Spice, Smoke and Sugar

Whilst studying at the University of Extremadura - Cáceres campus, I took two weekends from my life to visit a mate I met in Coimbra, Portugal at his new apartment in the old town in Granada. A twelve hour bus journey from Cáceres to a city I knew nothing of, via Madrid, was nothing to sniff at but I missed him and I love to write, so twelve hours was plenty of good time.

After the inevitable slog of roadside stops, buying overpriced water and crisps to stave off starvation I arrived to a city with red snowcapped mountains, a crystal blue sky and the last great Moorish bastion in Spain, the Alhambra, sitting quietly atop the hills overlooking the sprawling mess that is the Granada city centre. To me it looked like any other Spanish city, more picturesque than normal perhaps, but much like Sevilla or Badajoz where I had been before.

I have never been more wrong. My mate lived in the Alhambra's shade, the divot between the castle's ramparts and the old town, the calmest part of a one-way street filled with sellers, tea shops and little tavernas that somehow expanded once you peaked through the door into three-storey pubs the likes of which I've never seen since. Forgive me if I get a little poetic here, but it all bears mentioning.

White cracked stone lines the roads, dust drifting slowly between buildings that have stood since before the castle's builders fled south. The sounds of trading hawkers whose families have likely plied their trade from the same nooks for generations of mother to daughter and father to son, selling on the most beautiful blue and red glass, painted ceramics and brass lanterns I have ever seen or have yet to see.

And the tea. Oh god the tea. The smell of spices and herbs I can't even name in English or Spanish, mixes and blends that would make the average Starbucks customer cry over their £5 cups in shame and make hipsters from London to Moscow sell their glasses and trilbies for a single taste of the sweetest hot nectar that ever flowed from a iron flask to tea glass.

Colours that I've never seen in such mixes and abundances and such clarities, the tingling strings of flamenco bands giving renditions of ballads that clearly were crowd pleasers but which only the locals knew in any detail at all. The cheapest and sweetest sangria I have ever tasted, also the coldest at the height of Easter. The kebab shops that stretch for seeimgly miles in all directions and each taste like god-given succour after the bottle of rioja and a chaser of whiskey, chorizo and red onion and garlic.

Little chocolate pastries and Middle Eastern pizzas, if you imagine such a thing, chilled ice tea and the most succulent prawns I've tasted outside of Sorrento. For a city in the mountains that's no mean feat. The smells and sights and sounds haunt me, for I know I will not see anything like it for a long time to come.

I miss it so much it actually hurts some days. But go, go and see, go and smell, go and feel what my bank account and lack of student loans will not let me see for the nonce. And if you find Mustafa's tea shop, or that little pizza place, or the restaurant beside the church, tell them the Irish man misses them and will be back again.