Granada gets in the festival spirit.

This week is the main festival week here in Granada, it was the religious festival of Corpus Christi during the week and the people of Granada decided to take this day and build their whole festival week around it.  This means that there are things going on in town all week and there is a festival site set up on the edge of town.  I've not been over there but I imagine it is very much like the one I saw in Seville, lots of tents, people dancing, dressed in traditional clothing and I'm pretty sure there is also a fair ground.

On Wednesday I went and saw the first of two parades, this one was called La Tarasca and was all about this lady and her dragon:

It was aimed at kids so there were lots of people dressed up with big heads and there was even a pirate ship, although I'm not sure quite what purpose that served!

The main Corpus Christi parade was on Thursday, in typical Spanish style it started a fair bit later than it was meant to but that give me a chance to have a wander round and see what else was going on.  On Plaza Bib Rambla there were a collection of cartoon pictures that were generally all about Granada and things that had happened in the year.  My favourite one was a picture of a lady slipping over on the pavements down one of the main streets, we've said before that we'd hate to walk down them in the rain!

Eventually the parade got under-way, it started with parts of the parade from the previous day along with a group of women dressed in traditional flamenco clothing and playing castanets.  There was also a small group of men that were playing guitars and some horses.

These were then followed by what seemed like hundreds of people carrying candles.  I presume they were representatives from each of the churches as there were so many of them.  Eventually I got a little bored of this and decided to walk the route in reverse in the hopes of either finding the end of the parade or something else happening.  This was a good move as I came across groups of people in all sorts of different uniforms representing the military and the police etc followed by the main float at the end.

At the end there was also a band playing, I can't even begin to imagine playing in that heat, especially the guys that passed me that were playing tubas and baritone saxes, they're enough effort to play when walking without the 32 degree heat! 

Other than that I haven't been up to anything blog worthy recently, it's just been exams and revision.  Got a friend arriving tomorrow until Friday so I'll be doing the touristy things again, got our Alhambra tickets booked and I'm glad to go again because it seems I missed a part where you climb a tower and get a really good view of the city, how I missed that I'll never know!  Also got a trip to the beach planned, got to try and top up the tan (or get one....) before I leave in less than 2 weeks!