14th February 2017. Seville, Spain.

We wandered into Seville today but tried very hard not to look at all the beautiful buildings as we made our way to the area we will be staying in for the next couple of days, although we did stumble across the Plaza de Espana which looked fantastic.  There was a man blowing bubbles and the children were having great fun chasing after them, I even saw a teenager have a sneaky bubble chasing moment when she thought no one was looking!   We also spent some time watching a flamenco dancer busking, she was very good.

While we were wandering round the streets Darren remembered that we would need a hand luggage bag to take on the airplane so we popped into the China store and bought a very cheap one seeing as we already have plenty at home.  He soon discovered why it was so cheap, it might have been small but with the wheels attached to it it was very heavy, the handle was also extremely short even for me so every so often as Darren was holding it by his finger tips it would hit a groove in the road and go crashing to the ground.  We almost became a source of entertainment at one point.  We were walking up to a crossing at the traffic lights and noticed that the little man was still green and we had 20 seconds on the countdown, unfortunately it was a wide road so we had to run across.  There was a row of 4 motorcycles right at the front of the queue waiting for the lights to turn green and as I started to run I stumbled and just regained my footing before I fell splat in the road in front of them then as we almost reached the other curb Darren suddenly lost his grip on the handle of the bag and it crashed to the ground.  He quickly bent to pick it up and hopped on to the pavement just as the first car came round the corner!  How great it must be to look suave and sophisticated when crossing the road, not like a couple of pillocks.

I promised my friend Janet that we would save the sightseeing until she and her husband arrived tomorrow so we carried on walking towards the area that we’ll be staying in tomorrow night.  We found the teeny street where our hotel is situated, it looks nice, then we found the hotel our friends are going to be staying in which looks very posh.  As we walked up towards their hotel we passed a restaurant and the menu caught my eye, it had vegetarian AND vegan options on it!  Needless to say we popped in on the way back.

The food was gorgeous, it was very difficult to chose what to have because everything sounded lovely and usually I don’t have any choice.  When the food arrived it not only tasted wonderful but it looked wonderful too.

The journey back to our van was tricky, there were SO many sites to see but we tried valiantly to keep our eyes fixed firmly to the ground (except when we spied a parakeet sitting on a metal galleon which was fixed high up between two columns, that was calling out to be photographed!).

I find it hard to comprehend what happened this evening.  We had a message from my Mum in South Africa telling us that she’d phoned my Dad’s care home and as she’d been speaking to Jan the receptionist a message came in and Jan told her that it said the date for my Dad’s funeral had been changed!  This is the second time it’s been changed only this time we’d bought the plane tickets home, booked an hotel, booked parking for the van and our son had booked the day off work!  When we spoke to my step mother it seems she had no recollection of us telling her we were coming and insists that it’s not worth us coming over for the half hour service,  she wants us to have a memorial service when our family all arrive in the UK in May .  As a consequence her children assuming their mother would have to go through the day of the funeral all along changed the date of the funeral so that they could be there to support their mother.  I’m in a bit of a daze at the moment but we’ve decided that we’re still going home, we’ll spend the time visiting Darren’s family and spend some time with my step mum Sylv instead.

On a happier note our friends Janet and Paul are arriving tomorrow, I’m not sure I fancy their 5 a.m. start though!