Spain

Ok, here's the posting for Spain, I will endeavour to get commentary for the previous posting completed at some stage. The first photo here is of Hamish after he had lost his boarding pass out the window at the departure gate. On Ryanair you don't get allocated seats and it's a mad rush to get on first, if you haven't got priority booking, so you can seat where you want to. When Hamish lost his boarding pass the lady at the gate let us go on first so we got six seats together. We got to Spain about 10pm and were picked up by uncle Jimmy. Jimmy was not used to driving from the airport at night and we ended up going the wrong way for about 50km before Jimmy realised that we were going the wrong way. We got to where we were going, Jimmy's mate Eric's at about 12.30am.

Here we all are on our first day in Spain, bathing in the Banya, a place where warm mineral water comes out of the ground, very nice and relaxing. You can see and lake in the background that is used for water for the cities of Granada and Almeria and also hydro power generation.

After the banya we went to a pommy restaurant for Sunday roast, a massive meal followed by may cerveras (thavesas, beers) and vino tintos (red wines). Seemed to be big part of our trip to Spain, mucho cerveras. Apparently if you speak loud enough, slow enough and put o at the end of each word the Spanish can understand you, not. I found it quite good to try and use the phase book and I think people were more appreciative and helpful if they could see you trying.

Jimmy has a villa on the outskirts of the village of Freila and here some photos from around the village, peppers drying on the side of a house.

Two old boys processing almonds

Here we are swimming in the lake, the temperature in Spain while we were there was about 28 degrees mid day. In the morning it would start at about 19 degrees. The Spanish apparently get up early do their work, go home ( the bar) at about two for a sleep siesta (drink), then go back to work at about 5. We didn't get round to having a siesta as we got up late and ate and drank all day, with minimal activities such as swimming, golf, swimming, market, etc.

Here's one of the holes on the Valle del Este golf course I played on.

Here's Caleb on the coast at Vera while Hamish and I were playing golf.

Here we are after lunch by the dam end of the lake one day, the oldies were sleeping.

Here's a view back up the valley to Jimmy's place, olive trees in the valleys and almond trees on the ridges.

Jimmy's place in the evening prior to us going down to the village for more cervesas and vino tintos, yeah baby, it's a hard life.

View through the almond trees to Jimmy's villa with Freila in the background.

Us with Jimmy before we left for Granada and the plane back to England.

Here we are at the top of Granada looking towards the Alhambra (I think that's how you spell it)

I do know how to turn these photo's around but forgot to turn this one around, sorry Al. When we got to Granada and boarded our plane we were informed that there had been a bird strike on landing and the plane needed some work prior to takeoff. This meant that we had to stay over night in Granada, Ryanair said that they would reimburse our cost so I hope they do, it ended up costing us about $700 extra for the six of us.

All in all Spain was a very cool place, nice and hot, good beer, and good food and cheap in comparison to some places we've been. I think we will be back to see Jimmy in Freila again some time.