Sight seeing. Moving house. Magpies.

 Yesterday after a bit of post-lunch snooze we went sightseeing. In the Plaza Santa Ana we admired a fine building at the far end of the square, which turned out to be Casas Consistoriales - more or less council offices.

There were some splendid dog statues for some reason.

And of course there was the  Santa Ana cathedral, less spectacularly beautiful than some cathedrals we have seen. 

We also saw the supposed Casa de Colón, the house where Columbus is supposed to have stayed on his way to the Americas.

Today we had to pack up and leave our temporary accommodation and move house again. A friend had booked accommodation for a group of us in the Triana district of las Palmas. The booking didn’t quite coincide with our flights from the UK and so we have been like wandering gypsies, spending Wednesday night in one place and Thursday night in another. Today finally we have been able to unpack our suitcases as we’ll be here for about 10 days! 

So this morning we went out for breakfast in a funny little bread-shop cum cafe not far from where we spent the night. Later we set off for this new accommodation, stopping en route to look again at places we saw last night. We considered looking inside the cathedral and inside the Columbus museum but the queues were rather daunting. That will be for another day.

Here’s something quite unrelated to our adventures. On social media someone asked what the collective noun for magpies. Why do people ask questions that you can look up cor yourself. In comments people declared their ignorance but offered magpie folklore:

“One is for sorrow, two is for joy, three is for a girl, four is for a boy, five is for silver, six is for gold, seven is for a secret never to be told” 

 8s a wish, 9s a kiss, 10s a bird u must not miss 

And here is a long version by Anyone John Finnemore:

One for sorrow

Two for joy

Three for a girl

Four for a boy

Five for silver

Six for gold

Seven for a secret

never to be told

Eight for a wish

Nine for a kiss

Ten for a chance

you must not miss

Eleven for a wasp

Twelve for a bee

Thirteen for a coffee

Fourteen for tea

Fifteen for a pencil

Sixteen for a pen

Seventeen to hear

these options once again

Eighteen for pepper

Nineteen for salt

Twenty for an accident

in which you were not at fault

Twenty one for Jerry

Twenty two for Tom

Twenty three - where are all these

magpies coming from?

Twenty five no seriously

Thirty this is weird

Forty eight from where have all these

magpies suddenly appeared?

Sixty two stop counting

Seventy just run

Ninety nine the revolution

of the magipies has begun

Two hundred no more sorrow

Five hundred no more fears

One thousand for how long

the empire of the magpies will last

in years

That’s enough of that. A group of magpies, by the way, can be called a "conventicle," "tiding," "gulp," "mischief," or "congregation."

And a group of moles is called a “labour”

Hey ho.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!