Wednesday, July 18, 2012

I'll try again with "An all nighter? At my age?......

No you are not seeing double, nor have you, nor I, gone nutty, sadly I am slightly "peed" off. I wonder if I can say that on here?  Bugger, shit and lots of other rude words too, coz I have done it now anyway!  The reason for my rude'ish outburst is that I spent a couple of days last week putting my previous blog post together called "An all nighter?  At my age?  Yes please!"  You may remember it, you may have tried to click on it, opened it and thought "Hmmm she's having a senior moment!"  WELL.........  I was checking the correct spelling of the name of the castle we visited with our friends, and copied and pasted it correctly to the blog, via notepad, that is supposed to iron out any little discrepancies.  After I had finished my 2 days of little more than 2 fingered typing, and posting photos, I "published" it, then realised I had a white highlight line across the info I had copied.  I make no aplogies for saying it again. BUM!  I had a problem with this previously, and had found an answer in the forum telling me what to do, and surprise surprise it blooming well worked!   That was until I tried to return to the "compose" as opposed to the "HTML" page.  It told me I couldn't, there was some sort of error, and it was n't having any of it.  I came off here for a while and Alan later gave me the tragic news that the whole bloody lot had gone. So, here I am again, poised as well as I can be, with two snoring giant dogs at my feet, with a fan on my neck, as it's around 40 degrees as usual, for  Cordoba in July.  I am stopping only for lunch, and a wee break if absolutely necessary.  Sorry for the rant....so here we go again!  

You know how tough it is if you have animals, you simply cannot drop everything, and spend time with friends without considering what time you will be back for feeding etc.  Our friends Mike and Linda had a guest visiting them for a few weeks, and I was so pleased they took the opportunity to leave him in charge of their menagerie, and drive up from Ronda to spend a weekend with us.  We spent the first evening doing a quick tour of our lovely little town of Montoro.  Although they had visited us many times, they had n't done the official tour.  It was a pretty quick as we had a date in the park with a large TV screen. to watch the football, and yes we had to ask for the England match to be shown.  Although they did in fact win that match, I don't think we will going into that in much more depth, except to say that isn't in great that with have such a fantastic back up team we can rely on! A very nice meal later, and we headed back home to bed.


We had planned to visit the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos, or in English the Alcazar of the Christian Monarchs in Cordoba, then during the evening visit the La Noche Blanco festival in Cordoba.  Alan and I had been before however we had not been inside the castle.  We had been to a water, light and sound show in the gardens, which was great!  I must admit I enjoyed the day very much, and the castle was very nice to walk around, although I preferred  the gardens.  It was lovely to see them during the day, with the flowers all in full bloom. It was a forty five minute drive home, so the plan was a leisurely lunch followed by a siesta before a whole night out on the tiles.  Lunch however was rather more leisurely that we anticipated, so my siesta turned out to be a 10 minute snooze, whereas Alan had only just got into bed, when we heard a 'toot toot' outside our gate.


The view from the Alcazar


The gardens






N'awwwww Mike and Linda


We were expecting our other great mates Pat and Pedro an hour later but they turned up a little earlier than expected with enough chorizo to feed half of Montoro, and some freshly baked bread from their local baker!  We had a super duper bbq with all of our bestest friends who had n't met each other previously, although I knew they would all get on like a house on fire. 

Next stop... Cordoba!  In June there is a wonderful night of flamenco in Cordoba called the La Noche Blanca Del Flamenco.  The night begins at 10.30 pm and small stages are situated around the City, all within walking distance of the Mezquita, although anyone that has visited Cordoba will know it's not a huge city anyway.  Every hour is a flamenco show, be it singing or dancing, and the plan of the night is you watch a little show, then have a drink in a bar on route to the next performance, watch another little show, have a little drink.... you get the idea!  My favourite little show involved a flamenco dancer Pilar Garcia, the drama and total immersion into the dance was just, for me as an former dancer.... phenomenal!  I could have watched her for hours! I thought we did fantastically well, and left Cordoba around 7am, Alan drove home and we all fell into bed,although not the same bed I hasten to add!  We all met up for a very late breakfast, as you can imagine later that day, then our guests all left us and went on their merry way. 

I tell you what it took me a week to get over it haha, but I can't wait to do it all again, next year!



My favourite Pilar Garcia