Spain, Las Ramblas, last day crisis

This was our last day in Spain and with a mid afternoon flight and all morning to get to Alicante we had planned for a relaxing morning and a leisurely drive back to the airport.

I couldn’t lie in of course because when I wake up it’s a bit like switching a light on – I simply cannot doze and think about it and I just have to be up and away and out in the sun.  Tea on the terrace as usual and when Richard had joined me we finished off the last of the food and had a continental breakfast consisting of fruit, ham, cheese and yoghurt and after breakfast Richard set about cleaning the apartment from top to bottom in his usual thorough style.

I do confess to feeling a bit guilty as I sat on the patio but I did make the occasional helpful contribution but Richard was in full Mrs Mop mode and was cleaning furiously and I couldn’t match his impressive productivity.  I packed my bags and tidied my bedroom as best I could in the certain knowledge that there would be a full-scale military style inspection any time soon.  When the place had reached the required standard of cleanliness Richard made a last trip to the rubbish bins and the recycling centre and I went back to my seat on the terrace and breathed a sigh of relief.  The challenge now of course was not too make any more mess in the last two hours at the apartment.

There was some activity in the garden and some important looking people seemed to be assembling.  Ah yes, the Annual General Meeting of the Neighbourhood Association.  Pete from next door was there looking all self important and the man from across the way who had challenged us on the first day and two other people who obviously represented the Las Ramblas estate management company.

I couldn’t imagine that they could possibly have had a very big agenda but the meeting went on for nearly an hour with a full inspection of the garden and furious note scribbling to record their conversation.  I wonder what momentous decisions they made?  We were unlikely to find out because they kept well away from our side of the garden and nodded and gestured as they whispered in a conspiratorial style well out of earshot of a couple of non-owners!   After a while the two visitors left and the two owners lingered in deep discussion, probably comparing the size of their patios and bragging off about property values and then they went their separate ways and both marched off in a self important manner.

The morning passed quickly after that and after Richard made a final inspection to see if he had missed anything and after satisfying himself that there was no further cleaning to be done we loaded the car, locked up and set off for the airport.

We had judged our timing to absolute perfection so there was plenty of time to stop off in San Miguel and find a supermarket for some duty free purchases and we drove into the town and found a couple of promising looking shops.   And it was then that I had that awful sinking feeling when you just know that you have forgotten something.  Where was my mobile phone?  I ransacked my pockets and my bag but I knew that it was useless of course because it was a certainty that I had left it behind in the apartment.  Oh bugger!  I gave Richard the bad news and then there was nothing for it but to go all the way back to retrieve it, a round trip journey of forty minutes that was likely to destroy our meticulous planning.  Back at the apartment, sure enough, there it was, on the dining room table where I had put it in full view so that I could be sure that I wouldn’t forget it.

This unscheduled interruption to our itinerary transformed our planned gentle drive into a frantic dash.  It was all my fault of course but Richard has enormous amounts of patience and although he was probably thinking ‘what a complete pillock!’ he was nothing less than thoroughly supportive as I drove with frazzled nerves back through San Miguel (and I didn’t think that I would be doing that again today) and then on to the motorway system and off to Alicanté hopefully before the check-in desk closed.

There were miles of road works of course and a lot of midday traffic and we had to stop for fuel but despite all this we arrived at the airport with time to spare just as Richard had confidently predicted throughout the entire journey.

The first part of check-in was relatively easy except that I nearly forgot about returning the car keys and Richard had to remind me as we stood in the queue. This involved two trips to the Hertz desk because on the first one I forgot the documentation and was sent back.  Annoying therefore that when I returned the second time and after waiting for an ice age for someone to complete what looked like a very simple clerical operation was informed that I didn’t really need it after all!

Then we were sent off to a separate office to pay the excess daylight robbery charge for our golf clubs.  There were two men in the queue making flight availability enquiries and the clerk was dealing with it at the speed of a forming stalactite and Richard could sense that this was taking my patience levels back into the red zone so with the skill of a master magician he produced two plastic beakers and a bottle of beer and this was enough to take me back down to only yellow alert status.  The two men finished their enquiry and faced with a choice of options had a bit of a debate and decided not to bother, what the….? Richard poured me some more beer.  Whilst waiting for eternity I almost made the need for the mad dash back for the mobile phone irrelevant because I decided to drop it onto the tiled floor where it fell apart in two spectacular pieces.

Panic over we went through to the departure gate and after a short wait at the departure gate we were on the plane, a bit of a delay to begin with, the safety lecture, take off, two-for-one gin and tonics for me and a snooze for Richard and very soon we were back in a very wet and windy Birmingham which compared most unfavourably with the weather we had left behind in Spain.  Never mind, there is always another year….!

 

Spain, Lost without a Road Map, Clues or Ideas!

“We waded out at the edge of the sea to a fishing village and it was so lovely we promised to go back and stay. When I did go there, ten years later it was unrecognisable.  Only the name remained of what was once so exquisite”  Patrice Chaplin – ‘Albany Park’

I managed to stay in bed until about eight and being a naturally early riser this was a bit of a challenge.  Finally I could wait no longer and crept out of bed and onto the balcony with a cup of tea to enjoy the early morning rays of the sun.  I was unsuccessful in my efforts to be quiet and predictably woke Richard up with the cranking mechanism on the window blind that creaked all the way to the top but thankfully he wasn’t too grumpy about it.

We planned to drive and find the La Finca golf course that we would be playing tomorrow and we decided to find a breakfast on the road.  Rather than take the direct route through the village of San Miguel Richard decided to take the coast road and then cut inland at an appropriate junction.  Unfortunately we didn’t have a map and so for directions we were relying upon a hopelessly inadequate apartment sales brochure that seemed to indicate more or less where it might be but without the sort of precision that you would expect from say the AA.

This wasn’t entirely sensible as you might imagine, a bit like Stanley setting off into the jungle to find Livingstone with a drawing of the River Nile scratched on the back of a fag packet.  And then just to make things even more difficult for ourselves we forget to take the inadequate directions anyway and found ourselves setting off with only a vague idea about our intended destination.

Things went well at first because it was almost impossible to get lost on the coast road so long as you kept the sea in view and to the right, which wasn’t especially difficult even for us.  It wasn’t a particularly attractive road; in fact I would have to say that it was downright ugly, with the usual scruffy strip of development, which seems to be a feature of the Spanish Costas.

Unfinished pavements lined the road on both sides and beyond those were a sprawl of stylishly challenged buildings that looked as though they had been thrown up without any regard to planning or design and it was all finished off with all of the eyesores associated with supermarkets, garages, excessive advertising hoardings and flags and bunting that were waving everywhere.  It was a real assault on the eyes and certainly wouldn’t inspire me to go rushing for a travel brochure when I returned home.  Later we passed by Torrevieja, a vast sprawling resort thirty miles south of Alicante that looked like exactly the sort of place that you wouldn’t choose to spend your holidays unless you were forced to as some form of punishment.

We drove north past the town and passed by the salt lakes, or Las Salinas, which were the principle basis of the town’s economy until the tourist trade began in earnest in the 1960’s and everything else stopped while the town concentrated on becoming a tourist hot-spot to rival Benidorm, approximately the same distance north of Alicante.

Finally we passed out of the urban sprawl and Richard identified a turn that he had pinpointed as the road to La Finca and we turned left away from the coast and towards the abundant citrus groves and the small towns hiding away from the concrete of the coastal resorts.

After a while it was clear to me that this had quite possibly not been the correct turn and we wandered around aimlessly for a few kilometres while we tried to guess which way to go.  Finally my patience was tested too far and in an effort to take control of the situation I made a guess of my own.  Richard disagreed with my decision and confident that I was right and we were lost I told him that he knew nothing about our whereabouts. He quickly proved me wrong when he pinpointed our position with an impressive accuracy that cruelly exposed the fact that out of the two of us it was in fact me that was lost.

What a beautiful course it was and we sat on the terrace and had an expensive beer while we watched the groups of players teeing off on the first under the watchful eye of the course marshal and we plotted our tactics for tomorrow.  Actually this consisted of only one simple strategy and that was to get the ball off of the first tee if at all possible with the minimum of embarrassment, if we could achieve that we figured that we would be able to take things as they came after that.  We left the course looking forward to the return trip in the morning.

We drove back sensibly using the direct route and we returned to the coast without any further incident and arrived at the small seaside town of La Zenia where we stopped for our breakfast, which was now, on account of the time, really our lunch.

There was a nice clean sandy beach and a convenient restaurant situated in an opportunely elevated position so that we could eat, enjoy a beer and keep an eye on the beach activity below.  The lucky-lucky men pedalling their fake designer sunglasses, watches and belts amused us because they appeared to suffer from serious memory deficiency on account of the fact that their sales technique was to offer their goods for sale and after rejection give it about fifteen minutes or so (sometimes less) before trying once again to sell exactly the same merchandise to exactly the same people who had said no thank you only a very short time previously.  These boys really could take rejection squarely on the chin!

After a satisfying tapas lunch we returned to our apartment and were pleased to find that it was just as deserted as we had left it and we enjoyed the rest of the day lazing about in the garden, swimming in the pools and sun bathing on lilo beds bobbing about on the water.  Later we went back to Villamartin and stopped by the supermarket to stock up on more supplies and in the town we dined at the same restaurant and had enjoyed a fish medley starter and paella to finish.

Villamartin was nice enough but not very traditional Spain.  It is a purpose built resort town with everything the British holidaymaker in Spain seems to demand.  Most disappointing of all is the overwhelming Britishness of the place, the restaurants, the menu’s, the pubs and most of all the staff who were all sons and daughters of ex-pats who probably moved here a dozen years or so ago.  It made me wonder where all the Spanish residents had gone but of course there never were any Spanish residents here in the first place because developments like this were built especially for the British migrants.

You have to go a few miles inland to find anything really traditionally Spanish here.  And the British obviously don’t integrate very well either and it is a sad fact that they want to bring a little bit of Essex with them to their host country because they don’t need the culture or the way of life, only the sun and the cheap booze, and that is a real shame and the reason why it would never appeal to me to sell up and move across to join them.

Riga, A Russian Taxi Driver’s Perspective

For evening meal we choose the out-of-town Lido amusement park where we had been before on our previous visit.  Kim was certain that it was a very precise eight-minute walk but we were all pleased that we overruled her and took the twenty-minute taxi ride instead.

The Lido looked wonderful, there was a skating rink with people enjoying themselves on the ice, someone had forgotten to switch off the Christmas lights and the whole place was like a huge fairy grotto made all the more impressive with the liberal covering of snow below our feet and a clear velvet black sky above our heads.  Inside there was a sumptuous display of self service fare all carefully arranged by meat types which to be honest only vaguely assisted selection, faced as we were by an overwhelming choice of food.

This place didn’t seem to fit the vision of Latvia as being a place to get away from and move to the east of England instead.  I know that with the lowest average wage it is officially the poorest country in the EU, and for that reason tens of thousands of Latvians have left for England where they can earn as much in a week as they earn in a month back home but this place was lively and vibrant, the food was excellent and inexpensive, and the customers seemed affluent and happy.  With women in stylish fur coats and extravagant high heel boots none of this seemed consistent with tales of migrant worker woes back home!

The journey back to the hotel was one of the highlights of the holiday! We left the Lido and looked for a taxi and it was just our luck to select one with a lunatic escaped from an asylum for a driver.  When it comes to taxi drivers we certainly can pick them.

Kim made the first approach and asked if he could take some of us back to Riga and to our surprise he indicated that he could take all five of us in his Renault Megane.

This was a vehicle that was clearly unsuitable for accommodating five passengers and probably not licensed to do so either!  Kim doubted this and just for clarification enquired a second time and clearly running short on patience he gave her his “why can’t this stupid woman understand look”, and immediately increased his carrying capacity to an absurdly optimistic eight!  Kim looked even more startled by this and even examined the interior of the car for concealed seats by sticking her head through the open window.  He responded by raising his eyeballs so far into the top of his head that if he’d had laser vision he would have fried his brains.  This was our cue to accept the five in a taxi invitation and we piled in.

Then the fun really started!  He immediately quizzed us about our national origins: “Where are you from?” He enquired, “England” said Micky, “London?”he followed up.  This is a standard opening conversation with a European taxi driver that frequent travellers will be familiar with; the only place they really know in England is the capital, and sometimes Manchester, so they always make reference to it “No, Lincolnshire” Micky informed him without managing to raise a flicker of recognition and immediately closing down this topic of conversation.

Taxi driver “Do you know Tony Blair?”, Micky “Well, not personally, no”

The scary driver went on to explain how from his personal perspective life was desperately unfair in Latvia.  From his explanation of conditions we discovered that he was a Russian living in Riga and by his own self-assessment suffering all sorts of discrimination (which is hardly surprising really when they (the Russians) had spent forty years or so kicking the shit out of the place).  His solution to the problem was the advocacy of a red revolution and I for one thought it sensible not to disagree too robustly.   He spoke with a thick Russian accent and had the unfortunate habit of preceding each statement with an unpleasant phlegmy hack that was half cough and half retch and definitely only half human.

“Times are hard, it is very expensive to live in Riga”, “No way” said Micky, half mocking him now, “This place is very reasonable!” This led to a few seconds of choking laughter and uncontrollable hacking by the driver and after a few more cost of living exchanges Micky, fully mocking him now, did eventually concede that life was getting a bit tougher in the west; “Yes,” he said “I have to agree, things are getting harder in England too, look at us, we used to have two wives each but now we can only afford one and a third to share between us!”

Then the driver lamented that it would cost him a month’s wages to stay three nights in a Riga hotel and again Micky put him straight and corrected his estimate to just the one night. This man was good fun and he even thought it was amusing when we directed him to the wrong hotel and he had to make readjustments to his route to get us to our intended destination.  And it only cost ten Lats, that’s what I call good value, a taxi ride, conversation and excellent entertainment thrown in.

Actually Russians have had a bit of a hard time since independence because when Latvia broke free in 1991, it granted automatic citizenship to those who had lived in the first independent Latvian state, between 1918 and 1940, but not to those who immigrated here after the war, when Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union.

Under Soviet rule during the Stalin years thousands were arrested and sent to Siberian labour camps, or executed. Later, hundreds of thousands of Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians flooded into the republic under a deliberate policy of Russification. The Latvian language was squeezed out of official use.  Latvians were resentful citizens of the USSR and by 1991 they comprised only half of the population of their own country, while in Riga only a third were Latvian.

Today Latvia is determined to revive the national identity. It says that its policy towards Russians who immigrated there during the Soviet period is aimed not at punishing them for the ‘crimes’ of the Soviet regime but at ensuring that they learn Latvian and integrate fully into society. In order to naturalise, Russians must take a test in Latvian, and pass an exam about Latvian history in which they must ‘correctly’ answer that the country was occupied and colonised, not liberated, by the Soviet Union in 1945.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Pisa, Sleepless Nights at Hotel Royal Victoria

Because Ryanair had recently introduced charges for travelling with hold luggage this was our first attempt at restricting luggage to cabin baggage only.  At the airport I checked in but things became a little difficult when the security checks identified the corkscrew that we had concealed in the middle of a bag.

This was quite risky because the airport web site about restricted items in luggage is quite specific on the matter of corkscrews.   We knew that you were not supposed to carry one on board of course but as we consider it to be such an essential piece of travel kit thought we would try it on all the same.  The scanning machine was much more efficient than we had given it credit for however and there was some explaining and apologising to do before being allowed to proceed.  I am still perplexed by exactly what damage the airlines think a passenger can do with a corkscrew that couldn’t be done with the sharp bit of a belt buckle or a pair of metal spectacles, but rules are rules I suppose no matter how ridiculous they may appear to be.

The flight was uneventful and arrived a couple of hours later in a dreary, wet and overcast Galileo Galilei Airport in Pisa and as the Airport is only a very short distance from the city so we looked for a taxi to take us to our hotel.

Now everyone knows of course that Italian drivers are certifiable and I am now able to absolutely confirm this because it was just our luck to get the craziest taxi driver on the rank.

He drove at madcap speeds into the city, dodging down back streets and directing the car into impossibly tight spaces and then he rounded off this virtuoso lunatic performance by demonstrating some advanced driving skills that involved having two very loud and very animated mobile telephone conversations on two separate phones whilst steering the car with his knees. With his knees!  This man was clearly on the run from an asylum and our nervous laughter only encouraged him to play some more tricks as he switched lanes and negotiated the busy traffic with careless abandon.  He had obviously spent some time perfecting this talent because he continued to direct the car quite expertly without even having to drop his breakneck speed by ever taking his foot of the accelerator and we were mightily relieved therefore when he slewed to a halt outside the Hotel Royal Victoria and we were thankful to get out of the car in one piece.

We checked in and found our room and knew immediately that this was going to be a different sort of hotel.  Originally opened in 1837 it had retained all of its original features.  Quite literally that is!  We were allocated one of the hotel’s finest suites that had an old wooden door with a temperamental lock that was reluctant to work but which when finally opened revealed a generous sized room with fascinating decoration and furniture, a solid wooden floor and interesting pictures of old Pisa decorating the walls.  It had opulent decoration, antique furniture and a front window that had a balcony with good views over the River Arno directly outside.

The balcony looked rather unsafe so I was careful not to step out onto it for fear of falling into the street below in a pile of crumbled masonry, and there were some decaying shutters that looked as though they would surely fall apart if anyone ever attempted to open and shut them so I decided to leave them well alone as well.   At the opposite end of the room was a an old fashioned bathroom that had everything that you could possibly want in a bathroom but looked as though it had been salvaged in a sanatorium clearance sale.  This was not a problem however, the taps ran, the toilet flushed and there was a bidet, which, being English, we didn’t require for the purpose for which it is intended and was therefore a handy place for Kim to deposit her bathroom travel bag.

Outside it was still raining so without walking too far we turned left and walked along a busy road until reaching a hospitable looking bar in a square with the inevitable statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in what turned out to be the student district of the city.  If we had walked on only a little further there was a lively little district with more choice but it didn’t matter, this place was agreeable and we only really wanted a nightcap so we found an empty table near the window with some precariously high chairs that wobbled on the uneven floors and had a glass of red wine – and then we had another.

Back at the hotel I became aware for the first time that this was an exceedingly noisy room with all of the road sounds outside seemingly amplified several times over by the darkness.  It was a strange thing but turning the light on seemed to reduce the noise but it returned immediately it was turned out again.  I am sure that there is some plausible scientific explanation for that.  When I had selected this hotel I had read some hotel guest reviews on an Internet site that had repeatedly pointed this out but I had paid little attention to these when I made the reservation.  I optimistically assumed that eventually the noise would abate and settled down and slept reasonably well because tonight I was tired after the whole day travelling.  Kim on the other hand found it a lot more difficult and she had a disturbed and restless night on account of the noise.

I am now advised that the hotel has been renovated and upgraded and some of my observations may no longer be accurate: www.pisaconnection.it