Lions in Zaragoza

 There's a stone bridge in Zaragoza. It's called The Stone Bridge. It's the oldest in the city, dating from 1440, although the Romans built one in the first century. 

The bridge is 225 metres in length and has seven arches, one of which is hidden by the road. In 1991 they put bronze lions at both ends of this river crossing. The lion is an emblem for the city of Zaragoza

This photo shows the structure of the bridge very well.

When I'm in Zaragoza, it's nice to run across and between the city's bridges. In the photo it looks as if it's pedestrian; cars aren't allowed, but buses and taxis cross the river on it. Pedestrians use the sides.

Anyway, what I wanted to share today was the lions in Santa Engracia square. Last week there was a kind of flower festival. The big park had flower stalls and plant-based activities. Just off Independencia, the central shopping street, there were eight lions.

You can see four here

This one was my favourite

More wildflowers

 There's a walk we can do from our house; it takes a couple of hours and you don't need to use the car. You go down the picturesquely named La Favorita; it's not very pretty, although it has a nice flowerbed at the end, cross the main road to France and dive down a track which runs parallel to the road. There are lots of wild roses on the sides. Some way on we get to a concrete bridge crossing the Aragón river. If you turn left there's an easy road walk to the "golf ball" hydroelectric power station which processes the water coming down a big green tube that runs from our destination.

This video shows the power station and the pipe: 

We turned right at the bridge to climb the track taking us to the top of the pipe. It took us an hour and twenty minutes from home to the top of the pipe. The wild flowers on the way were amazing! Mostly blue or while linen flowers, dog roses and pyramid orchids.

Monte Oroel

This pyramid orchid was big!

Wildflowers

The tulips in Amsterdam were wonderful. However, here in Aragón we have some really wonderful wildflowers. On Thursday we went to Formigal, to the ski-lift called Espelunciechas to see the daffodils. It was rather late in the season but we couldn't make it before. Although the weather was fine lower down, in the mountains it was wet; not pouring, but enough to need an umbrella to stop my glasses being unuseable. Never mind. The flowers were amazing! 

Ranunculus pyrenaeus (most likely

Asphodels not open yet

Viola cornuta

Elder flowered orchid (apparently they smell like elderflowers)

All over the place!

euphorbia flavicoma (maybe)

Daffodils (I expect there's a specific name for these)

Squills?

Lovely gentians

Can't get enough daffodils. They were past their best but still lovely