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Sunday 25th - Christmas Day

Christmas Greetings to you all or Feliz Navidad as they say in Spain.

We had great plans for Christmas day – stay in bed until late, have a cooked breakfast, do a bit of reading listening to the forecast rain lashing down and then have a big dinner.

These plans were completely ruined as the sun was shining with blue skies and very warm! So after our fry up we were forced to have a walk along the beach and have our picture taken next to a fibreglass whale (no idea what is doing there). Later we had a very nice rum and coke in a new bar on the beach with all the trendy youngsters. The barman very proudly pointed out the rum comes from a local distillery, we always like to support local industry, shame about the coke. Because it was going to rain we put our shorts in the wash last night and they were not dry this morning so we were a little overdressed for the beach.

Most bars and one restaurant seem to be open on Christmas Day, the big celebration is on Christmas Eve when families gather for a grand meal and everything shuts down for the evening, tomorrow everything should be back to normal and Gill can put away her pinny. The forecast rain finally appeared at 6pm then we had a feeling of deja-vu. On New Years Eve in 2020 we foolishly did not book a table for dinner nor did we arrange to eat in. As a consequence we ended up eating at a table outside in the rain (under an umbrella) as all the tables in the only open restaurant were booked. That restaurant is next door to where we are staying and last night under an umbrella in the rain two couples were having their Christmas dinner, we did feel smug having our nice home cooked dinner.

I did test the €1.40 bottle of wine, it was fine for poached pears and did not taste too bad in a glass but we did have a decent bottle to accompany the meal.

When we were last here in January 2021 there were lots of workmen and gardeners putting the finishing touches to a greatly improved sea front promenade, including adding the fibreglass whale.

It seemed to be a mad rush as I suspect the important VIP was on their way to cut a ribbon or whatever Spanish bigwigs do.

One curious thing which caught our eye at the time were wooden cycle racks with the words “Solar USB Charging” which were being place at regular intervals along the promenade but there was no evidence of solar panels or USB connections. They are all still there and starting to look a little faded and what they were for is beyond us, we have never seen a bike using the stand, most cyclists chain their bikes to lampposts.