The twilight zone

Phew ... a busy few days, with no time to even think about blipping. Having got back from the UK, I spent all weekend at choir practice. And after choir on Sunday I went straight back out to my book group (the English one). On Monday morning we ran errands in town and then met our house-sitters R and A for lunch (finding somewhere open for lunch on a Monday in January was challenging ... well done Coco Sweet!).

We took our visitors home, and introduced them to Mystère (eeeek!), instructing them to just ignore him. This worked; he stayed in the same room with them. Then we all went up to the bergerie to visit A and his happy sheep and finished the evening around the fire with Christmas cake (brought by our visitors), galette des rois (bought by me) and blanquette de Limoux.

This morning we had an early appointment with our chiropodist friends to take photos. It took much longer than expected, but we finally made it back home at about 10 o'clock, flung our baggage into the car, and set off for our little adventure. Eight hours later we had made it to Xátiva. S had booked a cheap very charming hotel for our overnight stop without realising it was completely inaccessible by car. Manoeuvring around streets literally inches wider than the car looking for it in the dark was exactly what I could do without after a day's driving. At one point S got out of the car, ostensibly to ask for directions, and completely disappeared, which was somewhat alarming ... eventually I spotted him in the distance staking out a parking space. So I parked the car, and we trudged about half a mile to the hotel, with two stops en route to ask the way.

The guy at the hotel directed us to a pretty square lined with tapas bars and restaurants, neglecting to tell us that on a Tuesday evening in January they are all closed. Still, back on the main drag where we had parked we found the one open bar in town, which was doing a roaring trade in copas de vino, bread, and jamón, so soon all was well again. Onwards tomorrow ...