Saturday, April 18, 2015

A Great Day to Roam the Mean Streets of Murcia


Saturday, 18 April, 2015:

We awoke to a splendid day in the South of Spain, so we opted to take a walk in La Ciudad.

 A Café con Leche and a Cortado
to start the day

Always the right choice to start your morning!

Murcia is sorely in need of
a Festiva SOON!

My two Homies

The Museum of the Day

This is the Museum that we planned on seeing last Thursday until we got sidetracked touring the Real Casino de Murcia.

The building was completed in 1628 and was known as the Pósito de Trigo. It was originally a public building designed for grain storage from tithes. 

When we arrived today, it was still closed and would not open for another 35 minutes.

What to do?

 El Mercado de las Veronicas

It was just a block away and offered the perfect setting in which to kill a half hour.

The Veronicas Wall

Located adjacent to El Mercado, this is a section of the defensive line of the Hispano-Muslim city built in the 12th century. It has two distinct defensive lines, the Cobras don't by the way. There is the towered wall in the background and the shorter fore-wall.

Calabacin!!!

One of the key ingredients in one of our favorite Murcian dishes, Zarangollo.

Chirimoya

We bought two.

 Heart Shaped Tater

 Radishes

 Red Pepper Display

Red Pepper by the box load

 Cornucopia of Beans

 Sobrasada

I'm not exactly sure what part of what animal this local delicacy comes from but I LOVE IT!!!

The shrimp looked good today

Team Beer

 The doors are open

El Mercado de las Veronicas had weaved its magic through our digestive souls long enough to allow the Museum to finally open for the day.

Photography Exhibit

The entire ground floor housed an exhibit of the phenomenal work of Murcian born, Madrid based photographer Chema Conesa.

Lots of open space for the photo art

 Conesa has interesting ideas

We spent a lot of time browsing through his thought provoking portraits of mostly famous members of the Spanish cinema, art and political worlds.

 Taking the staircase to another exhibit

 The abstract work of painter
Miguel Fructuoso

A 1964 Ford Mustang convertible?

The abstract art was not too much to our liking so we headed back downstairs and who should we run into . . .

. . . none other than
Chema Conesa himself!

 He was leading this group

Laurie and I just tagged along for about 30 minutes listening to his fascinating descriptions of each photo including how he came up with the ideas for each and the problems/helping hand that each local gave both him and his subjects.

What timing!

Debriefing at Los Zagales

It was lunch time after all.

 Paparajotes!

The perfect Murcian dessert. 

The two small vino dulces were digestives thrown in gratis by our hard working waitress as part of Los Zagales' Frequent Diner Program, I think.

Another ferret selling store

OK, OK, it a ferreteria is actually a hardware store.

The Cathedral Tower looked splendid

Real Murcia is in Second Place

The turmoil with the team's ownership is still an ongoing issue. After 33 games they trail Real Oviedo in points 73-62.

A spitting sardine today

They have it all!

Last Regular Season Road Trip

Tonight at midnight the 4-3, second place Cobras will be on a recliner bus to start the journey to Barcelona for Sunday's 11:00 a.m. game against the 2-5, tied for fourth place Búfals.

As you can see from the map above, all four road trips for the Cobras have involved massive driving.

Barcelona is a mere 730 miles round-trip bus ride from Murcia.

On the Serie B team map you see above, Barcelona is the team logo on the far right.

The Reus Imperials are second from the right, checking in at 610 miles round-trip.

Farther left are the Zaragoza Hornets, a round-trip journey of 680 miles and, finally, to the far left are the Santurtzi Coyotes. The Coyotes are located in a suburb of beautiful Bilbao only 1,000 miles round-trip from Murcia in the far South.

I'm hoping that the Búfals are
NOT wearing these horns on Sunday

The news from España may travel a bit slowly the next few days as we are going to stay behind in Barcelona after the game for a few nights before taking the train home to Murcia on Tuesday afternoon.


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