Into the light

We are on holiday! Yes, I know being retired makes it sound like every day is a holiday, but we are actually away from home. We greeted our new catsitters this morning with the usual instructions (just ignore him till he’s ready to acknowledge you) and then off we went.

The journey would have gone well if I hadn’t made the rookie navigation error of thinking Google Maps knew what I meant when I typed in “Pals, Catalonia”. Considering we know the area quite well, it was remiss of me not to notice it was taking us to a suburb of Girona called Pals until we were heading into Girona with S, who was driving, repeatedly grumbling that the route wasn’t logical. A swift course correction saw us only wasting about 20 minutes before getting back on the right track, to get to “Pals, Vila medievala” (who knew to type that in) at the correct Spanish lunchtime of 2:30. We had had lots of coffee and little to eat by then, so we were starving.

S’s selected restaurant was not in the attractive part of town (as seen in my blip) and clearly wasn’t a tourist trap. It was so crowded we had to wait for a table though. The meal was “correct” as we say in French, very traditional, but good value for money, 30 euros for three copious courses each, a bottle of wine, and another of water.

We reached our actual destination of Begur at around 4:30. We spent three months here in 2012 (the year I started blipping) but have only made one brief visit since, in 2013. After we’d settled in to the hotel (bland, but comfortable, central and in a quiet street with a view of the castle from our balcony) we went for a wander round to refresh our memories. Not a huge amount has changed, though commerce in the form of shops, bars, and restaurants, seems to be flourishing more than it was then. Our old haunt El Tapas de Begur is still there, virtually unchanged, so we’ve just got back from having a couple of drinks and some tapas there (total cost the same as our lunch!). Research has been done for birthday/anniversary lunch. And catsitter J has Whatsapped me to say Mystère has eaten some tuna and is now purring and allowing himself to be stroked. Amazing!