Orante

Last Monday was a holiday-for St George's Day (which was actually Sunday but we had a day off in lieu)
It was a beautiful morning so we did a little excursion to Orante on the old road to Sabiñánigo.
There's a stone church building and a few houses. We were met by a couple of friendly Pyrenean mountain dogs and an elderly chap who escourted us along the track to the chapel of San Benito. It's all a bit mysterious and "New-Age"; apparently it's got "Teluric energy" and has been used at least since the Bronze Age. One part of the chapel wall is reputedly more than a thousand years old. The location is simply spectacular.

There's a little vent in the wall opposite the door which is apparently something like Celtic, to catch the last rays of the setting sun on the Equinox in March; the guide told us that this was very rare because they were usually for the sunrise.  Nice place!
That was April 24th. Warm and sunny. Today is the 28th and I lit the fire in the living room!

Flowers gone crazy

This morning we walked to church through Pignatelli Park in Zaragoza. It's been a horrible windy spring day, but I was very struck by some flowers coming out of the garden of a Modernist building next to the Italian Church.

They look like escapes from a fairy story (I saw Beauty and the Beast last week) According to the park web page 

they are "thornless rose" I looked in Wikipedia and the say :Rosa banksiae, common names Lady Banks' rose, or just Banks' rose. 

Really pretty!

Teruel exists

The Teruel Exists campaign has been going on for some years now. I've written about it a few times in this blog. Today's entry is because of a protest we saw in the centre of Zaragoza yesterday.

People dressed in 19th century-stylecostumes to protest about a 19th century-style railway service from Zaragoza to Valencia via Teruel, of course.

This is the protesters in Valencia station. Good luck to them!