5/5 – Dad & Val Arrive

For this past week, my father and his friend Val have been staying with us, they arrived last Sunday (29th April) and were delayed by more than an hour (not something that would have helped a nervous flyer I guess!)

As they arrived late on Sunday we didn’t get to do anything other than get back to the apartment, have a chat and a “wee drink” and go to bed, the following day the weather was glorious and Liesl had already got up very early to do some work, while she was finishing off what she had to do, Dad, Val and I went orange picking (at the same place as Liesl and I had visited before), in about 20 minutes the 3 of us had picked a massive amount of oranges, I have been juicing them all week and I would say that we have about 3kg of oranges left after making 10.5 litres of fresh juice and after a weeks worth of 4 people eating them!

In the afternoon we went over to La Marina to visit Liesl’s mum and Ken as they would be flying back to Ireland early on Wednesday morning, we spent some time with them sitting on their terrace chatting and enjoying the sun.

Tuesday was a bank holiday; however Liesl worked for most of the morning as she was quite busy, in the afternoon we all went for a walk on the board walk in La Mata. My work is very quiet at the moment, I do hope that it picks up over the next week or so as its a little scary when the phones don’t ring!

On Wednesday and Thursday Liesl and I had arranged for Dad and Val to go on some of the free blanket trips that are locally arranged, its a full coach trip out for the day, all free of charge, the only requirement is that you visit the factory where blankets are made and listen to a presentation for an hour about the blankets. On Wednesday they went to the trip that spends time in Benidorm. Val loves Benedorm and has been several times before, she took pleasure in showing dad the old town – don’t think that they saw any Sticky Vicky shows – well if they did then they kept it quiet 😉

On Thursday they went to Guardalest which is a picturesque mountain village, they said that they did enjoy it but as it hailed for some of the day, it was spoilt a little – they would like to return on a good sunny day as they said the views were breathtaking.

Last night we went out for a meal to Cocoas, dad very kindly paid and afterwards we came back to the apartment and our friends Gerry and Trisha, who are over from Scotland at the moment came round for more than a few sherbets’ – great night.

Today we are planning to go to the Saturday market in Santa pola (woohoo) and probably have a walk in the sun as its looking like another hot hot day – not a cloud in the sky! Tomorrow I expect we will go to the Sunday market in the lemon groves and we have been invited to a BBQ in La Marina, I shall also have to arrange for the “transfer of the pensioners” – lol, dad and Val are spending next week with Val’s son, Shaun who lives near Quesada (about 20 km away from us).

As way of a minor footnote, its been two weeks since I part exchanged the Barchetta for a Citroen Picasso, it was a very sad day, not made any easier by liesl’s comment when we test drove the Picasso – “its not as quick as the Barchetta is it?” The Picasso is a MUCH more practice car, its large enough for our shopping and the seats go down so collecting large items is not a problem, its a diesel and does about 1000km to a full tank, where the Barchetta struggled to get 300km to the same size tank, it has cruise control and satnav although the latter is not working at the moment as the CD is for Belguim! I still pine for the Barchetta, as does Liesl, but we didn’t come here to have everything that we want, we came here to have a less stressful and more relaxed way of life and I guess a convertible, hand built Italian sports car doesn’t fit with that ideal however much I would like it to.