It was a beautiful sunny day, and without classes I had lots of time to explore. So, after my morning Spanish practice, I headed toward downtown. There were lots of people out and about.
There is a four day market set up in the Alcazar (moorish palace) where all of the convents sell their sweets. Our landlord suggested we take a look. Lots of locals buy Christmas gifts there. Right outside of the market space was a map showing where in the city each of the convents is located. I didn't buy anything, but some people had baskets full. There was an amazing variety of cakes, cookies, candies, jellies, ....something for every sweet tooth.
After checking out the convent market, I made my way up to the park across from one of the large bus plazas. The winter festival there is not quite set up, but people were taking advantage of the things that were open. There were some snack shacks and kids rides and the Ferris wheel and the small children's ice rink open today.
And, they were hard at work trying to get the large ice rink and the ice slide and the ice go cart area ready. Seems like kind of a strange attraction when it is more than 70 degrees out. I can't imagine how much energy it takes to keep it all frozen until the first week in January....
Then, I wandered through the city center. I liked this guy trying to get his own map to line up with the decorative map painted on a building.
There are small stall markets set up all over the place.
And activities, like this challenge course for kids on segways.
And decorations in lots of store windows.
After a couple of hours of walking, the sun was going down, so I headed back over the bridge.
After dinner and some more Spanish, we went out for a very short walk and looked at some of the lights in our neighborhood. The river was glassy enough to act like a mirror for the bridge.
Tomorrow morning the painters are supposed to come and of course I am back to school for one day and we will do shopping to get us through the weekend with everything closed Saturday (for Immaculate Conception) and Sunday (because things are closed every Sunday).
