Our Spanish Journey

We arrived in Spain on 14, and left on 24 March. The Alhambra Palace in Granada is probably the most well-known tourist spot, and we went to see it on the third day of our arrival. Although it was off-season, a huge number of people were there. Most of them we casually talked to expressed their warm sympathy to what happened, or what was on-going in Japan. We talked, for example, with Austrian ladies, who said their country was affected by Chernobyl, the fear of a nuclear accident. We discussed tsunami with Malaysian ladies. We will remember those conversations for a long time to come.
Alhambra, of course, was the last resort of the Muslim power in the Iberian Peninsula, and is considered to be the great monument of the intermingling of different cultures. I would like to put it here, however, that we were more impressed by Alcazares in Sevilla which we visited two days afterwards. Partly it was because it was not as extensive and so was manageable, so to speak, for tourists. To a great extent it was because of the beautiful weather. But the architecture, gardens, use of water, in short everything was nice to see as a great symbol of the interaction of cultures. They talk of 'the fact that the periods of harmony and coexistence are more common than the periods of conflict and war between Christians and Muslims'. Similarly in the great Cathedral next door, with its huge space inside of one hectare or so, the official explanation was 'as is with many Spanish Cathedrals' this one was also made as such on the basis of the main mosque of the city.
From Sevilla we went up to Bilbao in the extreme north by train and bus. It is the centre of the Spanish Basque, with signboards written in two languages, Spanish and Basque, although both are in Roman scripts. It is a beautiful city, well served by several means of public transport including bus, tram, and even the Metro. The Bilbao river flows through it, which would have taken us to the seaport of Bilbao facing the Bay of Biscay. But we had no time for that. Our purpose in coming to Bilbao was somewhere else.