Downtown Granada… thousands of people getting the old city prepped for business. Shops and restaurants and courtyards, windows open onto cafes, or flower shops, or sewing circles, or union organizing halls, or a dark room where an old woman sits alone. David finally calls on the cell phone, now that it’s been discovered that Jan was not in either of the other cars. Through the old square, a garden with a circle of music in the central bandstand, Jan is piloted, by the large cross beside the white, gold and red-domed cathedral, down the cobbled boulevard where carriages and horses wait for tourists to tour, to the patio where the rest of the group waits.
We have an American style breakfast, which always creates anxiety over eggs. The consensus is that eggs are eggs; eggs just out of the shell and fried are as good as you can get. Salads are mostly met with skepticism, but most mysterious is fish. Vince: “If you ask a missionary if it’s safe to eat the fish, they’ll raise their eyebrows in mild alarm, and answer ‘you can try…’”
The second half of the day’s run involves a short (25 kilometre) ride into Mesaya. David, when asked, says that it is all downhill. After the grueling climb under the relentless sun, we are led to understand that he meant “downhill, but not in your direction.” Multiple side trips caused by misinterpretations of the complex “left,” “roundabout with the chicken place,” and the always present miasma of downtown anywhere, and we arrived at today’s stop.