Zaragoza & Aljafería Palace

We arrived in Zaragoza and it is beautiful.  I love all these small little towns.  As much as I thoroughly enjoyed Barcelona, I think it's really nice to get away from the big cities and come to a smaller, quieter place.

We went to the Aljafería Palace which, despite fading and decay over thousands of years, still
stands and is still beautiful.  The Aljafería Palace is a fortified medieval Islamic palace built during
the second half of the 11th century in the Moorish taifa of Zaragoza of Al-Andalus, present day
Zaragoza, Spain. (I stole that from Wikipedia :) )  I was amazed at how beautiful the castle was and I took another opportunity to look at it up close and examine each little detail.  I can't even begin to imagine how much time and effort it was to paint each little swirl and carve each little structure. Wow.  It was so beautiful.

In our journal for the class, we were assigned to talk about conquest, and what it would be like to be conquered.  I couldn't imagine what it must be like to have this beautiful palace and have it taken away from you, just like that.  I never really even thought about what it would be like to lose everything you own and built up, everything taken away from you so quickly.  It would be very difficult to live in a time like that, when it was survival of the fittest and whoever had the most power or money or the strongest army.  That would be a huge, devastating blow.