Medina Azahara and lavatorial nicknames

On our way from Cordoba to Seville we stopped off at Medina Azahara. This is a fascinating place - a city built around 934 - a city built from scratch - to house the Caliph, his court and the administration of his lands. It was built into a hillside and must have been visible from many miles away. The city was sacked in 1010 and then abandoned.
It gradually got covered over and wasn't rediscovered until 1911! And so far, only about 10% of the city has been excavated. As you go round you can see there are bits that they have still to uncover amongst the ruins. And there are huge areas that haven't yet been touched.

These huge arches were part of the formal entrance to the city. The raised platform to the side of the road at the front of the picture is where soldiers would have formed a guard of honour for important guests.

This is inside the throne room. Can you see all those bits at the bottom of the ladder? They are bits of the carvings - a huge huge jigsaw puzzle to find the right place for them to be restored to the walls. The patience of some people is amazing!

This is inside the administration building. Not particularly inspiring in itself, but I just really like this photograph... and that palm tree framed by the arch.

And this is the entrance to the house of one of the courtiers. With a very glamorous young lady - wearing my sunglasses!

Next time we'll be off to Seville and the fiesta!

This morning, I was chatting with my chum, Kathy, about food we had as kids. I was reminded that we often had bread and jam for tea (we had school dinners) and that we called it 'BAJ' - pronounced 'badge'. That got me thinking about funny names we had for things - mainly, now I come to think about it, thought up by my mum. Farts were called 'Pardonas' - I suppose to remind us to say 'Pardon me' when we did one! A poo was called a 'big dinx'... I've absolutely no idea why! I expect my mum will tell me off for putting such things in my blog, but I just wondered if other families have/had such bizarre nicknames. Do tell!

On the jewellery front, I've been having a big stock-take and restock of the website, so don't have anything new to show you at the moment. However, I expect there might be something very soon as I've been at the chain maille again!