Saturday morning, I met with Stephen and Kerry at the hotel Balcon de Europa to get to know them and take them through their wedding blessing ceremony I'm celebrating with them tomorrow. Their daughter Lauren, same age as my granddaughter Rhiannon, was with them, she'll be reading prayers in the service. She goes to a church primary school in Cheshire where they live, just like Rhiannon. Then, Clare and I met up and walked around town for a while, then had a tapas lunch before going back for siesta. The rest of the day was spent in lethargy, as the heat and humidity defeated us.
No early morning drive for a service at Almunecar this morning, as there's just one service in Nerja for the reduced numbers during August, when many Brits return to cooler climes. There were two dozen of us at the midday Eucharist, half the usual numbers, and that included visitors. After the service a handful of us had a drink and tapas together at the bar-restaurant across the road from San Miguel parish church. My first sardinas a la plancha of my visit, cooked with way too much salt for comfort. My palate is far from being fully attuned to Spanish taste.
Home for a past lunch, then a walk down to the the Parish church of San Salvador on the Balcon de Europa for Stephen and Kerry's wedding blessing at five. It's the first service of this kind I've done since I was here two years ago, and I was just a bit nervous, but it all went well, as intended. Clare and I met up afterwards and went to the nearby Nerja Museum, established in new premises at the top corner of the Plaza Espana, a new town centre development with apartments and hotels at first floor level and a succession of bricked up empty retail spaces at ground level. A stalled development project, by all accounts.
Despite this region being so rich in history and culture, the museum, thus far hardly reflects this. There are plenty of fine paleolithic artefacts, taken from the nearby cuevas de Nerja, which we visited when we were here two years ago, but insufficient artefacts from other eras to reflect, its Roman, Visigothic, Moorish, reconquista, or sugar cane industrial past. It's odd, and probably there are political reasons for such a lightweight representation of 20,000 years. A nice building, with good access facilities, but much space underused. I'd venture the museum is also a stalled development project.
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