Return to baseline

With the Christmas holiday behind us and no visitors in the flat this week, there's a real sense of returning to normal. Rachel is in Malaga this week attending a conference. She'll be back here on Saturday for a day and a half, then we both fly to the US. Rachel will return to Miami and her fourth semester of graduate school. I'll go to a conference in Baltimore.

For some reason I was unusually cold this morning. I tried a number of different space heater configurations, but my office in the back room of the kitchen was just too drafty. Laura suggested that I move my office back into the guest room since Rachel will only be using it briefly on her transition from Spain to the US. The heater in the guest room is effective for that space and there are no drafts. I agreed and we moved all of my stuff back to the guest room:

It's almost like I never was gone. It was a vast improvement in warmth too.

***

Laura's trying an afternoon Spanish class this week which is yet another return to the past. For most of the first few months of our time here, she was in the 4-7:30pm time slot. This time around it's to a more advanced class. She's just trying it out to see if she can manage it.

***

The streets are a bit less sticky today. No rain in the forecast.

A parting of the ways

We passed a quiet morning at the hotel in El Chorro. It was breezy and chilly, so we didn't venture outside much. I did grab this photo of the back side of the hotel with the mountain face looming. It was a quirky hotel, but beautiful:

Rachel's train didn't leave until around 4pm. Ours, not until 5pm. We checked out at around 11:30am, but the hotel kindly held our bags while we went on a hike towards the mountain shown in the first photo. The trail was a bit steep and challenging, which made us grateful for the cool weather. The lower slopes were arid pine forest:

I went off trail at one point and found this beautiful flower in bloom. It's January, so we're definitely not in Walla Walla anymore:

As we approached the face of the mountain, we began to see numerous climbers on its face. My phone isn't sharp enough to show them, but there were a couple dozen folks up there at various heights. Not long after we noticed the climbers, we started seeing folks lower down hiking to the mountain and a number of cars parked along the track that also likely carried climbers:

After our hike, we returned to the hotel restaurant and enjoyed a long, slow lunch as we waited for Rachel's train. We even had dessert:

Eventually the parting of the ways arrived. The train station was a stone's throw from the hotel and restaurant. We headed out to the station and Rachel took the southbound train to Malaga for her conference:

After Rachel departed, Laura and I hung out in the lobby and read for a while until our northbound train came to take us back to Sevilla. I managed to snap this shot of the Caminito del Rey from the train window as we left El Chorro:

Because of railway construction, there's a 10 mile stretch of tracks that are out of service on the way back to Sevilla. About halfway through our trip, we had to get off the train and get onto pre-staged buses that drove the entire train contingent around the gap in the tracks to another rail station. A train met us there and took us the rest of the way to Sevilla. Here's a shot of the station in Osuna, Spain where we got back onto the northbound train. An abandoned engine:

An abandoned rail station:

Switch controls at the new train station. We watched an engineer throw the switch so that the train arriving from Sevilla could switch tracks over to the northbound tracks. When it arrived, all of the passengers got off and took the same buses we just used to go south around the gap in the tracks and continue their journeys south to Malaga:

We finally made it to Sevilla and walked home from the Metro station along streets that had yet another sticky, sugary layer of crushed and dissolved candy from the Triana parade that occurred yesterday. Yes, another parade with people throwing buckets of candy into the streets. The city parade being insufficient, the Triana neighborhood has to have its own parade the next day. 

I wonder how long the streets will be sticky. There's no rain in sight on the weather forecast.

Caminito del Rey

Somewhat fitting, but totally unrelated to the three kings day, today Rachel, Laura and I traveled to El Chorro, Spain:

To walk the Caminito del Rey, at times known as "the world's most dangerous walkway", though now it is a perfectly safe cliff hike in a Spanish National Park. This walkway is bolted to the side of a canyon that contains a number of hydroelectric projects for southern Spain. It's both a tourist attraction and a service corridor for the dam projects.

We caught the train out of Sevilla this morning, made it to El Chorro by around 10:30am, checked into the hotel and then caught the shuttle bus to the top of the trailhead. We met our guide and walked the 8km trail back down to the hotel.

Hardhats were required. Mostly to protect from falling rocks from above:

Much of the walkway was like this--bolted onto the sides of the canyon:

A look up the canyon:

An old bridge across the river from one side of the canyon to the other:

Our tour guide, Estella, spoke alternately in Spanish and English:

She was a good Spanish language listening exercise for us.

The sky was deep blue. There's an abandoned building along the way:

Another look up the canyon:

On the right, other visitors on the walkway. On the left, a railroad bridge:

We actually crossed the railroad bridge on our way to El Chorro on the train.

Here we see the new walkway above the original service walkway:

The last canyon opened out onto a reservoir. The town and our hotel are on this reservoir. To get there, we had to cross that bridge:

Here's another view of the new walkway above the old one:

Here's the walkway bridge across the canyon at the end of the hike:

Some video of the three of us trekking across the suspension bridge:



Here's Rachel taking pictures back towards the canyon from the reservoir:

Here's the special Christmas Cruzcampo beer I had at dinner:

Cabalgata de los Reyes Magos

The big parade celebrating the three kings wound its way around Sevilla today for 6 hours. According to accounts on the web, around 90 tons of candy will be tossed from over 30 floats. The cavalcade went down our main street, and they were not lying about the candy. Buildings and balconies in our neighborhood were decorated with balloons for the occasion:

Crowds started building along the route:

Even on the bridge:

Here's a panorama of the part of the crowd we were in:

They approached from the bridge:

The black-faced Bedouins distributed candy:

I have videos of people tossing massive amounts of candy from floats, but it's still uploading. EDIT: Here's the video:


Marching bands played popular songs that really got the crowds going:



Standing under the shower of candy was like being in a hailstorm--a bit nerve-wracking. There was so much candy, it just lay unclaimed at our feet:

And crushed by the tires of the passing floats:

Bringing up the rear of the cavalcade were the street sweepers doing their best to clean up all that sticky candy. I can't imagine what this would be like if it rained:

EDIT: Here's the video of the street sweepers bringing up the rear:



Here's Rachel's haul. Halloween in January:

Then, to add to the booty, Palma and Mario dropped off a traditional pastry:

It's a cream filled ring. Somewhere in the ring is a small toy and somewhere else is a bean. If you get the toy in your slice, it's good luck. If you get the bean, maybe not so good. Rachel's piece had the toy. No one got the bean yet:

There was also a paper crown in the pastry:

They do love their processions, parades and cavalcades here. It's fun to be a part of it.

El Heraldo Real

The build up for the Epiphany on Jan 6th continues. Today we visited a parade near the Cathedral that heralds the coming of the three kings. In this event, the kings receive the keys to the city of Sevilla--presumably so they can deliver presents to all the good children. As children send letters to Santa Claus in the US, children here write letters to the kings. Children along the parade route today dropped their wish lists into a receptacle carried along in the parade:

Along with the usual marching bands:

People on horses tossed candy to the crowds. I gave what I managed to catch to kids around me in the crowd, but I kept one for documentary purposes (it was pretty good too):

If you have a sharp eye, you'll see a large number of Balthazar's bedouins wearing black face again:



After the parade, street sweepers followed--picking up unclaimed candy I suppose: