Andalousia, part 4 - Grenada

Penny loved Andalousia so much she had to take Mike there. The second trip was less than a year after the first, in spring 2001. She was in mid-pregnancy, so you could say Antonia was there too. That's maybe why she didn't write anything down at the time. But she remembers:

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I took Mike round all the same sights in Seville and Cordoba that had so impressed me, but this time we had a car, and also made it across to the Alhambra in Grenada. I remember being very impressed with architecture and less inspired by the queuing and waiting with the hordes of other people who wanted to see it.

After seeing the Alhambra, we started walking up at random through the olive groves. I don't really know where we went but we found a large ruined cistern for water storage and an ancient, rusting children's playground with the kind of death-defying slide that no longer passes European regulations.

I don't know why, but I decided I simply had to go on this slide. I came flying down the near vertical metal, and was launched from the end onto the ground with a hard thud. Presumably, my pregnant state had made me clumsy, it was perhaps also responsible for my utter terror. Later that day, I decided the time had come for the first cup of coffee of my pregnancy. Obviously, I was feeling a bit crazy. Anyhow, what with one thing and another, Antonia manifested herself for the first time that day. It's the sort of thing you remember, in the same way that I remember her first tooth emerging the day I was standing in the cathedral in Strasbourg, listening to a guide, with my finger in her mouth to keep her quiet.

The other thing that marked our second Andalousia trip was walking down the corridor of our hotel and nearly crashing into Stephen Hawkings. That absolutely thrilled Michael.