The Alhambra, Granada

After two busy days of walking, standing in line, and gawking at the splendors, I can say I have a positive first impression. However, much of April seems to be spring/Easter break for Europeans and school kids from from all over the world. Sidewalks on all of the main streets have been overflowing but admittedly, my timing might have been bad.

On the positive side, I was delighted to be able to get an Alhambra ticket for yesterday by simply walking up to a tourist info kiosk on a sidewalk on Friday when I arrived! This was after discovering weeks ago that all of the online tickets for most of April had been sold out! So with the Alhambra lined up for Saturday, I spent the rest of Friday giving myself a guided tour of Granda using a rented mp3 player. It was OK if you like churches, history or walking. I liked at least one of those things so I was happy.

The Alhambra is a large complex of Moorish, followed by Christian, fortifications, palaces, gardens, mosques and churches. The Islamic architecture that remains is apparently the best of its kind anywhere in the world. There are beautiful gardens to see without standing in line but the key palaces are such strong attractions that you have a specific entry time and there are check points to keep you moving in one direction. This gives it a bit of an amusement park feel and it's challenging to get photos without people in them. Just the right people in photos would be great but random tourists seldom work. The most spectacular architecture is inside buildings which creates an extra photographic challenge of lighting. I used a lot of 3 frame auto bracketing with high speed continuous shooting followed by HDR processing. I'm pretty happy with some of my results!