CASA OLIMPIA MANILVA ESTEPONA.

Saturday/Wednesday 5th/9th December 2009.

On Saturday morning a light Tarifa breeze had got up so Brenda did the washing and aired the clothes on the balcony; this weekend is a bank holiday in Spain and they are closed until Wednesday as on Monday it is a saints day and on Tuesday they celebrate the Spanish constitution so it is the longest holiday of the year as it starts on Friday; the traffic on the roads all over Spain goes mad and it is the weekend when the most accidents on the road take place! Mano who is now working as the night manager at the Manilva Green Apart hotel says it was very busy with all the customers coming from all over Spain, especially Madrid. In the evening we had steak and frits for dinner and then settled down to watch SCD, the right result this time! Bacon butties started off the day on Sunday as we had a small Leg of Lamb to roast for a late Sunday lunch, instead of roast potatoes I made a dish of Boulangere potatoes and finished the Lamb on it! We also had amongst the vegetables creamed Leeks which reminded us of our dear friend Tim, back in North Wales who often gave us his special Garlic infused Lamb with all the trimmings. Tim and Thea had gone away for a long weekend to Cologne to see some friends so when we phoned on our regular Friday evening call we had a nice chat with Jo who is home over Christmas. Monday was catch up day around the villa and at the same time we dug out the Xmas decorations and the trees; a bit of a problem with the large one as the top third was missing and it took me three hours to find it in the garage! The weather is still sunny all the time with no wind and the views across the Strait are still unbelievable. I was catching up with the e-mails over Tuesday morning when the Skype alarm went off; it was a friend that we met on our travels, back in France, who was very helpful to us as at the time when we were just starting to get to know the Winnebago as he was a long standing Winnebago user and had been across in the USA many times, Tony Turner has now settled in Arizona for six months of the year and was calling us from there, nice talking to you Tony and thanks for the call, we will keep in touch! In the evening, late on BBB1 there was a documentary on Joan Baez which was excellent and had a interview with Bob Dylan going over the old times when they traveled around the USA.We shot across to Manilva first thing on Wednesday morning and called into the surgery to make an appointment to see our doctor and get our flu jabs; we then stopped at the house and collected some more clothes for over Christmas as well as the first Xmas cards! We then went to Estepona to do some shopping and also called into our bank to collect a money transfer from Chris over in London which he had sent by Moneygram, not Western Union, it took over two hours for it to come through, I ended up locked in the bank with our manager and Raul who looks after our account – thanks! It meant that we missed the shops that we were going too so we are having to go out on Friday morning to the Hypermarket. On the way back we called into the marina in Estepona to post cards and get some more stamps so I was able to take the picture below which is the entrance to the port and shows the Poinsettias in front of the famous Reinaldo’s bar.