Two Sundays ago, the day after La Ofrenda Floral, my friends and I decided to go see the famous Gypsy caves of Granada. The longer I'm here, the more I hear about Gypsies (Los Gitanos in Spanish). I've been told that you have to be really careful, especially in the Albaycin (Arab neighborhood), because the Gypsies will try to hand you things and then grab your hand to read your palm. If you don't give them money afterwards, they get very angry so basically don't accept things from Gypies. We, nevertheless, decided to go to El Museo de Las Cuevas de Sacromonte, which translates to The Museum of the Caves of the Sacred Mountain.
Because it was Sunday and everything closes on Sunday, we had to wait until 17:00 for the museum to open. You'd think that at that point, the hottest part of the day would have passed, but it was swelteringly hot outside and in order to get to the museum we basically had to climb a mountain. Oddly enough, we ended up walking past a discoteca (dance club) called El Camborio where all the erasmus (exchange) students like to go out on the weekends. None of us knew exactly where the museum was so we were all cracking up throughout the walk when we realized we were taking the exact route we take to get to El Camborio. As if the walk to El Camborio wasn't bad enough, the museum ended up being way farther up the mountain and has a cobblestone path with hand railings because it's so steep. To be honest, by the time we got there I was more interested in finding a glass of water and some air conditioning (which of course they don't have here) than Gypsy caves.
To give you a little background info on caves, the they're referred to as underground architecture because they're literally built into the mountains.They can look very different depending on the environment. Underground architecture still exists today as a form of housing and can be found all over the world (including Colorado). A lot of the caves that are still in use today have been modernized to include electricity, cable, etc. I don't know whether people still live in caves in Granada, but they were originally used by people who were exiled from Granada or in hiding for various reasons, which is why they were so popular amongst the Gypsies.
The museum definitely wasn't what I expected. First of all, it was all outside, which in retrospect makes sense because you can't shove caves that are carved into the mountain into a museum. Second, the caves were significantly more normal than I thought they would be. They also felt really cool inside (as in the temperature), which surprised me because it was so hot outside. The signs in front of each cave weren't very descriptive, but it was pretty clear what the purpose of each cave was based on the objects inside.
Above is an example of a living cave. You can see the bed when you look straight back. If you turn left from where I took the picture, there's a little nook that serves as a kitchen, which you can see below.
There were all kinds of different caves to wander around at the museum. For example, there was one filled with yarn and tools for weaving and there was another one that served as a stable. It was unclear whether or not the non-bedroom caves were communal or belonged to only one family.
This is the view from the museum. I've seen a lot of breathtaking scenery of Granada since I've been here, but this one by far has the most foliage. Also, I climbed all the way up from the bottom of that. I'm just saying...
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