After school, I stopped off at the spice and tea store to get some spices that I can't find in the regular grocery store - then I met Albert to do our grocery shopping. With the holiday tomorrow, we bought more than normal, but there are a few stores open tomorrow in case we forgot anything. In fact, Costco is open tomorrow (but of course is closed on Sunday) - I will need to decide if we need anything for our visitors who start arriving next week - YIPPPEEEE.
This evening, we went for a walk downtown. A crowd was starting to gather in Plaza San Francisco where the three large crowns are. There were balloon salesmen all over the place. This boy was making the best of a bad situation with his balloon.
We went online and found an announcement that indicated that the crowns would be illuminated for the first time at 7:00pm with some accompanying music. It was already after 6:00, so we decided to walk around downtown and come back for the lighting.
The chestnut roasters were in every plaza (sometimes competing for space.)
We checked out some more decorations and stopped to listen to a group of carolers outside the Salvador church.
The church was open - lots of folks in both for tourist and for religious purposes.
It was about time to head back to the original square - it was not a trivial trip, there were people everywhere. We finally found a spot to stand pretty far back from the crowns - there were still lots of people behind us.
At a couple of minutes past 7:00pm people started passing along a message that the lighting would not happen until 9pm - not sure if it was a technical problem or just bad info. For us, it was no big deal, we are adults and hadn't really planned on seeing it until an hour before. Sadly for the hundreds of people who had made their way to this square with families, it was a bigger misfortune. But, they all seemed to take it in stride. And, the place started to clear out with lots of people deciding to try again another day. This little girl and I played peek a boo for a while; she seemed pretty happy, I am pretty sure she had no idea what she was missing with the light show delay.
We walked home, enjoying the nice walk and then had a dinner.
