Olive Groves in Ontinyent

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We have surfaced! The 24 hours spent getting out here were relatively uneventful. I just felt like Tom Hanks in Terminal Man for a little while there. It is a good thing we went to the airport early as Air Canada had some kind of 'electrical failure' and had problems with their automatic baggage checkin - the line up just to check baggage snaked all around the airport. It took a great leap of faith to leave our baggage in one of many piles with the assurance that it would be safe and get on the right plane - but it did! We said Thank You in four languages that day - English, French, German and Spanish.
I can't believe we have already been in Spain one week and that we will soon be saying goodbye to Margaret and Edward and hello to Niki and Dieter.
Margaret and I have not seen each other for 11 years, so the last few days have been very much about catching up and settling into the Spanish way of life - which certainly has not been hard to do. If you look on the map Ontinyent is about 60 k south of Valencia and is NOT on the tourist route. They are living in rural Spain complete with 2 plus acres of olive groves, fig, orange, pear and walnut trees and loads of veggies. All our meals are eaten out side.
Life comes to a halt in Spain in the afternoons - it really does. All stores, banks etc. close up at about 1:30pm and do not open again until 4:30 or 5 pm. Somewhere during this time a long leaisurely lunch is eaten and dinner is eaten from 8:30 on. Life revolves around the village square where everyone gathers in the evening to visit, drink coffee etc.
We have been to Bocairent, a medieval village and to the castle in Xativa and we enjoyed a full day in Valencia, which is lovely. As you can imagine there are beautiful old buildings with amazing architecture but there are also some stunning new buildings as well.
The pace of life in this area is easy and the Spanish people are kind, helpful and polite - no tourist rip offs here - things may change when we get to the cities - I will let you know.
There are some ex pats in this area but not too many (yet). I can see why they come - for the lower prices and the lifestyle - just hope they don't eventually bring their problems with them!
Tomorrow we will fly to Malaga

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Comments

[martin]

Wow...
Sounds just perfect right about now!! I think that I could handle that for a month or so... perfect lifestlye and environment. Yes.. time does fly. So glad to see that you are having fun... and are truly into the swing of things.