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From the rock of Gibraltar vantage, the British could gun plunk passing ships and therefore had control of the narrow straight and ship passage. Very strategic. Next we noticed that all the rock and roof tops were terrace-sculpted to catch rain water where it was then channelled into cisterns. This was because the Spanish sometimes turned off the water and electricity when they got especially piqued, about the foreign rock squatters. I bought a Calabash pipe because it was cheap and how could a pipe smoker resist a Sherlock Holmes Calabash. Had to smuggle it back into Spain, so as not to pay a large import tax. Allison may have taken it through customs in her purse.
We went to Cadiz and then we stopped a few days in Seville, for the week-long spring fiesta, called "La Feria de Sevilla". We found that most if not all large towns and cities in Spain had week-long fiestas at some point in the summer, in celebration of some Saint or other, or so we were told. This was an early one. Seemed to us it was a week long excuse to get drunk. Everybody drank red wine, and we were treated to lots of glasses by drunken old men, if we visited any place that served it. Since we could not communicate by language, there were a lot of looks and gestures, and we at least were not always sure what it all meant, or if it was all that innocent. The costumes, parades and pageantry were a lot of fun with bright colored ankle length dresses worn by some of the woman, tight at the top down to the knees, with particularly prominent derrière, and then flaring out in pleats from knee to ankle.
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