Plaza Bibarrambla, Granada by The Gigapanographer Currently Known as "Kilgore661"

Gigapan Pro + Canon 7D + 18-55...

After taking some shots of the local municipal cemetery (www.gigapan.org/gigapans/69924/ ) I decided to head into town and follow my nose looking for some more traditional subject matter.

Plaza Bibarrambla is another fine place to sit and watch the world go by on a sunny day, although this image does nothing to convey what a fine place this is (although viewing the image in Google Earth helps, and there is an alternative treatment of this scene here www.gigapan.org/gigapans/70343/). It is described as 'iconic' of Granada. Certainly the archictecture is what I consider to be typically Spanish although perhaps www.gigapan.org/gigapans/70246/snapshots/195376/ is more of an exemplar.

Although I can in no way be said to speak Spanish, there was something odd about the sound of the name of this square. I asked the nice lady in the tourist information kiosk about this, and she smiled and said that yes, I was right, the "bibar' part of the name is not Spanish [ah, smug mode] but Arabic and means 'bridge'. 'Rambla' is a word that I expect English-speaking geologists have an equivalent for, but I don't know it: it means 'A sandy place, ground covered with sand after a flood.'

"Aha! Tell me more." I hear you say. Well, alright. What I recall is that this area used to have some Moorish buildings that were demolished to make way for what we see now. At one point in time, the square was half Moorish and half Spanish, and one of the citiy's two rivers (now completely built over) used to flow here. So we have a bridge over a river that deposits sand in a half-Moorish, half-Spanish area, hence the name.

The plaza is just around the corner from the cathedral which is my next shot: www.gigapan.org/gigapans/70131/