CARMONA SPAIN

Our third lodging was at the Carmona parador, a beautifully restored 14th century Arab fortress that sat on a hill overlooking the small Andalusian city.  Geri and I had a great room overlooking the plain below the parador, and here are a couple of photos from our window of farm fields being bathed in a late afternoon sun.

The light helped these shots a lot.  In the second photo my preference would have been to place the outbuilding a bit further to the left, but I also wanted to include the meandering lane in the lower left, and I simply didn't have enough remaining on the right side of the image to provide the balance I was looking for.  Still, I liked this shot quite a lot.

Carmona gave me a chance to work on my narrow street shots, including the one below.

Again, not so great, but it did include some interesting blue-trimmed windows, including the following.

Here are a few more of those street shots.  By the way, my understanding is that a preponderance of buildings are painted white to minimize the absorption of heat in the hot, sunny Andalusian summers.

I liked this last shot for the little arch over the street.  Oh, and these are all streets for vehicular traffic, something that would clearly be intimidating for any drivers unfamiliar with the town.

The next was my favorite of the Carmona street shots, primarily for the two youngsters dashing across the open space at the end of the street.  This was the same arch that appeared in the prior photo.

OK, so much for street shots.

On our third evening in Carmona I decided to walk into town on my own, armed with a schematic map.  A mistake, as I got sort of lost almost immediately.  Part of the problem was that my map was written in English but all of the signs in town--at least those I could find--were written in Spanish.  (Why ever did I take French in college?)  My efforts to get "unlost" did give me a chance to get a few more shots of windows and doors . . .

. . . as well as a quiet statue outside of the Iglesia de Santa Maria (i.e., Church of Saint Mary).

Finally, here are a couple of photos I took near our parador.

I liked this for the framing of the towers by the trees and shrubs.

I particularly liked this last shot, which I got purely by luck at the end of a small tour of the town.

John