Rocking Your World 2019: Week 19

I had an interesting chat with a worker in our "Supermarkets overseas" shop (aka Iceland but with a lot of Waitrose items on its shelves). I was asking him why I was holding two items from the fresh produce shelf with identical bar codes, but one was quite reduced and one was not. He pointed to a number on each one, 1803 on one and 1806 on the other, and told me the 18 signified the number week of the year, and the other the day in that week, so my cooking apples were week 18, the 3rd which were reduced, and 6th which weren't. Apart from the fact that I find this a very unfair way to show age - best before date -  of an item as few customers would understand it, I was wanting to tell him that I am quite sure this is week 19 of the year!! However, I was keen to finish my shopping so I let it pass in the end. I might add that I  bought both sets of apples to make a pie for my visitors arriving on Sunday!

 It may be the end of week 19, but I have very little news. The week has passed with my getting all the bed lined and towels washed and dried from last week's visitor, and making the spare bed room ready for the ones arriving this week. I can't think of much else I have done, so I must have spent a lot of time pottering around doing very little! But how lucky am I to be able to have weeks like that sometimes?

However, here, as promised are some photos of our short break in the beautiful Ronda.

Ronda is most famous for its beautiful bridges. The town is set high up on the edge of a deep gorge with two bridges that were originally the only access into it. The 'Old bridge' was replaced by 'The bridge of Ronda' and its construction was completed in 1793. This is the one we could see from our hotel room balcony, and it is used to decorate the many tourist gifts that fill the shops.(Yes I succumbed and bought a fridge magnet and a cheese board with it on!). It divides the main town from the old Town which is the area we were interested in exploring. Here is the bridge as seen from both sides, and the deep gorge below.

From our room we could watch the constant stream of people crossing and recrossing the bridge. The first thing on the other side was this long line of shady arches, each one home to a small shop. When we opened the window on our first morning I was struck by the deep shadows cast by each of these arches.

All along the edge of the gorge there was a pathway with plenty of viewing platforms so you could stand an admire the view stretching across green plains to the distant mountains.

The main one was called Paseo Ernest Hemmingway, and then it became Paseo Orson Welles, and we liked to walk along this in the evenings before finding a restaurant for our dinner. We stopped at this parador because I liked the pergola on it. We stood on the little viewing platform and someone offered to take a photo of us together, which was much better than my shakey selfies.

A bit further along, we sat under a big tree and watched the little birds that were busy collecting bugs and seeds from the top of the grassy slopes. Chris patiently waited while I tried to get a picture of one. The mechanism on my camera makes a noise and it kept frightening them off just as I had focused on them. Eventually I did manage to get this one.

Then we sat a bit longer and watched the sun setting over the mountains.

On our first full day, armed with a good guide book that a friend lent to me, we crossed the bridge into the old town and started to explore. The roads were narrow and steep with sloping bends, and everywhere was big rounded cobble stones which made walking quite difficult.

Our first stop was at the Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation, also know as Santa Maria. It had lovely arches and balconies along the front and a renaissance belfry. At the time we only admired it from outside, but later I went back to it and did go inside, but more about that next week.

We then followed some steep roads that led down to the Iglesia Espiritu Santo. This is it taken from the ramparts nearby.

In the centre of the wall you can see the tall bell tower. From the courtyard of the church we looked up to wave at some children who had climbed up it to a small viewing platform.

Of course, I wanted to go up there too, so we climbed a very narrow winding spiral staircase, praying we wouldn't meet too many people coming the other way. And we managed to arrive at the top just as the bell struck the half hour! Had we been thirty minutes later it would have struck twelve times for mid-day and I think we might not have stayed to admire the view!

I have to say it was easier going up than coming down. I am a compulsive counter, and can nearly always tell you how many steps there were at the top of a stairway, so I know there were 65 steps up this tower. Chris managed to come down quite well, but I think I did more of a crab walk sideways down, but we made it in one piece.

I am not a huge fan of the very ornate altar pieces and icons in these ancient churches, but I have to admire the work that went into making them, and there was some very interesting art work and beautiful domed ceilings too.

We moved on to Moondragon Palace which now houses the town museum. There were some very old painted domes, and this construction showing how the first settlers would have lived.

This is just one of the beautifully carved wooden doors that we saw.

The next building was the house of Saint John Bosco, now known mainly for its gardens. They are built around the central pond with its wide tiled surround. In the centre are four giant stone frogs spouting water from their mouths.

Many of the walls were beautifully tiled, and there were beds of roses in gold and red, all in full bloom.

Again the house was perched on the egde of the gorge so the views over the back railings were lovely. There was a small strategically placed platform from where the photos of the back of the main bridge could be taken.

This man was sitting in the garden enjoying the sun, and painstakingly piecing together scraps of pottery that he said were from the neolithic age.

I think we have seen enough of Ronda for this week. Next week I will show you what we saw on our second day. But before I go I will share these pretty flowers that grew everywhere. They are I think a type of snapdragon, but they were almost as big as the antirrhinums we grow in the garden in UK. They were always pink and they sprouted from crevasses in rocks, and all along the roadside. They all seemed to be flowering together and they were so pretty.

To leave you on a lighter note, here is a meme a friend sent to me this week. It is a bit unkind to all those lovely dads out there, but it still make me chuckle. 

Now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and I'll see you next week with Ronda part 2.

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.