A is for Alhambra: AtoZ Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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A is for Alhambra

I first visited Spain when I was a college student, in 1992 as part of a summer study program. There is so much about that summer that lives in my memory, but nothing shines brighter in my mind's eye than the Alhambra. 

The Alhambra was the last Moorish (Muslim) stronghold in Southern Spain. It's beautifully preserved and a major tourist attraction, famed worldwide for the beauty of its architecture and gardens.  It's definitely on my list of the most beautiful human-made places I have ever seen. There's a famous poem, by Francisco Asís de Icaza y Beña that expresses it well:

In English: "Give him alms, woman, for there is nothing sadder in life than being blind in Granada."

It was my first exposure to Arabian styles of architecture and I fell in love hard. The tile work, the detailed carvings, the water features and statuary are magical. There's a romance to it. You can't be there and not feel the history and imagine stories.