Sunday, 28 August 2016

Spanish Bathrooms...and some of my other least favourite things

I was going to do a post about Spanish oddities, but a few whinges will make their way into this particular post.

I woke several times during the night because the light switch for the overhead lights is on the bead head, in the middle of the bed. So each time I rolled over and moved my arm along there I turned on either my or Marjan's overhead light. Who thought THAT was a good idea? Wrong. In between they have a plug, so you can recharge your iphone, and leave it.......oh between you in bed! Again ....... wrong. Added to that, it was the first time on this trip that we have run into the particular Spanish insanity, the double width pillow for the double bed ....... I want my own pillow....I wanna squish it and pound it, and put it in odd positions …....I do not want to wrestle Marjan for control of one pillow ...... I do not want to switch on the light accidentally when I try, either.

Then there are bathrooms! I believe Spain has water issues, particularly here in the south. This could be why bathrooms are designed to get you out of them as soon as possible. They are all clean, they are all tiled, they all manage to find room for a specialist foot washing basin, but why no fans? It is like a sauna in the warm weather, the room is soon so steamy that you need to leave it to get dry. Also, any movement involves me knocking something over. But my particular beef, as if the above was not particular enough, is the bloody showers! In no particular order:
  • four Spanish showers: four ways of managing the hot/cold balance;
  • Shower heads should aim water at people in the shower, not walls, ceilings or windows;
  • Showering requires some movement of arms to get soap etc to appropriate places and having to bump fittings and walls, or alternately get wrapped in two shower curtains whilst doing so is very irritating.

Marjan is not quite so irritated; though she did at one point suggest hard jail time for litterers.

OK, I feel better now!

It has actually been a rather nice, calm day. Marjan's foot required some more rest, so we wandered up to the castle, and spent most of the morning watching the vultures soaring and coming in to land. We are nerdy enough, that just that, was a heap of fun. In between we looked at the rural scenery and the next white village






When we got a bit thirsty, we came down the hill to the plaza for a coffee, and to fill up our water bottle at the town fountain. ....we also bought some bread, jamon and cheese for lunch ….when the Saturday crowd in the plaza became too much for us we wandered back up the hill again, found a shady spot and lunched, whilst keeping an eye out for …. more vultures. A local resident dropped by, climbed into the garden behind us and presented us with a couple of ripe figs for desert. He also pointed out a vulture nest in the cliff across the valley and said apparently there was a chick in there recently. I could not see it.







When it got hot, we went to the beach again. Only this time we learned our lesson. We went to the bar before the swim, so that fussbudget Marjan could not complain. Oh yeah, and I had to park like a local........ across the median strip.

Finally we went into the town square, planted ourselves at a bar and watched Saturday in Casares evolve. More people, more horses, a party, mass at the church, churros after, street closing by the police, locals ignoring street closing, watching the pizza delivery woman scoot around on her scooter, eating some boquerones and a whole squid, drinking some wine...and Manolo joining our table for a while. Manolo is a middle aged Down's syndrome local, who sat at our table for a while, drank his lemonade, and told us about a wedding Saturday week and how he was going to get all dressed up.


We were just a part of the broad canvas of the town.

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