The sun slants down onto the bed, peeping in through the shutters, and wakes me some time after eight. I lay there listening to feint sounds in the street, then got up to investigate the Corpus Christi flowers.

The air is filled with luxurious flavours. Freshly mown grass, sprinkled on the street to pick out the details in green; carnations, last night mere buds but now magnificent blooms; coffee and chocolate powder, laid out to form black borders or the spots on monster ladybirds; and a smell familiar from childhood holidays on the farm: oat husks, which we used to feed to the hens, but here are used to colour the features of regal cockerels.

Already it is hot. The thermometer outside the pharmacy reads 28 and as I squeeze off the first 100 shots of the day I quickly wet my t-shirt with sweat.

Many streets still have no flowers - just chalky outlines of patterns waiting to be filled, but as I return from a break to eat breakfast I find myself walking the edges of magnificent floral carpets after every corner turned.

We spent the afternoon on the beach, the four of us, where the women have shaved their pubic hair into evil little moustaches - the kind Hitler would have had if his lip had been four inches tall. The sand blistered our feet until the sun fell beyond a cliff four hours on, and the ants came out to invade our towers.

It was a long, hot walk to the beach, and no cooler coming home, and we arrived back at the hotel dripping with sweat and badly in need of a shower for which we had no time.

We’d heard rumour that there would be a church service, then a procession, and then the virgins of Sitges would process through the streets, dancing their way through the flowers.

The rumour turned out to be false. Almost.

The main procession had already started by the time we got onto the streets. Men in 20ft-tall costumes were parading through the crowds, dancing among the people and twirling around so that the faces of their costumes looked in through the first and second-floor balconies of the shops and apartments that line the pavements.

The thermometer on the pharmacy was showing 29 and inside all that material, with so much weight on their shoulders, the heat must have been unbearable. Still, though, they trampled through the flowers and then on down to the seafront through the sun to the steps that took them up to the church.

It was an impressive sight and the noise that went with it of trumpets and drums and whole marching bands, was so loud that it drowned out the excited chatter of the thousands of onlookers that followed it through the streets.

And then it came to an end, for a while. The town’s virgins paraded into the church and the doors were closed, and for half an hour there was nervous chatter among the crowds, nobody quite sure what would come next, but as the church bell began once again to ring out it turned out they merely retraced their steps through the streets.

1. Sitges: Fireworks
   The flowers had been destroyed by the time we came out to eat last night, and when we got up this morning and walked through...
   
   
2. Sitges
   Back from Sitges - and up to date with my notes. The entries for the week gone by, when I had no Internet access,...
   
   
3. Sitges: Final Day
   A very late state to our last day in Sitges. The alarm was set to go off at eleven, so of course we missed breakfast...