It's been a while...

Okay, okay! I know it's been a while. I'm still trying to get into the swing of things once again. The run up to my family's visit the week after Christmas was a hectic flurry of completing research projects, gift shopping, and trip planning. It's been an unusually rainy winter and I really struggling for a while to take picture of the city bedecked with lights. The array was really quite impressive at night if rather ugly during the day. In addition to the usual shopping booths set out in some of the city's more prominent plazas, two special shopping fairs also appeared for a matter of days. Around the Cathedral, a Feria de Navidad materialized in the two weeks before Christmas. This fair specialized in nativity scenes...of every size, sort, and design. One booth specialized in Mexican figurines and another in hand-carved pieces from the Andes. Should the shopper favor something a little more close to home, one vendor even made hand painted legs of ham and bundles of chorizo to hang in the manger. All in all, this fair was surprisingly fun. In addition to nativity scenes in the home, a number were erected around town. Of course every church had a sign directing parishioners to their local Belén (Bethlehem). The hermandades bought out unused office space to erect separate productions and nearly every corporation, bank branch, and private business had a nativity somewhere on-site, including city hall - how very different from the United States! However, my favorite was by far that placed in the window of Confitería la Campana made of marzipan, chocolate, and coconut. It looked good enough to eat, though I suppose that was not the point.

In the Plaza Nueva, a separate Feria de Artesanía ran from mid-December to January 5, the extended shopping time fell in line with the Spanish tradition of exchanging gifts to coincide with El Día de los Reyes Magos (The Day of the Three Wise Men) and not Christmas itself. In this fair, artisans offered handmade ceramics, leather work, and other goods using some of the oldest techniques possible. It was here that I was invited to visit the workshop of the city's finest tile maker, currently completing restoration work on the monumental Plaza de España in the Parque de Maria Luisa.

Christmas itself was rather quiet for me. I had a small dinner for La Nochebuena (New Year's Eve), went to La Misa del Gallo (Midnight Mass) in the Cathedral, and met a few friends for drinks afterwards. The next few weeks would more than make up for this momentary lull. Stay tuned...