Days 242-248, 9-15 Feb '15, Chilling out in Enniscorthy, Massive Travel Day (12th) and getting into the Spanish swing of things again... Tapas anyone?
Last week passed in a blur of sheer laziness. Culminating on Wednesday when we literally did not leave the hotel. Breakfast... movies... packing... movie on TV... packing... dinner and so on. Super restful. Which is lucky because we finally left Ireland on Thursday, eventually. It's only a 3 hour flight from Dublin to Malaga, but it's a 2.5 hour bus ride from Enniscorthy to Dublin Airport. Add in a couple of hours of sitting about... then the flight... then another hour or so for the train and it was about 10 pm by the time we unlocked the house and let the starving kitty cats inside. Woo hoo! Back in Spain. The cares of the world - ok, ok... not that we had many - have dropped from our shoulders. Friday was great - my first chance to show James our new town. We keep getting caught by the weather though - nice chill mornings at about 8-10 degrees (yes - equivalent to the Irish daytime high) - so we wear jeans and long sleeves etc. And by 2 pm we are roasting in Spanish sunshine and 20 degrees. Saturday was El Rastro at the Fairground. That's right, the massive flea market which I have written about before. It's at about 50% of it's high season strength right now, so it "only" took 2-3 hours to wander around. Bought a necklace and a sunhat (seriously, roasting!) The last few days have been a combination of showing James some of my favourite haunts and trying new places together. Today's picture is James at Casa Pedro. A bit of a hole in the wall that I've always wanted to try because they advertise Pescoito Frito which simply rolls off the tongue. We tootled in after the market and the manzanilla and tapas definitely took the edge off our market feet. And all for €5. Which seemed a good deal and is a fairly standard price for a couple of tapas and two drinks. Never fear however... There's a bargain around every corner. A new promotion has just been launched by the very active tourist commission here in town. La cazuela de la Abuela... traditional Andalucian food/casseroles. Literally "The casserole of the Grandmother". There are 83 participating restaurants and bars around town. Which we have no hope whatsoever of visiting, but we are giving it a crack. Basically they are all competing for the honour of best casserole. You take your little passport in and for each bar you sample you get a stamp. 5 stamps and your passport goes in a raffle for assorted prizes - including a week on the Costa del Sol. Having had a super lazy Sunday morning we finally launched from the house at about 12.30 pm and walked downtown - only 3 kms... saves over €3. I took James down to the Castle end of town for a stroll around the Sunday street market. It's the market that has about 10% of the stalls of the Tuesday market and is designed for feet that just can't handle the big one. We meandered back towards the main square along the waterfront and then chose a bar at random to try the cazuela... just too much fun. The deal that the eateries have signed up for is to only charge €2 for the tapa and a drink (beer/wine/softdrink/water). We had been wondering how bad the wine could be - but it was excellent! Certainly better than the €1 bottle we splurged on at the supermarket. The only thing to do after the first bar was head to another one. Amazingly the wine was even better. We get one red and one white and write the whole exercise off to practising Spanish. Had a coffee while we waited for the bus up the hill. Still only 3 kms... but UP the hill. Total expenditure for afternoon of eating, drinking, people watching, coffee and transport home? €12 / A$18. So you can see why walking downhill and saving €3 is a really big economy... That's almost another round at a snazzy tapas joint! Off to Mijas, the white village/pueblo blanco tomorrow.