Caz and Peter.....

Friday 25 January

Burns night photos

Monday 28 Jan 

We collected Caroline and Peter from the airport today. The Monarch plane may well have been elderly (the ashtrays hinted at it’s age) but it got our friends to Malaga 15 minutes early - they had to wait for us to arrive. Most unexpected!

They settled in and handed over their gifts of the Sunday Times, Gordon’s gin and proper biscuits, all very welcome. The afternoon was spent chatting on the terrace enjoying the sunshine. 

Tuesday 29 Jan

A lovely sunny morning and we all headed out for an walk behind the house up the Magiaza hill. Quite a steep climb rewarded with great views. This walk is well known to our previous visitors, Sam, Jo, Paul and Bill. What a treat to get back to the terrace at the end of the walk and collapse onto the sun loungers with a cold beer. 

Wednesday 30 Jan

Another hot day and an introductory walk into the village for C & P. We all checked emails in the bar and had lunch there too. Nice to meet Viv and Mike in there and for them to meet C & P. We did a little food shopping on the way back to the house and spent some more time on the terrace. We must point out here that we were all truly sorry to hear of all the cold weather and snow in the UK but tried not to let that spoil our enjoyment of our Kindles, sunshine and sun-loungers.

Thursday 31 Jan

 A lovely day for a drive around the area to some small villages and Vinuela. We stopped at Los Romanes to admire the views and browsed round the small market there. Caroline brought socks for a euro, she suffers with cold feet. Poor Peter. Within a couple of days she was borrowing Petra’s mending kit to sew up holes in them! Lunch was at Hotel Vinuela sitting outside with a fantastic view of the lake. Great chips. We had afternoon tea at Periana, not as grand as it sounds - we took a flask.

In the evening we walked down to the village for quiz night. It was fearsome difficult except  for the medical terminology round (Petra and Peter) and the Friends and Neighbours round (Caroline saved the day with this one). We didn’t come last this week and had a lot of fun, laughs and drinks. The walk back was so easy and Caroline ran up the hill.

Friday 1 Feb

Today we ventured up to El Torcal. It was the perfect day for it, sunny and not too windy. Kevin didn’t lose his sunglasses over the edge of the viewpoint today. We watched the film in the visitor centre - as always very informative but getting repetitive for frequent visitors.  We had a picnic lunch in Campy walked along the route verde. Such a fantastic walk, the rock formations are truly captivating. We saw one goat, 3 cows and no Griffin vultures. Oh well, maybe next time. 

Back in Riogordo we were in for a very windy night, a little bit more of the terrace roofing (kindling) blown down and shutters rattling in the wind. 

Saturday 2 February

A busy morning in Riogordo today. We went to Viv and Mike’s for coffee and a guided tour of the house for Caroline and Peter. We picked some tangerines from their tree and were introduced to on-line jigsaws, amazing, if only we had internet access at the house. Maybe not, nothing would ever get done by Petra. We visited the village museum and learnt about olive oil production. It’s a wonderful place in a very old house, rooms furnished and stuffed full of possessions from a century ago. There was quite a lot of noise and singing coming from the downstairs kitchen area and we discovered they were the local thespians having a break from rehearsals for a comedy they are performing at the museum later this month. They obviously recognised Peter and invited us to join them for wine and olives. They explained that we should go back to the museum on the 23rd when there will be a real donkey in there harnessed to the old olive press. Not to be missed! We had a quick internet session in the bar and Peter sampled the calamari tapas. 

Sunday 3 February
Happy birthday, Linda x

A drive to Vinuela today for lunch with Celia, Maggie, Nigel, Sue, Bob, Mike and Viv. A lovely afternoon with the unexpected bonus of celebrating the birth of Mike’s grandson that morning. We had a great time, lovely food and lively company.

Monday 4 Feb

A trip to Malaga on the bus today. We got the 09.00 bus to enable us to have lots of time there. This meant getting  up at 7.00, quite a shock for us all, it was still dark and cold outside.The bus was on time today and got us there for 10.00. We headed straight to the market and purchased various croissants (second breakfast). We walked along the marina area, looked at boats and shops (new pair of super sunglasses for Caroline) and stopped for a coffee break. Perfect coffee. From here we walked to the cathedral area. By now we were ready for a sit down and lunch. We had a magnificent feast in the sunshine serenaded by a singer playing a 5 stringed guitar. Kev enjoyed him so much he gave him some money. Or maybe that was to make him go away? We had a little walk around the shopping area and C & P purchased little gifts for the kids at home. On the way back to the bus station we stopped at the bodega to sample some of Malaga’s best. 

Tues 5 Feb

A lovely hot day today so we stayed at the house for a lazy day around the and terrace. We ventured out around 20.30 to Tantos in the village for that very Spanish dinner of Pizza. We did have a good meal and the red wine was lovely. 

Weds 6 Feb

We drove along the coast road today to Nerja and then inland to the pretty white village, Frigiliana. We arrived in Frigiliana just before 1400 and parked up to have lunch before exploring the village. We found that we had parked opposite the school and the children were being let out at this time. Whilst eating lunch we were very entertained by the goings-on. The road was supervised by the local Bobby who obviously knew everyone in the village. Cars, bikes and mothers would stop and have conversations with him and where they held up the traffic behind it just waited patiently for the conversation to end. He did control the traffic some of the time and even made a motorcyclist move off the disabled bay and onto the pavement. Interestingly, this chap was collecting his son from school. He even had a child’s helmet for him and sat him on the petrol tank of the bike to take him home. We thought the village was lovely although quite steep in places. Obviously no cars could get around the old part of the village. There were lovely views from the top. 

Credit to Peter for the picture

Peter's Pic

Thurs 7 Feb

Another sunny day today and we went for a walk, not too arduous though today. Last chance for topping up the tan today for C and P. 

Fri 8 Feb

We rather sadly took our friends to the airport today for their trip back to East Midlands airport and the onward journey to the home of great beer and marmite, Burton upon Trent. 

The 10 days has flown by as time always does when you are enjoying life and not working.  We started most days with breakfast on the terrace, generally not before 1000 unless we had to go out earlier. The late start is chiefly due the the shutters making the rooms so dark that we didn’t wake before 0830 most days. Added to that we had late dinners and a full complement of alcohol which always commenced with a gin and tonic at around 5pm. We didn’t bother with TV and had played many games - Scrabble, trivial pursuit, millionaire, and card games. We have been playing ‘take two’ with Caroline for the last 20 years. A great game and makes us all very happy! We tried over and over to become ‘virtual millionaires’ with no luck, we even got to a stage where the DVD seemed to try to help us by repeating questions from previous rounds.  We watched a couple of films on the laptop, Megamind and Tintin. The latter got top marks from everyone. Music - we had a very interesting and entertaining time with the IPods introducing each other to different artists and genres. One evening was spent playing a favorite track each, in turn. 

Caroline quickly took on the role of laundress, no one can iron and fold like her. Peter was responsible for getting everything on and off the washing line. Also washing up (no dishwasher here at Casa perro con pan). Thank you both.