Another chill out day, but I was a bit bored. I'd been on Facebook a couple of times over the past few days, mainly to post my Doubev photo and to keep up with how the Big Country Ireland gig had gone, and I got a text telling me that I'd spent £20.42 so far. Eeek!! Fortunately, my service caps their roaming charges at £42 in Europe, so I wouldn't have been able to go any higher than that, but I decided that I'd already spent enough, and would have Simon freaking out at me as it was. Which reminds me. I still need to confess that one before he gets the bill.
So, as mentioned earlier, I ended up nicking Simon's John Grisham book and sat and read that in a day. Simon and I went up for a walk to the top of the hill behind the town in the afternoon. Estepa is famed for two things, the lovely sweets and biscuits it makes which are renowned throughout the whole of Spain, called polvorones and mantecados. It's also famous for a mass suicide of 2,000 people which took place just before the Romans occupied it but we'll pass over that bit quickly though, and concentrate on the sweets!
At the top of the hill is the Church of Santa Maria and also the Convent of Santa Clara. It's a silent order of nuns and one of the things they do is make the famous sweets and biscuits. There is a door with a small opening in it where you put your money, a handle is turned, off goes your pennies and out comes the biscuits, and nobody has to say a word. I was looking forward to this particular transaction, but despite finding the convent we couldn't find the door anywhere. There was another doorway that was open onto a courtyard, so I sneaked inside and took some photos of the lovely icons on the walls - but there wasn't anyone around to ask about the biscuits, so we just had a good look around the castle and the outside of the convent.
At the top of the hill is the Church of Santa Maria and also the Convent of Santa Clara. It's a silent order of nuns and one of the things they do is make the famous sweets and biscuits. There is a door with a small opening in it where you put your money, a handle is turned, off goes your pennies and out comes the biscuits, and nobody has to say a word. I was looking forward to this particular transaction, but despite finding the convent we couldn't find the door anywhere. There was another doorway that was open onto a courtyard, so I sneaked inside and took some photos of the lovely icons on the walls - but there wasn't anyone around to ask about the biscuits, so we just had a good look around the castle and the outside of the convent.
Back at the chateau I made some pasta for tea then we helped Becky with some revision - she has her GCSE's when she gets back and had brought some of her study books with her. One of her English Language tasks is to read J B Priestley's play 'An Inspector Calls' We'd decided that a good way to encourage her would be to all take parts and read through the play with her (she hates reading). It was hilarious. We all had 2 parts, Simon was Arthur Birling, the father, and also Gerald, the chap who wanted to marry Athur's daughter. Well, just about the first half of the first act was just the 2 of them talking to each other. Simon had used different accents for each of the parts, and we were just creased up laughing as he got them muddled up. Not sure whether Becky learned anything to be honest, but it did make for a hilarious evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment