Turks and Christians

What an interesting day it has been despite the cloud with occasional heavy downpours.

We walked down to Solar to go to the market as I was cooking. Then we went to the station where there is a Picasso ceramic exhibition and another room with Miro paintings. We went into a covered market as some bagpipes and drums were playing.

We just managed to eat our lunch outside when the rain started. I used the rainy time to prepare my meal, a stew of local sausage, chorizo, aubergine, pepper, tomatoes and chickpeas, flavoured with paprika.

Luckily it cleared up a bit for our next walk down to town for a surprise treat - Roger and Carol wouldn’t say much about it apart from it being a procession of the townspeople to take the effigy of a protective saint to church at the start of the the festival of Moors and Christians, commemorating the victory of the sollerics, over the Turkish corsairs on May 11, 1561.

It was a wonderful experience. Jolly families all dressed up, carrying flowers, led by a bagpipe band. It took ages for them to pass by and enter the church. Those nearer the end got caught in a downpour. We had our raincoats and by the time we got back up to the house the rain had stopped so our hosts took us on a tour of their orange and lemon groves, the cactus garden, palm garden and other fruit trees.

We had a lovely evening eating and chatting and making weather-dependant plans.

I couldn’t decide on a blip so there’s a selection. The little girl on the bottom right is sticking out her tongue to catch the first raindrops - it’s been a long time coming to Mallorca.