Rest, relaxation and a bit of rain in Spain COMPLETE 11/10 About This Page:

[KMB733]

Sorry about the nightmare with the car park. I can't believe the prices at the restaurant!! Great pictures of the Beach.

[chezp]

Tuesday 13 October – part five: what was that crash?

We got back in the car and headed towards the villa.


One of the trams running in the area

Beating the train!


On the way, we stopped at Carrefour supermarket at Benidorm on the way. Honestly, the food there was amazing – I even had to get some photos of the fish on offer, as I’ve never seen anything like it before.


I can still smell these, just looking at this photo!


Best of all, we found some apple and hazelnut liquor for just €2.96 (about $4.40), much cheaper than the €5 we’d paid at the Chinese earlier in the week.

On the way out, Mark stopped to browse for olives:



From there, it was back to the villa, where we sat and relaxed, with me braving the sun for an hour or so, until the factor 50 lotion pretty much gave up the battle of protecting me from the sun, then I had to venture into the shade. It certainly wasn’t nearly as hot as yesterday and was much more pleasant today.

Finally I got some photos of the new gate:



And the windows, which now had glass in – only added earlier in the day, while we were out:



As we were sitting outside, we heard a massive crash and just assumed that maybe it was a lorry that had lost its load. There are a lot of speed ramps around here and it’s not unusual to hear lorries hitting them at speed. A little later, I was just getting changed, when Mark announced that everyone was going down to see what had happened, as there were police just down the road. We drove down and discovered that a German car had hit a wall and had overturned. A woman was just being helped out of it and looked in amazing shape, considering the state of the car. I didn’t have the camera with me on that visit, but a little later, when we headed out, I managed to grab this shot:



To be honest, it really doesn’t show the full extent of the damage to the car, which could be seen much better from the other end of the road, but as there was a policeman standing at that end, I didn’t really want to stick the camera out and get a shot, while he was watching. :

Next: traditional tapas dining

[Colexis Mom]

More great pictures! Love the new windows!

[KMB733]

Amazing story about the crash. Sounds like the woman was lucky to walk away from the crash.

[Sandra Bostwick]

Stunning photos! It is just like being there!

[chezp]

Tuesday 13 October – part six: traditional tapas dining

We had chatted about going into Moraira for a meal at one of the seafront restaurants, which I’d enjoyed so much last time, and we decided that tonight would be a good night for that meal. We drove down and took a few photos on the way.






We quickly headed to the place we had enjoyed so much last time, called El Lloc de Poble and it wasn’t busy at all when we arrived.




We had a look through both the tapas menu and the main menu, opting to go for tapas style snacks for appetisers. Between us, we got crab croquettes (my choice and definitively the best out of the bunch – everyone agreed on that! ), potato with aioli (essentially a garlic and mayonnaise dip used a lot in Spain, it’s lovely ), ham croquettes and calamari. It all worked really well, with us picking and choosing what we wanted out of that selection. We almost felt full after we finished that!



Then it was on to main courses. I had a lot of problem deciding what to go for, as there was such a good fish selection, but eventually went for the fried hake or merluza a la romana, a dish that is regularly covered in my Spanish language learning kit, so I opted to try a traditional Spanish dish and very good it was too.



Mark wasn’t so happy with his. He went for the fried mixed fish and I think he was expecting fish like salmon or prawns, but instead he got a mixture of things like calamari and whitebait, as you can see:



We all commented on how full we were by the end of the main course, but I’ll always look at a dessert menu and that was our downfall, as everyone ended up getting a dessert. I went for the cappuccino brulee, which was superb, but there just wasn’t enough of it. I could easily have eaten more! Mark had the reina, a date and pecan nut pie and I didn’t hear any complaints from him about it. :




We paid for the meal for the four of us to say thank you to Mark’s parents for ferrying us around everywhere. After all, they’d saved us the cost of a rental car by doing that for us. The bill came to €105 (about $156.15) for the four of us, which we didn’t think was too bad, but I know Dave nearly had a heart attack when he found out how much it had come to!

Once we finished eating, we walked back to the car, getting some night-time shots of Moraira on the way.








Then it was back to the villa, where we watched a bit of TV, before heading off to bed for the night.

The weather today was in the high 80s and sunny.
The best thing today was missing stopping in Alicante.
The worst thing today was how little there was at Altea market.
Today we tried seeing Heurte del Cura at Elx.
And the result was it’s a beautiful place and not too big.
The most magical moment today was going back to El Lloc de Poble for dinner.

Next: why do they like me so much?

[BritDisFan]

Looks like a really nice meal! Mark really looks like his Mum

[Disneybine]

Just got caught up! I love your pictures, Cheryl. That pecan nut pie looks SO good!

[Colexis Mom]

Great pictures! Love tapas!

[pamcarey]

Great updates! Dinner looks delish! And I did NOT know that dates come from palm trees... learned something new today!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by BritDisFan

Looks like a really nice meal! Mark really looks like his Mum

He'll love you for that, seriously. He's really worried he looks the spitting image of his dad!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by pamcarey

Great updates! Dinner looks delish! And I did NOT know that dates come from palm trees... learned something new today!

Glad to know I wasn't the only one who didn't know that before...

[goofysdtr]

Cheryl, your dessert looks so good!

I was thinking how much Mark looked like his DM, too!

[KMB733]

Originally Posted by goofysdtr

I was thinking how much Mark looked like his DM, too!

I was thinking the same thing!

The dinner looked delicious, especially the dessert

[Hugmonster]

Yum..