April 17, 2010 -- Goof ups and Olive Groves

This was one goofed-up day, but pleasant nonetheless.

We had breakfast at a neighbourhood cafe where they didn't serve toast with marmalade at 10:00 am and zumo naranja (orange juice) was no longer available either. The Spanish are very inflexible in this regard. Toast is served before mid-morning and they were now preparing for their larger breakfast at 11:00.

We decided to take the car from the garage and then check out and return the keys. Unfortunately, Cordoba has so many narrow one-way and poorly marked streets that we got lost trying to go three blocks. An hour later we returned to our starting point at the cafe, double parked on the sidewalk, and Duane hiked back to the hotel. We left town and, after a couple of circuitous attempts, made it onto the highway to Granada.

We ventured in to one little town (Espejo) that looked interesting, to try to get some photos of the beautiful surrounding countryside from the hilltop. We took a couple of photos and left via a narrow one way street, which was blocked by a crowd attending a wedding; apparently all could not fit into the church. No one moved for our vehicle so we decided to wait until the wedding party came out and not try to nudge our way through the crowd, especially since there were numerous baby carriages and at least one old woman in a wheel chair in our direct path.

Probably an hour went by (it was obviously a Catholic service). We people-watched and took a couple of photos surrep- titiously as we couldn’t resist the little guy decked out in the shiny golden suit (seen here in someone's arms). Once the newlyweds appeared much rice was thrown and large confetti was blown out of some type of a gun. And we resumed our journey.

Our next stop was Alcala la Real, a town dominated by an impressive castle, at which we enjoyed beer, calamares and the usual ham and cheese sandwich. We decided to refuel and when paying Duane discovered that his Mastercard was missing. The only place he could have left it was back in the hotel in Cordoba, almost two hours away. After numerous adventures with pay phones in the bus depot and parking lots, he finally got through to the hotel and YES! they had his M/C. Back to Cordoba, where we spent another interesting hour trying to navigate to our hotel. We got close a couple of times and saw a good deal more of Cordoba than we had before.

Finally we left Cordoba once again and decided, because of the hour, not to travel through Granada as planned, but to boot it to Malaga and Frigiliana.

One thing we have learned about Spaniards is that "the good Lord is responsible for almost everything." If somebody misses a bus or a train it is not because he is tardy but because "the bus escaped me." Nobody drops anything but rather "it fell from me". You don't lose anything but rather -- "of its own volition and without my permission, it lost me." So, Duane can be forgiven, here in Spain.

We did see some beautiful country today, mostly hills covered with prime olive orchards.