Rocking Your World 2019; Week 18

Well I hope you have enjoyed this week as much as I have. This will be a very quick resume for today with lots of photos to follow next week when I have sorted them out!

I mentioned last week that our son Tom had arrived from Denmark to house/animal sit for us while we had a few days away, but we had a couple of days with him before we went, so on Saturday Tom and I set off for Murcia. I wanted his help in buying (carrying) a flat-packed shelf unit from IKEA, and he wanted to look in the clothes shops as menswear is so very expensive in Denmark, and we decided to combine the two.

I am not familiar with Murcia, as neither Chris nor I are really city-people, so we don't visit without  good reason. My first impression was of a very clean, and surprisingly empty pedestrianized street, lined with beds of trees and red geraniums.  There was an interesting mix of modern shops and much older architecture on municipal buildings etc.

We walked to the end of the street and as we turned a corner we could hear noise - a mixture of a lot of people and an assortment of music, so we followed our ears and suddenly found ourselves in a very crowded street full of noise and people, many in bright costumes, and several sporting badges or jewelry of fish! At one point it was impossible to move forward at all, and then a circle opened up and a group of drummers gave us a wonderful display. This was repeated in the next street as well.

There were others playing a random assortment of instruments as well, and over it all, very loud music played over a PA system.

There was a strong smell of gin in the air and many of the folk carried bags of bottles of gin, beer and fortunately, water as well. We battled through but soon realised that all the main shops had sensibly locked and barred their doors, and our best plan was to get out of the revellers' way. 

We stopped at a caravan café and bought some churros (dough similar to a doughnut mix, extruded and deep fried, then sprinkled with sugar), and a pot of thick, rich chocolate to dip it in. Delicious! Thus fortified, we continued to fight through the crowd until we got back to where we had parked the car. Then we drove just to the edge of the city, to our nearest branch of IKEA, where I was at least able to buy the shelf I wanted. With much rearranging of the car interior, we managed to get it in, and soon we were home. (Tom, being the good lad that he is, put the shelf together for me while we were away!).

I had asked a few people what the Murcia fiesta was all about, but I didn't get a lot of explanations, so when we got home I did some internet searching, and apparently it was the last night of a week of celebrations of Spring, with that day being dedicated to sardines! Now they do use the name sardine as a nickname or a friendly name for all sorts of things (i.e. a baby could be called a little sardine as a term of endearment) so I wasn't much clearer. But is seemed as though one day had been dedicated to the 'Grand Sardine', one to burial of the 'Infant sardine', and bizarrely, one to the meatloaf, but that's Spanish fiestas for you. Everyone was having a grand old time, and that night there was to be a grand finale parade through the main street to end it all.

On Sunday Tom took the plunge, literally, and was the first person to test the newly repaired swimming pool. The water was only 18º which is much too cold for me, but he swims in the sea around Denmark all year round, so it was almost warm to him! I was happy just to watch him, and then I spent a while trying to take pictures of the lovely light patterns made as the breeze ruffled the water. I am sure these will appear on a backing paper on a card soon.

Unfortunately Chris has suffered with back pain for a couple of weeks. We are not sure whether it was a rheumatoid arthritis flare-up, or a pulled muscle, but either way, a four hour drive to Ronda for our mini-break didn't seem like a very good idea. So we decided to have our first trip on a Spanish train, which has the reputation for being very clean and efficient, and usually on time. So on Monday we all got up at the crack of dawn and Tom drove us to Almeria, which is our nearest train station. We were expecting to catch a train to Granada where we would change straight on to another train to Ronda, but things didn't go exactly to plan. It seems that many of the train stations in Andalucía are undergoing major reconstruction ready for the long-promised high speed trains, that should have been up and running by now, but don't look likely to be ready for some years yet! So we were shown to a bus which took us a short ride to another station where we did get a train to Granada. It was clean, and comfortable with plenty of space to stretch our legs as needed. We enjoyed the changing scenery as we passed, rocky cliffs...

huge wind farms....

and snowy sierras.

It was good to see that in some of the tiny hamlets, the little stone cottages each had a solar panel on its roof. That must be so much better for them than relying on a generator, as they would not have any mains electricity.

We knew we would have wait at Granada so we found some lunch and then returned to the station only to find we had to board another bus. This one took us a long way - over an hour's drive - to another station, where we all got off and were immediately herded to another bus which took us all the way to Ronda. All in all we could have driven there much quicker! We felt there was very little information or warning about this when we booked the tickets, but in fairness, if we spoke the language better, and could read all the small print, I am sure we would have been more prepared.

The main thing is that we arrived safely and soon found our hotel. Our room was lovely with a long narrow verandah and a view to die for. Ronda is famous for its ancient bridges across the gorge and this was the view from our verandah.

Of course there were a lot of small flies way down below us, attracted by the water, but little birds constantly swooped and collected them, so they didn't get up as high as us, and were no problem at all. I liked sitting on the verandah chairs and watching the birds, and the constant flow of people walking to and fro across the bridge.

On the far side of the bridge from us is the old city where there are many beautiful old churches and other monuments of interest, and just below that were even more. Over our stay we managed to visit most of them, and next week I will show you some of the photos I took (about 400 in all!). But for now I want to spend some time with Tom as he has to return to Denmark at the weekend.

It was a lovely way to celebrate our anniversary. I hope to get some scrapbook pages made to record the highlights.

(I have just noticed that the arch way and its shadow behind us looks like a big question mark above my head!)

Now I will link up with Rocking Your World, and Annie's Friday Smiles, and then go and enjoy some family time.