Carnaval Post Script

Well, Carnaval came and went, rather wetly in the end in Canarias where the rain came down once again. Andalucía suffered floods in Jerez as well, closing the airport there and causing general chaos in an area that has suffered more from drought than flooding in the last 20 years or so. Today I read that in the UK Birmingham airport is closed because of snow. If the odd weather patterns continue in this way, pretty soon air travel will grind to a halt. I’m not sure that any other means of travel will be much better, however.

Here we had rain on Wednesday evening as well but it didn’t stop the fireworks in Cangas which we could just see from our window, standing on tiptoe and peering over the block of flats to our left.

I did not watch any sardines being buried in Vigo but I did discover that Goya had painted a small picture called El Entierro de la Sardina, sometime between 1812 and 1819, as part of a series on costumbres españolas.

By Thursday morning the decorations and lights were being removed from the centre of Vigo and things were getting back to normal.

Our internet connection continues to be mega-slow so this morning I bit the bullet and phoned Orange, our internet provider. As usual I had to go through the routine of if you want option A, press 1, if you want option B, press 2 until finally I was put in a queue to speak to a real person. “Mantenga la espera. En breve le atenderemos,” I heard at least 5 or 6 times before María or Charo or whatever her name was finally informed me that we have used up our official quota for this month. Consequently for what remains of February our connection will be slow and if we want to download anything or add files or photos to emails it will be virtually impossible. ¡Vaya fastidia! How did we manage to use up so much in just over two weeks?

I was tempted to try to barter. We didn’t use any gigabytes in December as we were in the UK and, having had to pay over the odds on the occasion when we accidentally used our mobile connection in Portugal, we left the dispositivo out of harm’s way in our flat in Vigo. Couldn’t we use our December allowance to counterbalance our February excesses? Unfortunately the system doesn’t work like that. Internet works in the present only!

So here I am posting this blog in a WIFI café and adding a selection of pictures that didn’t get posted earlier in the week. Here we have Minnie Mouse and even Minnier Mouse on the way to the Carnaval parade.





The mobile jazz band,

a whole boatload of pirates




and lots of Bob Esponja lookalikes.



Double trouble on the bouncing castle.


A member of the Carnaval Royal family, her friend the dragon and a couple of Carnaval “queens”.









And finally a bevy of Galician beauties/crossdressers singing Dirty Old Town in gallego.