Granada

We arrived in Granada ysterday, the last Sunday in September, and bugger me if the entire town didn´t turn out to welcome us!
Apparently the Virgien (a pieta of enormous size if not as beautiful as the one in St Peter´s) makes a journey from her church around the town calling in at the cathedral as a midway break. She is accompanied by Catholic knights in evening suits and white elather gloves who carry her in teams through the streets. The teams have to change very often after short distances because believe me this is one big lady. The Catholic knights are accompanied by men in medieval dress, the city council, police and emergency chiefs in full dress uniform (lots of plumes), an escort of carabiniere and a platoon of goose stepping soldiers plus thousands of citizens carrying long thin candles.Interspersed every so often were various bands of the brass and marching varieties. They all, every one of them, came up the narrow alley behind our hotel (beneath the terraced balcony outside our room). The nusic was terrific and raised the hairs on the back of the neck. I drank several beers and loudly applauded teh passing of the Virgien but particularly the gut straining effeort of the elderly men attemnpting to carry her a few metres up the alley.
Today we saw the Alhambra and it is one heck of a wonderful highlight. We managed to get there just 10 minutes before our scheduled appointment in the Palacio - and still left the barclaycard I used to buy tickets in the UK back in the hotel room - still we were allowed in on time. Afterwards we had lunch under a vine covered open air table. We asked the waiter why he was so happy in his job and he replied that "the summer was over!"
We have had a magnificent holiday and we are looking forward to meeting up with Kitten on Wednesday and perhaps seeing Firstborn on the weekend. First we have to get the train back to Seville and then on to Madrid for night train to Paris, before Eurostar to Waterloo and home.