| Glenn's Alhaurin El Grande Journals 6-08-02 Saturday morning and we are heading to Malaga, actually Alhaurin El Grande, to meet and stay with George Thompson for a few days. Well, you ask, who is George Thompson and why are we stopping in Alhaurin El Grande??? Less than 2 weeks ago I received an email from my mom who mentioned that she had located a distant cousin (6th generation once removed) of ours that lived in Alhaurin El Grande in the south of Spain. Since we were near there, and if we were interested, we could email him to see if he would welcome a relative for a visit. I emailed George over the previous 2 weeks and he welcomed us with open arms so we took him up on his offer. Both George and my mom have been working on the genealogy information with George having over 13000 names in his data base. George was dropping some other folks off in Malaga on Saturday around 1:00 pm and could meet us there if we could arrange it. We found a train that left Sevilla at 11:05 am and arrived in Malaga at 1:30 pm and we hoped that would work (We had emailed back and forth over the few days prior to work the timing out). Sure enough we showed up around 1:30 pm and met George at the train information booth. He didn't even need the sign he made with our names on it. George had arrived in Malaga a little early but that provided him enough time to do his monthly grocery shopping before meeting us. We then rode with George out to his place in Alhaurin El Grande which was about a 30 minute drive from Malaga. George has a wonderful 4 bedroom home which he cleaned up just for us. George made us feel at home in every way. It was really nice after almost 3 months on the road to feel at home with a kitchen (not eating out every meal), living room (with a couch and English television), and even a balcony to enjoy. The afternoon was spent having lunch, which George prepared and then walking around town for a little while. Let me go back to lunch for a moment as George is from Ireland and has lived in Spain for the past 3 years. Lunch was sandwhiches which we all enjoyed but you always have to try something new on occasion. George liked his sandwiches with wiches with jam and ate almost all of his breads with jam. So we had sandwiches with margarine, strawberry jam, cheese, ham, and salami. The sandwiches were very good and we had them every day we were there. George also had green guage which we also tried but did not have on a regular basis. Alhaurin El Grande (not to be confused with Alhaurin De La Torre) is a village of 8000 or so locals. One of the things that amused us was that the locals had 'Campo's' which were their summer homes. The only difference was that their "Campo's" were only 5 minutes out of town, so they spent most weekends and most of the summer at their "Campo's". Our "Campo's" are usually a decent drive away and sometimes even in another state. Alhaurin El Grande was a quaint little village where we should enjoy a quiet and relaxing weekend, except, that this weekend included a huge celebration. You could hear the fireworks going off during different parts of the day from early morning until the late hours of the night (and I don't mean just midnight). While we were in town during the afternoon we checked out information about the festival and the times the parades would be (Oh Yes!! Parades every day, even twice a day!!!) There was a parade at 7:30 pm and another at 11:00 pm. We decided that we would see the later one as that would be closer to dinner time. We had a chance to check emails and review the genealogy program that George was using to capture all of the data on over 13000 names. Some of the links went back as far as 400 AD and included royalty along the way. He also showed me how we were linked through the maze of names and sure enough 6 generations ago we had the same "great to the 6th" grandparents. It was really pretty interesting and with Erin being Irish and all I am sure on our travels through Ireland we will do some research of our own. (I hope we are not related!!!) It was getting to be 10:00 pm and this is about the time that dinner is served. We went to a local restaurant for dinner before walking downtown to see the parade that was scheduled to start at 11:00 pm. Dinner was enjoyable and it also provided us a chance to get to know George better, to learn about his days on the motorcycle circuit and how he became an English teacher. George is currently teaching (tutoring) in English to some of the locals. After dinner we followed the crowd to the local church where the parade would start. The parade finally started around 11:45 pm and we watched the parade pass us by and returned home around 1:30 am. (I believe the parade ended somewhere around 3:00 am.) The parade was interesting as you would think that a parade that took almost 2 hours to pass us by would be pretty big. Well, this parade had 6 bands and maybe 100 other participants in it. So what took almost 2 hours??? They walked very slowly while stopping every 30 feet to perform and wait. What a parade!!! I am glad that we were not out there until 3:00 am to celebrate with them. We finally crashed around 2:00 am (at least I did as I am a sound sleeper and didn'y hear any more of the band.) |
| One of the first views you see upon arriving in Alhaurin El Grande.. |
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