This morning we headed into Almeria’s medina (the old town) to visit the Alcazaba – the 10th century fortress who’s remains look down over the beautifully non-dolled-up-for-tourists medina. It’s rare for us to leave Harley in the van for a few hours and even rarer for us to be prepared to pay for admission into the ruins of anything BUT this one looked particularly interesting and the entrance fee was only a couple of euro each so we thought we’d make the effort. Harley was quite happy to sleep off his breakfast and morning mooch so, off we set down the Paseo Maritime (the promenade), through the market stalls which had set up en route – mainly selling “Nike” trainers and “designer” handbags (!) so we resisted the temptation to purchase anything -and into the town centre. By this stage it was almost noon but the usual market traders on La Rambla appeared to be only just getting their act together – one can only assume the festivities of the previous evening, which involved a parade of The Three Kings through the town centre followed by a fireworks display, had continued on into the early hours hence the late opening! Apparently, tradition requires the said Three Kings to throw sweets for the children and, judging by the volume of sweet wrappers discarded on the ground, this certainly still seems to be the case! We mused on the fact that this probably wouldn’t be allowed back home – Health and Safety would, for sure, have put a stop to it as they did with the centuries old “bun-throwing” tradition in Abingdon – apparently it’s “too dangerous and someone could get hurt”. Uuuugh!

Anyhow, on we walked, following the thoughtfully placed tourist signposts and, having meandered through La Rambla and the medina, we arrived up at The Alcazaba to find it closed on account of it being a public holiday, despite it advertising that it opens on “festival days”! Grrr. Hence, we only have a couple of pics of the fortress itself from the outside! We walked on back through the medina and headed back to the seafront where we amused ourselves with a couple of lunchtime beers and tapas and indulged in a bit of people watching -this was a totally different type of people watching to what we’d done in Benidorm and that’s for sure! Not an English voice to be heard, apart from ours! Prize for the “most overdressed person of the day” had to go to the lady wearing a full length fur coat – it was 21C with pretty much full sun for most of the day!

Harley was delighted to see us on our return to Sebo and we treated him to a run on the beach and a bit of stick-throwing as a reward for guarding (and not eating!) the van, so he was a happy pup!

I noticed a sign had been put-up at the entrance to our car park – basically banning all parking on a Saturday between the hours of 6am and 7pm due to it being the location of the weekly market. There’s several motorhomes parked-up here at the moment – some whose occupants seem to have abandoned them temporarily- so this should be fun if they try to move everyone off! We’ll go to sleep and see what happens…..