Birthday!!

It was my birthday yesterday! I'm now old (but still not as old as Andy so it's fine...)

We've had a few days of bad weather, so my planned rest day on Thursday has turned into four.  Yesterday we pottered round Loja, a small town about 30-40 km west of Granada.

The map we picked up from the tourist info promised many interesting sights (24 of them to be precise). Unfortunately, all the indoor ones seemed to be closed - I guess mid-january is not prime tourist season here. We saw the Fuente de los 25 Caños (fountain of 25 spouts) though, which did exactly what it said on the tin.

There are 25 spouts - I counted!

Despite most of the official things being closed, we spent an enjoyable couple of hours exploring Loja.  It is quite a pleasant town with lots of tiny streets, and I took some pictures of pretty things we found hidden around corners.

Pretty floor

Statue of a sad lady next to the church

The general's palace (early 20th century). Also the town hall

We then stopped for lunch at a cafe-bar on one of the main streets.  The restaurant played an eclectic music selection, consisting of croony love songs interspersed with the Sex Pistols, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, etc.

Olives and smoked salmon make a happy Ali

After a long, lazy lunch we headed out of town and relaxed in the van for a while.  The bad weather rolled in again and the wind picked up, causing the van to rock occasionally in a slightly disconcerting way. Andy took my mind off it by preparing a light dinner of my favourite things - cured meat, cured fish and cheese, with a glass of Old Peculier on the side. Combined with the smoked salmon and olives I had for lunch, this means I managed to eat pretty much all my favourite things in one day.

Board of happiness!

In place of a birthday cake we tried some Roscos, ring-shaped cakes that are apparently a local delicacy. I found them a little very for my taste, but they were liberally coated in sugar and cinnamon, which is all good...

Roscos!!

This morning the weather turned properly horrible near Loja - high winds, rain lashing down and temperatures of 3 degrees!  The joy of living in a van though is that, after a quick check of the weather forecast for the surrounding area, we packed up our breakfast things and rolled further west and south to Valle de Abdajais, where it's several degrees warmer. The pedantic amongst you might point out that if we lived in proper house we wouldn't need to move it because we could just turn up the heating, but that would be missing the point...!