UP early doors, and spent some time watching the imbeciles actually queuing at 8:00 to be allowed to put their towels down. Some of the loungers have towels on for most of the day with no one there. It is a self fulfilling process though, as because people do it, then in order to get a bed, you also have to do it – stupid.
So we went down just after 8:00 and had a little swim. This was nice,hardly anyone else around, almost the whole of the pool to ourselves – although with five people in the pool it was a little crowded for me. We spent around half hour in the pool, which was surprisingly cold when you first got in it – then off for the first of many massive breakfasts. Standard hotel fare, big huge buffet with everything you could want from fruit, cereals, bread, cheese, hams, bacon (well a sort of European bacon), eggs, chicken nuggets, chips and on and on. I immediately got into a routine which stayed with me for the remained. Two rolls, lots of meat and cheese and some orange juice.
Once sated, we decided to find the “private” beach the hotel may or may not have, it may not, as far as we could see. So instead we walked along the coast to the other town – Pineda de Mar. This seemed like quite a trek, and Kate couldn’t wait to get in the sea, but wait she did ;o)
We had a little look around, and big brave Kate climbed a playground thing with a slide, then we went to the Amstel pub. Amsel beer glasses, Amstel menu, Amsel table, Amstel ashtray, Amsel chairs – but oddly no Amstel lager. Nah – I’m kidding. After this brief stop we headed back to find a piece of beach we liked. That took longer than you might expect. Finally we found a spot we liked, so the race was on to get in the sea. The beach was a sort of shingle, with a steep incline down to the sea, there were big breakers but as the beach was so sloped within about 15 foot you were out of your depth – I was scared as I didn’t know how the undercurrents might behave, but after a time we were pretty confident. If you weer caught in a wave you got pummeled – this is a lot more fun than it sounds. I had a little sit in the sun whilst Sian took over sea duties with my book, my water bottle and Tenacious fly for company.
After beach time we headed home and went for a quick bite to eat in the hotel outside restaurant – I had a “horse” sausage – make of that what you will – it was tasty, but a little dry.. Afterwards the girls took themselves off to the pool again, and I relaxed like an over-weight life guard in my chair on the balcony. Couple of beers and 17% of my book later and we were all back together ready to hit the strip. This time we didn’t walk so far, and went to another recommendation from tripadvisor. We hadn’t really got into the Spanish way yet – we were ready for food at eight, Spain isnt ready until way after nine, so we ended up being the only people in this place. The manager was friendly, I think, as he didn’t seem to speak any English – and the waiting staff kept walking passed us like it was an aquarium. We had some free things from him, which as we couldn’t speak the lingo we had no idea what they were – there were nice though, and I had my first Spaghetti Fruiti de Mar – it was nice. Couple of beers later and it was time to join the streams of people on the front. Back home to the balcony, and I couldn’t even finish my beer everyone was asleep again. We had had the air con all day, and the curtains closed, so it was chilling nicely, but also chilling noisily – good job I had my earplugs…
Via 7 – 8/10