Advertisement
Published: September 18th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Torrevieja #1
View from the villa Finally! Friday crept around and Clay, Hannah, Kristin, Kim, Meg and myself headed off to Alicante in southern Spain as a belated extension to Clay’s 30th birthday celebrations for some much needed vitamin D. We flew in on the Friday evening and picked up the hire car. I nominated myself to drive though I had never driven on the right or in a left side drive car before. It wasn’t as difficult as I imagined though there were certain things I went to do automatically which I had never thought about, like going to change gears and I kept slamming my hand into the door until I learnt that the gear stick was now on the right.
We found our villa and went out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The first thing we ordered – a jug of sangria each! The dinner was also momentous for being the first time Hannah has ever tried peanut butter (as part of the satay chicken)! She is a convert. After being relaxed by the sangria, we went back to the villa for a relatively early night. The next morning we headed down to Playa Flamenca, the first beach of the trip. It
Torrevieja #2
View from the villa was amazing to be back in hot sun and have the water to cool off though the beach did have some over-officious lifeguards who thought people should not be in water above their thighs.
After several hours here, we headed back to the villa and Clay and I went out to get more groceries, which was really code for the girls setting up a surprise birthday party for Clay. Surprise! He had no clue and we started off with some wine before quickly polishing off both a bottle of rum and vodka which meant it was time to head to the pub. We got a few looks as part of the surprise was that we had dressed up in sailor theme and even provided a captain’s suit for Clay. The pub also happened to have karaoke and here was the best advertisement for never retiring – they sang the most boring, depressing songs around. Liven up people! You are in Spain! We got Clay to get up and sing ‘In The Navy’, and generally made the place seem interesting before we eventually called it a night/morning.
When we woke up, we had planned well and had bacon, eggs,
First dinner
At the Chinese restaurant sausages, etc ready to cook up for a nice greasy breakfast. It went down VERY well. We then went out for a bit of a drive and had lunch at a lakes edge before heading down to Playa Mata – definitely the best beach of the trip. It was a huge beach so we had loads of the room and there were enough waves so we could bodysurf a bit as well – if we avoided the rocks.
We spent most of the afternoon here before heading back to the villa then down to the Cabo Roig ‘strip’ for dinner. We decided on an Argentinean restaurant where half of us got a bottle of the Malbec red wine. I am not a red wine fan but ever since trying it in Mendoza in Argentina, I am a convert. This one especially was probably the best wine I’ve ever had! The meat wasn’t too bad either, though not as good as the port in Montevideo, or even the Argentinean restaurant Clay and I went to in London. We went for a walk afterwards and planned to have a couple of drinks but the wine and food left us exhausted and
Kristin.... singing?
Getting into the kareoke spirit we crawled back to the villa.
On our final day after an early morning swim in the pool, we headed out to the beach again. The first beach was so packed we didn’t even bother trying to find a space and the second wasn’t much better but we managed to squeeze in for a few hours before we headed back to the villa to tidy up, grab our stuff and head back to the airport for our flight back to sunny (yeah right) London.
Thankfully for me it wasn’t too long to wait after this for my next holiday – 4 weeks of work followed by 3 weeks of holiday around Eastern Europe including Oktoberfest. Before I jetted off for that, Kristin and I went for an Italian dinner followed by ‘We Will Rock You’ which was fantastic – definitely one of the best musicals I’ve seen. Our Alicante group also had a Spanish reunion as over our trip, we never made it to a Spanish restaurant so we made up for it by going to one in London. It makes sense really…….. Then along with several Leeds games and the US Open, the Rugby World Cup started
Night out
Me, Kim, Meg and Clay and I indulged in a feast of sport. Although I couldn’t be back in NZ, I watched as many games as possible and hopefully when I get back to London, it will be just in time to see the All Blacks in the semi-finals and marching on! Fingers crossed!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.179s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 25; qc: 102; dbt: 0.1371s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb