15/7 – Well That Was a Busy Week!

On Sunday we went to for a walk along the harbour in Alicante and had a drink in a cafe that overhung the water, Richard and I picked out the new BlueMoon yacht, the 3rd one from the left in the picture (below), we decided that we would call it ‘expenses’ in honour of the 3rd director of BlueMoon, Sean 😉

Rich and Caz went back on Tuesday evening (hehe, back to rainy old England, sorry couldn’t resist) and Liesl and I packed in a couple of long days work to try to get on top of everything we needed to do, we had a new front door fitted (well new to us anyway, its a cast off from the guy on the floor below us – Hans – who was replacing just about everything in his apartment!), its a great door, bolts everywhere and is MUCH better than the one we had on there before, it had really seen better days. We had been quoted 800€ to purchase a new door and fit it into a new frame, however with the new frame and fitting we have managed to save over 400€ (bonus as we really couldn’t have afforded to spend the 800€), the only thing that I have to do is sort out my neighbours computer as part of the deal – sounds like a fair swap to me!

On Thursday we had arranged to visit a couple (Jane and Colin) that run a bed and breakfast high up in the mountains behind Crevillente, a customer of mine, Brian, who is also a fellow contributor to the Jungle Drums magazine knows them well and asked me to visit to see if I could get their wireless Internet connection working. They had agreed to make us lunch in return for my services and both Liesl and Hetty were to come with me. The drive took around an hour in Brian’s 4×4 – and believe me it was essential for the last part of the assent!

Well I was not able to fix their Internet connection as there was simply no G3 connection available where their house was, but I have not given up on the challenge, I WILL get them some kind of Internet connection – even if I have to drag a cable all the way there from our apartment!

One of the incredible things about where Jane and Colin run their bed and breakfast is that they are right opposite one of the last breeding pairs of Bonelli’s Eagles in the world (apparently there are less than 700 breeding pairs left in existence!), a fact that brings ‘twitchers’ (that’s birdwatchers, not people who suffer from Turrets Syndrome) from all over the world to stay and look at these incredible birds – I’m told that they are incredible as they totally failed to show up when we were there – typical!

Anyway, as you can see from the picture (click on it to make it larger), which do it no justice at all, it’s a breathtaking place and we will defiantly be returning.

After we were driven home we had previously arranged to visit friends John and Patricia near Torrelano (Alicante), John is a professional golf coach and was returning the next day to Ireland to continue teaching – he will be back only in October so it was important to us to meet up with them before he went back.

We went for a meal with them and had a great time, it will be a shame that we won’t see him again until October. We were still sitting, chatting, at 1am outside the restaurant, nice and warm sitting in shorts and tea-shirts. We finally staggered home well into the early hours of Friday morning, crashed into bed knowing that I had a job in the morning an hours’ drive away and I needed to be there at 9:30 – talk about burning the candle at both ends!

We both survived Friday and were so nakered by the afternoon that we decided to have a Siesta, good job as well as we received a text message from Dorothy (Liesl’s ex-step mother) who was over on holiday and wanted to meet up – great, she is such a laugh.

Refreshed from our Siesta we met up with Dorothy, her husband Jim and his brother Dennis at La Paripe (a local Spanish bar) for a couple of drinks, we then went onto La Fantasia (a local Swedish restaurant) and had a lovely meal – all of which was paid for surreptitiously (as we had no idea that it was being paid for) by Jim, we had a fantastic time with them and afterwards we went onto their place in AltaMar II for a few drinkies, again staggering home in the early hours of Saturday morning!

And you wonder why I never get time to update this blog!

On Saturday Liesl had agreed to help out at a local Cancer charity event so we went down to the Carabassi bars at 12:00 when the event was due to start. At 1pm people started to arrive to setup stalls – lol, well I guess this IS Spain!

Sunday was a pretty lazy day, catching up on little bits of work and trying to catch up on lost sleep – although Liesl still has this annoying habit of being able to get up and start work well before 7am even if she got into bed at 2am seeing double and singing the “Goblin Song” 5 hours earlier (sickening!)

If you are not familiar with the “Goblin Song” then you have been missing out on some classic BlackAdder – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewR5HANQWE0