(written 28/3/06, in Santa Margherita Lígure, Italia, by
Liz)
The rest of our afternoon was spent driving. We were on a quiet back-road (although maybe it is not usually so quiet, as we saw more police on this road then we have in the whole of Spain), and there were olive orchards all around and little Jamons running around in the orchards. It's nice at least that they live outside, rather than being cooped up in some horrible dark little pig-sty.
The weather had cleared up a little, but there was a huge black cloud looming on the horizon as we drove.
Our destination was a town called Mérida, once the biggest city in Roman Spain, and now famous for it's large number of Roman ruins.
We found our way to the middle of town, and then went on a hunt for somewhere to stay the night.
To cut a long story short, we trudged around for quite a while, being told at every place we found that they had no rooms left. It was a Saturday night, but we haven't been anywhere this busy yet, and we couldn't work out why this little town was so popular.
In the end, we got the last room at a
nice enough hotel, not right in the center of town, but only about ten minutes walk away. It turned out that there was a medieval festival in the town that weekend, and that's why all the accomodation was full. We are still trying to work out why a town, famous for its Roman ruins, was having a Medieval festival.
As a bonus, our hotel had it's own parking, so we moved our car there, and then walked down towards the festival.
Mostly lots of things being roasted on spits and children running around with little wooden swords while parents stood around chatting. We stopped and had a drink and a couple of tapas in a bar, before moving up the road for dinner at a great little Italian restaurant. For the first time, we were eating dinner with loads of locals - it was 11pm!! My belly usually can't wait that long :)
Bed soon followed, with us appreciating a proper bed after our previous couple of nights of camping.