The rain in Spain falls mainly in Andalucia

Having essentially fallen asleep due to the sheer necessity of not wanting to throw up anymore (this is a lovely way to start a post isn't it...), I awoke as we finally arrived in the twisty, turny streets of Ronda.  Pip had been wanting to come here for years, and we were all hoping it would live up to expectations!

Having ensconsed ourselves in our hotel, we went out exploring all the incredible vistas that Ronda is known for.  It's perched high up in the hills with a series of fantastic bridges over a deep ravine, and despite the mist and blustery winds, we managed to get a great sense of the town.  Sadly my stomach wasn't up to eating much, but we tried our first tapas and everyone got stuck into the ham that had been sadly missing in Morocco!

From Ronda we drove down the coast to Cadiz which is on the south-western coast.  It had a wonderfully eerie cathedral and we walked all around the coastline and out onto the piers to see the waves throthing about.  The boys went out for 'one drink' and we saw them about 3am - and finally someone else felt as bad as I had been feeling!

And then it was the turn of Seville.  We did lots of walking around, seeing the cathedral, the Plaza de Espana, the bullfighting ring, and on the last day, the 'Feria de Abril'.  This is essentially a week-long excuse for the people of Seville to dress up in flamenco outfits and spend all night partying and dancing!  Families have their own tents which they've kept for generations, and there are also big groups of people with tents (and the public tents for the plebian likes of us).  There was also a big fun-fair, where of course we managed to try out a few rides - just for quality control purposes obviously.

It was quite an odd experience to be there when it was so wet (the torrents of rain in Seville were unbelievable), and then also personally not to be able to eat anything was a bit of shame (particularly when the others were eating giant skewers of seafood and meat, and all this delicious tapas and sangria), but in the end the enforced starvation killed off the bug which was such a relief.  Since Kazakhstan I seem to have the dodgiest tummy - no more boasting about having an iron stomach that's for sure!

Anyway, here are the photos of Spain - see if you can count some where it's not raining!