Spanish Song

Every so often, a few gentle notes drifted softly over the vine-smothered wall. The music was not loud enough to disturb, but just sufficient to enhance the evening's ambience in the walled garden of the restaurant. The low murmur of lovers' talk, the chink of cutlery on china and of glass against glass, the flicker of candlelight protected from the balmiest of breezes by goblet-shaped lanterns, and the tiniest pin-pricks of fairy lights twinkling prettily through the garden foliage. It was an idyll. A clandestine paradise.

Ambling down the cobbled street, colourful lines of laundry stretching from one side to the other high above passing walkers, you would never have divined its existence. Only those in the know - learned by word of mouth, friendship with the proprietors, or happy accident - had the secret understanding that this old, studded wooden door, which to the uninitiated appeared to be just a door in a wall like any other, with its unassuming little copper bell, led to the delights of the best garden restaurant in all Granada. From the intimate tables were visible the lights of the Alhambra Palace. As you sipped your Marques de Caceres and contemplated the treasures tonight's menu had to offer, drank deeply of the vision seated at your table with you, you might gaze for further inspiration in the direction of its ancient walls. Your thoughts might even travel to the lives it had held, the opulence it had witnessed and the beauty it still possesses.

I don't know if I'd ever find it again. But I'd happily die in the attempt.