skies are always, always sunny in these times, as no one imagines themselves on a rainy beach or taking cover in a hilltop town to escape hurricane winds. No, these imaginings are filled with brilliant skies and pleasant temperatures, error-free days and maximized potential.
Thanks to a price war involving some European airlines in the fall of 2016, we got an unbelievable price* for a two-stop jaunt to Madrid in spring 2017. Five minutes before we left for the airport, I found an email from KLM informing me that one of our KLM flights was cancelled. We were free to rebook another flight, but in the meantime, they would looking into finding us an alternative. One minute later, KLM emailed to say that they had managed to rebook us on an Air Canada flight from Montreal to Heathrow, followed (very closely (full-sprint close, as I recall)) by an Iberian Air flight to Madrid. We would arrive half an hour later than originally planned. Crisis averted.
As dawn broke the following morning, not long before landing at Heathrow, the sky blossomed into the colour of dreams and opportunity, the pinks and blues and oranges intensifying until I relented and got out the camera.
This image epitomizes that feeling of anticipation, where everything is perfect, everything how you want it to be. You know it's going to be a good day.

What is it that makes one of your travel photos stand out from the rest?

Here's a bit more from Spain:
http://artypeg.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-little-bit-of-seville.html
http://artypeg.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-spanish-window.html
And a little more detail about that KLM incident:
http://artypeg.blogspot.com/2017/07/why-is-hate-so-popular-airline-edition.html

*That unbelievable price has forever clouded my judgement when it comes to the real cost of inter-continental travel, but no mind, this is a happy post!