Happy New Year, Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day!! I'm a little late posting our New Year's holiday from Spain.
Having some doubts about not enough to do at a beach area on the Costa del Sol during the holidays, we figured it would still beat sitting in the grey drizzle of the UK or most of the mainland. It turned out to be a brilliant (pardon the pun) choice with lots of sun and temperatures between 14-20C! No rain on the plains!
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New Year's Day!!!! Missing the beach swimming pictures... E said the water was warmer than at the cottage in the summer.... go figure.
Having enjoyed the wee bits of Spain while on our Med Cruise 2014, we had a need to get back to a ham-eteria. Seriously, there are jamon-eterias! If the Spanish weren't declared Roman Catholics, I'd swear they worship ham. Ham was everywhere. Big shanks of pork legs drying in shops, in grocery stores, in restaurants... the sweet smell of the cured meat was everywhere.
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Jamon
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| A boutique for ham!! And they had mighty fine cheese too. |
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| Do you want the regular ham, the Iberico jamon, at a billion-Euro a gram ham? |
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| Can I bring it home? Puleeze? |
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| All the ham sampling can make you very thirsty. Time of a pick-me up. |
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| Shopping for ham can also lead to buying shoes. I'm not sure about how its relevant, but it happened. |
Gibraltar
Our first day trip was to the much anticipated Gibraltar. How cool is this big hunk of rock jutting out of the ocean? A big hunk of cliff with so much military significance and history? The town itself is a little more run down than expected, but the whole of the rock is just an interesting place.
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| The first sign we encounter in Gibraltar. Guess Adrian doesn't get fed.... |
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| Hey, we related? |
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| Who you lookin' at? |
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| St. Micheal's caves in Gibraltar. Freaky cool |
Ronda
The gorge pictures in Ronda got overexposed with my faulty camera. It has a little accident in the South of France this summer and it now being cantankerous.
Ronda, established in 9th century BC, is perched on an inland plateau riven by 100m fissure of the El Tajo gorge. Its old town dates to Islamic times, filled with mosques and places. It was an attractive spot for bandits and profiteers because of its wealth as a trading depot.
Xerez
What is visiting a European country without some wine? We visited the town of Xerez where they make Xerez - isn't that obvious? We visited the Gonzaler-Byass Sherry Bodega which the main iron pavilion was designed by Gustav Eiffel.
Sherry is wine that is fortified and aged in butts. There are two main types of Sherry that yield different styles of wine. The first type is aged biologically under the flor, or yeast which produce drier Finos, Manzanillas and Amontillados. The other is aged oxidatively with out the layer of flor to produce Palo Cortado, and Olorosos. With the solera system of ageing, the butts (Criadera) are stacked on top of each other with the oldest on the bottom and youngest on the top. Old wine from the bottom is drawn and topped up with the younger wine on top. The soleras can be centuries old.
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| A little ladder to help the winery mice. For real!! |
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| Tasting my favourite, Noe, a Pedro Ximenez wine. |
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The bitter and sour Seville oranges that every dumb tourist tries to eat. Happens that we do eat them - only once they've been made into marmalade!
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We had a delightful lunch of tapas afterwards!
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| Winter? Did someone say it was -20C in Canada? |
El Torcal Nature Reserve
A lovely day of hiking the weird El Torcal. The Nature reserve is known for its unusual limestone rock formations where over the millions of years, the rain and wind have chiselled ways at these layers to form interesting shapes. The whole area was under sea until 100 million years ago. The violent movements of the earth's curst forced it upward into hills and mountains, keeping its layered horizontal formation.
Grenada
Our day trip to Grenada to see the famous Alhambra palace ended up being a bit of a bust. They sold out!! We were about 25 people deep from the wicket when they announced they were sold out for the day! Some people had traveled for 6 hours to get there. So, to console ourselves, we went for lunch...
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Alhambra in Grenada. Lovely view from the really nice restaurant. Too bad we weren't on the other side taking the picture!
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| The beautiful view from the balcony of the restaurant. |
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| A twist on the Spanish classic of almond soup. |
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| Yummy lunch! |
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| No explanation required for this slab - except maybe for those graphic cheesecake things in the right corner... (what's with using anything but a plate?) |
Six degrees of separation - or one in this case!
The finale to our trip has the most incredible small world story! On our way home from Malaga to Madrid, there was a bit of a mix up with our seats on the plane. Because it was only a 45 minute flight, we decided it wasn't worth sorting out and I struck up a conversation with the lady in the next seat over, who had been delayed by a day. We were having pleasant conversation about travel, children, politics etc. In an exchange of what would seem like chit-chatty personal details, a little bit was revealed. Then a little more that led to more questions. And then suddenly, both our jaws dropped! This lovely lady, Martha, who lives in Greece, was good friends with our Ottawa neighbour Cheshmak! Now, it really is a small world when you meet someone on a different continent, with no apparent links and find out that we're all friends!! We think this is a pretty amazing story. Top that one!
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Six degrees of Kevin Bacon - or Cheshmak.
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So my wish to all of you in the New Year is health and happiness, and fun life surprises!
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| Beautiful sunset from our holiday home overlooking the Med |
