Dancing in Granada

As I said in my previous blog, our first day in Granada was the best day in Europe, possibly ever.

Here are a couple more anecdotes that added to our wonderful day.

After wandering through the Cathedral, we decided to get some cold drinks and sit down in the Placa Nueva and enjoy the people watching and atmosphere. Little did we know that the people watching would be the best people watching experience of our life.

While staring at people, I noticed a group of men walking around wearing cardboard playing card outfits.

My first thought was, "Well that's strange." They walked into a building and I didn't think about it again.

We continued our staring, then suddenly they came out of the building. One of the men was wearing a flamenco dress and heels. He proceeds to dance through the square, slowly making his way to us. I overheard a Spanish woman tell another girl, "Oh yeah, this is normal for a bachelor party." (I realized after witnessing another bachelor party in France that European bachelor parties are much different.)

Well, he made his way to our bench and immediately grabbed Anna to join him in his Flamenco dancing. Anna does not flamenco dance, so, when in doubt, JAZZ HANDS! He was flinging his dress about. Anna was traumatized.

Later in the evening, we had just decided to head back to the hostel, when we stumbled upon this group of people dancing their hearts out.

(For some reason, the videos won't load on the blog, so I put them on youtube. For those of you who are not tech-savvy, click on the words "them" and "youtube.")

Some of it was choreographed, some of it was free style dancing, and all of it was wonderful.

It was so much fun to watch. There were onlookers also having a great time and we were all having a great time. A man who did not speak English had a full conversation with us. We somehow managed to understand that he was a professor at a university

That woman in the black dress and red skirt had some moves.

That man in the orange shirt really had some moves. He was so dramatic!

Here the orange-shirted man is with his moves.

As we were watching, this man asked Adrienne to dance. She said no, thank you.

There he is with his moves again.

Anna enjoying the show.

Allison and I enjoying the show.

That woman had quite the hair.

Then these boys joined in and it was hysterical.

There was a lot of throwing each other in the air and running at each other like bulls.

And tango-ing

and skipping.

It inspired Adrienne and Anna to dance as well.

There they are dancing dramatically.

And having lots of fun.

Staring at us dramatically.

Then, there is Adrienne staring dramatically through the crowd with one eyeball.

JAZZ HANDS

Here is Anna getting asked to dance, while Adrienne laughs hysterically.

And there is Anna dancing.

And here is the video. Unfortunately I was too far away, so I had call Adrienne over to take the very quick video.

We laughed and had a great time enjoying Anna's dancing.

Then, blue-shirted, sweaty man asked Adrienne to dance while standing next to her and she could not escape. Here is the video.

The faces Adrienne made while dancing were hysterically funny. We could not stop laughing. And neither could the many people around us. Everyone was laughing so much. She was actually quite talented, considering she had never done it before. All the older men and woman sitting around us were dying.

The next day at the Alhambra palace, an older couple asked us to take their picture. Then, he recognized Adrienne and was dancing along with his cane as we walked by, singing, just in case Adrienne didn't know he was talking about her. It was wonderful. She was mortified.

Allison and I joined in for a bit, but then the music stopped, so we headed back. (Yes, I danced very very briefly to those people who are doubting me.) The perfect end to a perfect day.

The next evening, we took a walking tour of Sacromonte and Albacin, the Muslim neighborhood., which had a great view of the Alhambra. The large houses and gardens are called "Carmens." At the end of the walking tour, we went to a flamenco show in a cave, which was wonderful.

Here are the old streets of Sacramonte at night.

The Alhambra by night.

You can very clearly see that we are in front of the Alhambra.

Oh there's the Alhambra, but where'd we go?

Our tour guide, Christian, was hilarious. He made fun of my camera saying it was easy to use and real photographers use difficult cameras.

He claimed a well that we saw was where they cook dead babies.

He claimed to be a photographer for Japanese playboy.

He said the Alhambra was his summer home.

He said that in Mosques, the reason women have to pray in the back is so that men don't get distracted by their bottoms.

Love the plates

This is the hill where our show was.

The wall of the room with the flamenco show.

The room

Here we are!

It was organized with 2 different sets of dancers. The woman there is the singer. The guitar player is the guitar player. The man there was the drummer slash secret flamenco dancer.

The first dance was a bit of a dance-off, which was fantastic. Also, as you can see, we were sitting extremely close to the dancers. At one point, my foot almost got stomped on. A few other times, I was hit by a flying skirt. At another point, Adrienne and I were hit by an excessive amount of flying sweat.





This woman was great. Here are a couple videos of her. And just her feet.

Here are a couple short videos of her. The show was pretty long and each dancer danced quite a bit, but I didn't want to waste the experience taking a ton of videos and pictures, so I snapped a few then just enjoyed the show. The videos are a little shaky because I was not looking at where I was filming, so I could enjoy the dancing.

There they are sitting down.

Then, the drummer came up and starting dancing. He was great too. Here is his video.

I kind of forgot to take a video of her until the end, but here's a short one.

One more video.

You may wonder what a much older woman was doing, but she was quite skilled. Her hands were so fast!

Then, this man in a suit came in suddenly. I did not take a video of him because I was too distracted by the sweat flinging about into my face.

Also, he looked extremely similar to Pete from 30 Rock, which unfortunately you can't really see here.

We got dinner afterwards and then packed and went to bed. It was the end to another great day!