Lunch with the campers!

This is the 3rd year we have been invited by Rosi and Pablo to join them and their friends for Sunday lunch down by the river where they are camping. Their friends, another 3 families, come from Rosi's village of Valdealgorfa which is 15 kms from here, and set up their tents in exactly the same place around about the same time each year for a long weekend. This has nothing to do with the "credit crunch", it's just the traditional summer holiday.

Click left on any photo to see it full size.

Send me your captions for the photo above! I shall publish them at a later date if they are any good.

The children had been playing in the river but returned in good time for lunch. This time it was a paella con pollo, cerdo y caracoles, (chicken, pork and snails.) All local produce, especially the snails which had been caught the previous day.


Margaret lent a hand preparing the cucumber while the snails simmered.


This was indeed "throw another prawn on the barbi" and they were absolutely delicious along with olives, crab and pickled onions on sticks and sepia, (cuttlefish), as appetisers. Sepia is a fantastic food - no gristle, no waste, easy to cook, it tastes great, especially with a garlic and olive oil dressing, and it just melts in your mouth. It's very low fat too, (apart from the dressing!)


Now that's what I call a paella. Note the cocktail stick for getting the snails out of their shells. Delicious!

The village trip to Expo

Saturday 12th July and a coach load of us from the village set off at 7:00 am and after a coffee stop arrived in Zaragoza at the Expo around 10:00 am. After passing through security our first visit was to the Torre del Agua, Tower of Water, which dominates the skyline.

Click left on any photo to see it full size.

As the theme for Expo is "water", not only is the building shaped like a drop of water, (on it's side), but it has a large "splash" sculpture in the middle of it as seen in the photo below. As if we didn't have enough walking to do in the course of the day, we walked to the top of the building and then down again, 22 floors, which involved walking around the perimeter for each floor.


To see the inside of the Torre del Agua, play the video.

We ate our sandwiches for lunch just outside the Palacio de Congreso, which was a very large administration building.


To see Margaret with Floyd and Jordi outside the Palacio de Congreso, press "play"

A parade, headed by a large wooden serpent with dancers on it's "back", stilt walkers, etc, went past a couple of times...



Another interesting building was El Faro, the lighthouse, although it didn't have a light on the top, just a revolving sail contraption.



Inside El Faro there were many water cans and entertainment.


The whole area had been created with the theme of water in mind and of course one of the favourite features were waterfalls which where just about everywhere you looked.



The area had also been designed to give plenty of shade as you were walking around and to keep it cool, mist was being sprayed into the air.



Around mid afternoon the sky began to look threatening and we were to be in for another demonstration involving water - a torrential downpour.




If you look hard enough, you can see the rain on the floor.

Despite all the water we didn't get too wet as we stood in queues waiting to get into the presentations and the exhibits of over 100 countries who had provided a display in their separate areas. We didn't get to see all of them! Notably the UK and USA were not represented.

Each country had it's own interpretation of the "water" theme. To see Japan's, we had to join a queue for an hour in order to join a second queue for about ¾ hour to see their cartoon presentation which was projected onto 3 walls and lasted for 15 minutes. The French pavilion had a much shorter queue and offered water tasting of their various bottled waters. Malta took this opportunity to advertise the island for tourists. Oman had built a model showing water treatment and desalination plants. South Africa showed a 7 minute movie telling us how to take care of water and not waste such a precious resource. Inside the Pakistan area they concentrated on selling products made in the country from carpets, hats, jewellery and carved furniture, they seemed to have missed the point about the water theme!

If you want to find out more about Expo in Zaragoza, then click left on the heading at the top of this entry that says "The village trip to Expo" and you will then be linked to the official website.

We all met back for the coach at 22:00 and got back to the village by midnight after a thoroughly interesting day out.