In which Sid and Doris find more joy than they expected.
We left Granada completely full of touristing about mid day with no appetite for a six hour drive to Valencia so decided to stop in Murcia. The road there involved some biggish climbs with a couple of passes and some engineering that seems to have cut through the local rock as though it was made of cheese.
Murcia is at a confluence of three rivers in the Segura valley and is still a big agricultural area. We trundled round the town and looked at buildings like the cathedral and the Real Casino, but prioritised ice cream eating over visits. Of more interest to Sid and Doris is the long mill building over the river. 
The Museo Hidraulico ‘los Molinos del Rio Segura’ makes a nice change from ecclesiastical architecture and palaces although could frankly have benefited from a bit of translation. Anyway, the deal seems to be that the water flows longways under the building, there are sluices for each mill stone, and then a jet of water is directed onto some turbine-style horizontal wheels under each millstone to turn it. Or not. It was a bit mysterious.
But the town was friendly and the evening restaurant was jolly.
The next morning we looked in the Green Guide and rather regretted not seeing the cathedral and the Real Casino, and what the hell, it is only three hours to Valencia, so let’s leave later and do some visiting. Which was a great decision.
First of all we get sidetracked into a nativity. This is a big thing in Spain and Portugal, towns and organisations such as the local fire station set them up and collect for charity. Often the nativity has been running for many years, getting more elaborate every year. Heaven only knows where they store it in between. Anyway, the one in Murcia was built as a single true-to-(imagined)-life Palestinian townscape, with scenes illustrating various verses from the bible. [Doris apologises for the sometimes-odd camera angles, but it was tricky getting a good shot over the heads of many 4’6″ tall Spanish grandmas. The odd lighting effect is because the whole scene was under a large tent in the town hall courtyard.]
And then onwards to the cathedral. In contrast to some of the starkly simple cathedrals we have seen recently, the entire centre of this one was blocked off with the choir space, organ, sanctuary etc. Which to our eyes detracted from the beauty of the architecture, but allowed them to display lots of other marvellous crafts.
We shuffled godlessly past the opportunity to save our eternal souls and got on with the touristing…
Two interesting altars – one with a couple of very laid back angels, and one with a strangely patient central sculpture which looks like it is definitely of someone (rather than of a stylised saint)…
Two lovely stained glass windows…
And talking of stylised saints, St Bartholemew having a really terrible time, and St Christopher not looking quite as cuddly as usual.
And finally the Royal Casino. Built as a private club in 1847 the building was renovated from 2006 to 2009. As the pictures will show you the style is eclectic. [The building is difficult to photograph well, but the link above will take you to their website with some pics from the pros – D.]
The first room is straight back to Granada with its Arab court.
In the library we have perfect British Arts and Crafts all ordered in from Waring and Gillow. The swans are motifs we see around the town.
There is a tea room, a ball room, and a Pompeian court. There is a ceiling painting of Luna falling from the moon.
The Casino isn’t mentioned in our Michelin guide, but Sid and Doris will take this over another cathedral.
Time to move along to Valencia, very happy to have made the stop.
I don’t want to think about St. Bartholomew.