Back home

Home now, after a last night in Torremelinos before getting our flight. Back on the Costa Del Sol on this beach strip. A sign for Sunday roasts at a cafe! In that heat?! I don't think this place has changed much since Eric Idle wrote about it.

Before we left Seville, we visited a bull ring and took a guided tour. I am so naive - not realising they still kill the beast. The history of it was interesting and I must admit I would still like to see a fight for the spectacle - although perhaps when it came to it I wouldn't enjoy the finale. And again naivety, whilst our guide was explaining, it dawned on me that on a bad day, one could actually witness the matador killed, which would be horribly serious. When someone asked if there are women matadors, the guide told us that there have been but male fighters will not fight against them. She explained that these women are no 'princesses' - being very serious about their craft, tough and covered in injuries. A strange career to want to take up.

Andalucia was all in all a fantastic experience. Hollywood's cowboy country (Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns filmed here). Steeped in history with great food and happy people despite Spain's economic problems. Apart from the fact that we didn't get to Cordoba and the Mezquita as we'd hoped, this was a great holiday.

Flamenco and paella

Hooray, finally got to see a flamenco performance.

Great Spanish guitar, tortuously wailing and clapping singer (we both struggled with this sound, although it is authentic, of course) and some fantastic dancing. So dramatic, serious and noisy, both graceful and tough at the same time and the woman had us all smiling with her belligerent act, hitching her frilled skirt up and stamping at trembling speed - even emulating horse riding at one point. Those dresses are very flattering on curvy figures too - she was no skinny model.

Fantastic, loved it!

And my kindly husband agreed to share a paella with me even though it is not really his type of dish. Had he not agreed, I wouldn't have got one of course as they are all cooked up for 2 people minimum. This quantity could have fed 4! We made a good dent in it and Pete enjoyed it mostly I think (or was he just being polite?). This was an interesting restaurant, El Cabildo, written up in the Rough Guide as being good for paella, really hard to find in a dim backwater, but worth it.



 

Ole!

The oven of Europe

15/16/17th June

We said our goodbyes to Jack and Simon, got back into our Fiat 500 and motored off to Seville for our next stay. Always a bit scary trying to find a hotel in a new town, but this one was relatively easy, despite roads only one car width at times. We found our hotel in a very scruffy end of town; this does not have the feel that Cadiz had and were given a room in a semi basement with a high window onto the car park!! Having booked one with a balcony, we complained and were moved on the next day, which was good but irritating having to pack everything up again.

When we walked into the tourist area of the Alcazar palace and cathedral, Seville showed its true colours. The narrow streets behind the palace (the old Jewish quarter) being a labyrinth of interesting bars, cafés and individual shops. Beautifully conserved old buildings with fantastic interiors, heavy studded doorways opening onto palm filled airy atriums beyond decorative gates, and glimpses into age old bars with crooked tiled floors, shiny trims and hanging Serrano hams. Great.

The palace was breathtaking, endless rooms of moorish tiling, wood and stone carving. A senses-fest. Everything so colourful too; even the carvings were painted. Such detail, hours and hours of work obviously. I love this style. Unfortunately we visited on the Monday (possibly should have come on the Sunday we arrived) because there were many school parties milling about - the Spanish clearly don't believe in the English way of 'crocodile' lines, they were like shoals coming at you and there was no giving way to old folk!
Sian, where are you?!

So 3 days of sightseeing again, wearing the soles of our flip flops out in the hottest temperatures we have experienced here. Seville is not called the oven of Europe for nothing. Love the cafe's outside tables with a continuing mist of water to cool you though - they work so well along with a freshly squeezed orange juice or a cold beer.






   


    
Streets so hot they suspend canopies above them

more magnificent patterning in the palace

our favourite bar
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                                                     Quick, could be trampled here

Hola Cadiz

14th June
After a last night meal in a very pleasant recommended Danish restaurant in the hills (surprisingly not blasted by the wind), we left the casitas and our friendly hosts and daft George and travelled to Cadiz where Jacky and Simon had booked an apartment through airbnb and had offered us a sofa bed for the night. What a find they had succeeded in making: a very slickly appointed top floor apartment with huge roof terrace overlooking Plaza San Francisco, it even had a turret up to a further level. We overlooked the church and it being Saturday witnessed 2 weddings, one when we had just arrived and another early evening - they didn't have to worry about the weather here, it was a scorching hot day.
We wandered the pretty alleyways of this old port town down to the cathedral and stopped to have tapas and drinks in a quiet square, which as we sat there got less and less quiet as Spanish families with small children arrived, the children freely and happily playing on scooters and bikes and with balls. All very relaxed in the early evening heat and no worries about getting the children to bed. The atmosphere was so relaxed we ended up having that second bottle of wine as is becoming a habit here. We had a break back at the apartment and went out for dinner much later, Simon and Pete having decided to brave one of the bars to watch England v Italy football match at midnight. Jack and I retired and left them to it. Apparently the bar was full of Italians and they won, so S and P were totally outnumbered.

The night buzzed on, the little square was still alive with people drinking, singing and generally enjoying themselves until the early hours. Cadizians seem a friendly happy lot and this picturesque old town with its narrow cobbled alleyways and port with huge liners docked for overnight stays seems to be a very content city.







A mural


        


wedding beneath our terrace

Adios Vejer

13th June

On Friday in searing heat relieved by a slightly cooler wind, we decided to visit the NMAC art installations in the next door golf course; Montenmedio. This was an enjoyable 2 hour wander through pine forest where the sculptures are cleverly hidden giving them even more impact when you come across them.

One spectacular piece by James Turrell appeared to be a subway entrance into the hillside - when you emerged from the tunnel you were greeted by an overflowing pool with a kiln shaped structure at its centre which you could enter. A hole at the top of this allows the sunlight to spotlight through and the echo when you call is mellow and long. I was blown away by this beautiful construction, the materials it was made from were natural and the terracotta colour of the earth surrounding us. The 'kiln' a granite grey and painted inside. Attention to detail was everything. A satisfying experience.

So we say goodbye to Vejer's environs with it's pretty hill town, storks on pylons, dusty cacti and heat baked pine forests.



























The storks build the grand construction, then smaller birds add their nests underneath!

La Palmar beach and Keef

11th June
Took a trip to La Palmar beach and a fish restaurant J and S knew to be good for 'lunch' at 4 o clock.
We checked out Trafalgar Bay first (where Nelson lost his life) as we had believed it would be more sheltered - the wind was wicked today. It was actually more windy here, so we settled on having a beer at Las Dunas cafe, an interesting cobbled building with a sand roof. Inside wooden and thatch vaulted ceilings, heavy plank tables and an open BBQ area still smelling of burnt charcoal, and an outside garden with another bar - all in all a great atmosphere finished off nicely by the music: Harry Nilson singing Mr Bojangles. All very old hippy stuff.
As we walked into the place someone pulled up on a dilapidated scooter and dismounted slowly. Without staring I was convinced it was Keith Richards; an extremely haggard face with a wide gnarly mouth, wearing bandana and hat, lots of rings and bracelets and a general air of dishevellment! Was it?! He wandered through the bar and out through the garden with a couple of people saying hallo to him on the way and we never saw him again. Probably an incredible look-a-like - who knows?

On to la Palmar, a short sit on the beach in a fierce hot wind, a dip in the Atlantic. Not cold to us Brits, Simone! And then into the El Cortijiro for boquerones, calamari (tasty, not the rubber bands we get at home) and fresh tuna. Yummy.

Back to our casitas for a swim and more vino. Whoo hoo.




How not to get on a lilo



El Palmar






The rather large owner of the cafe - fish diet not for him obviously!
Jack sensibly topping up on her water intake.

Vejer de la Frontera

7/8th June

On Saturday we left Ronda and travelled to meet Jack and Simon at our next stay in 2 adjoining casitas outside Vejer.

As J and S had promised (this is their 4th year in this area) Vejer and its surroundings are wonderful. Vejer is a whitewashed hill town topped with a castle and at this time of year still quite quiet and untouristy. On our first night here with our very tired friends who had had only one hours sleep the night before, we ate on a terrace overlooking a valley and wind turbined hills on a long road Paseo de Corredera where sometimes you can see eagles floating almost on your level.

After exploring Vejer a little more and coming back to our accommodation for a swim on our second day, we barbecued by the pool. This is a lovely place to stay, our hosts are charming, we have the pool to ourselves in a delightful garden where we can pick lemons for our salad dressings. Their little dog, George, likes to drop his ball through the boundary gate in the hope that we will throw it for him. We have been warned by our hosts that if we start, we will never be left alone, so we don't indulge him. The result is half a dozen balls by the gate and a hopeful little face and wagging tail peering at you. It makes you feel very mean!

The sun shines, the gentle easterly wind blows, cockerels crow, birds sing and nesting storks clack clack in the pine trees opposite.







Not a nun; typical Vejer dress - not nowadays of course.


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Ronda on my birthday

4/5/6 June

On Wednesday we travelled to Ronda, up a steep road until the vegetation ran out. A little stressful trying to find the out -of -the- way hotel we had booked using the GPS on our phones. We passed a sign to it: Hotel Alavera De Los Banos, thinking it was pointing along the main road we were on, but it did not appear. We then realised the sign pointed down a narrow cobbled road which we had thought led to a farmhouse. All this was well worth it when we arrived at this Moorish styled hotel with pretty gardens overlooking a horse paddock and the hills beyond, well outside of the bustle of the city and a short climb up steps to the old town.

Photographs don't capture the dramatic drop of the ravine. We have walked ourselves silly - lots of steep roads of worn cobbles. Fantastic churches and palaces. On my birthday, we sat in the park by the bullring, then had a swim at the hotel and finished the day wandering around the centre, a beer at a bar in a lovely square where people were meeting up for the evening and children were playing, then tapas at a place recommended by the hotel - really good food, but we felt still not strictly authentic; slightly nouvelle with Brie and marmalade, pork cheeks with foam potatoes, wagyu beef burger, tempura prawns and veg. Tasty, but Spanish?!

27 degrees and only a gentle breeze, not the hot African wind up here. Ah.






                                          Breakfast here


                                                      'Our garden'



The harpist was playing in this bandstand

Estepona and Casares and family

Monday/Tuesday 2/3 June

Arrived late on Monday evening after we had overshot the turn off for our hotel from the A7, Costa del Sol. Still we had a passable plate of salad and fish in the nearby port amongst several other Brits before retiring. This strip is as I had imagined; too many pubs! How we British can spoil things, it's shaming.


On Tuesday we travelled inland to Casares where my cousin and his family live in an interesting urbanisacion (spelt?) , half of which is incomplete buildings or empty apartments and houses. My cousin, Simone informs us that the house buying boom that this part of the country still expect is just not happening. It made the area seem neglected. Their block was charming however, terracotta higgledy piggledy apartments surrounded by beautiful gardens of bougainvillea and palms, totally overgrown as the maintenance payments have lapsed. Also a large swimming pool, (yet to be cleaned for the summer) and tennis courts, where, after having a plate of Simone's delicious pasta, we bashed a ball about with Simone and Luisa's lovely boys. We lost pathetically to Matteo's skills. Daniel gave up with me as I am just too bad at any ball games.

We had a beer in the pretty hill town of Casares, then travelled back to the coast for a (much,much better than last night) fish meal in a restaurant they knew well on the beach. A perfect spot for the boys as they could play football in a small park next door and fish off some rocks (Daniel came back with one small crab).

Matteo and Daniel very kindly gave up their bedroom for us, so we spent a comfortable night amongst Lego, football posters and dinosaurs.



  Estepona


                                                       Casares




Chiapparinis