Bedrock

Another cement and painting masterpiece done and dusted – main bedroom is back in action. Next… complete outside walls to restore to original showroom shine.

All lighting is of course compact fluorescent but note the different colour…. the soft white are from Carrefour – the blue-ish white (actually cold white) are from the cheap Chinese store.

Meanwhile the TV is fixed (that’s a mirror in the picture) but we’re convinced the engineer over-egged the price. Granted he arrived on time and fixed the problem but you’ve never seen a more miserable type in your life. To cut a long story short, he charged (excluding labour) £80 for a replacement LNB. Now, I know people have to make a profit but UK LNBs are under 10 quid (single)!!!  But then this seems to be the way, our builder is currently trying to extract electricity charges out of us that are three times my meter calculations – and that’s based on a very generous 20cents per KW/h – as that’s what some others are paying – yet if you look at typical costs in Europe on the web, electricity costs for Spain of only MARGINALLY higher than the UK seem to be the norm. I can’t seem to get a clear idea of what the price SHOULD be and everyone has a different opinion. This site suggests Spanish electricity prices on average are around 10% (if that) higher than the UK. If you’ve any experience of this please do comment…

A nice walk to finish off the day and I’m checking emails for a while before an early night… for tomorrow we paint – and swim.

After spending the day in virtual meetings while Maureen painted, I polished off the day by doing repairs to our bedroom ceiling and testing out some (blue) tiles for our soon-to-be-wonderful tiled BBQ….  and then we took a trip to Huescar to get some odds and ends before returning to the local “Galera Hotel” which has a balcony outside where you can drink and enjoy the scenery.

To the left is the view from the balcony of the Galera pool  – this is in no way recoloured or enhanced, it’s straight off the iPhone. Lovely colour. Might take a dip in there soon..

We finished the night at the local pizzeria, sitting outside talking to people we’ve already met and people we met for the first time which was nice. Interesting conversation about the weather here, it’s currently just under 40C mid-afternoon so very hot indeed yet less than an hour down the road, there are easily-accessible mountains with snow on the tops. Now we know you can get to them I can see a trip out with the camera in the coming weeks.

We must’ve had a good time as I have a startlingly bad head this morning, not the ideal way to start a day of constant meetings and some tile-cutting but there you are. I’ve an hour left before planting myself in front of a video camera for 6 hours! At least this is the last of the meetings for a while and we can get on enjoying the break.

Since arriving here the weather has been superb, hitting highs of up to 27 degrees and the evenings a sensible 25C – of course in our cave it’s nice and cool at night.   I’ve spent most of today in a video conference with the office – and I have another two days of that on and off. I was particularly gratified to note that in several hours of meeting the video didn’t screw up once.. we had SKYPE for audio and video – and GotoMeeting so I could see the Powerpoints… I didn’t want to miss important meetings but I was damned if I was going to miss out in the tan – so not a bad compromise considering it’s apparently pouring down in Blackpool And back home – we have people looking after the house in the UK so no worries there, the cats will be fine…

Already gotten some painting done, tomorrow we need to grab a couple of crappy Chinese compact fluorescent to replace the crappy Chinese lights that have died in the master bedroom upstairs… I had a spare but that packed in as I was screwing it in (yes, they are THAT BAD – should have brought a load over from Tescos, what was I THINKING about). That, a little cement to fill in a couple of holes, a LARGE tub of white paint.. and I think a spell in the lake… you just can’t beat hot weather while up to your shoulders in cool water! And now to pack in for the day, beer sounds good. Builder is trying it on with electricity prices so I’m monitoring usage… more on that when I get some results.

Got my PC kit, timer and tubes for plant watering and a desperate need to get an even tan…. yup – all ready for the summer break. Looking forward to endless sunshine and no more miserable rain and clouds… just a slight matter of a very over-enthusiastic builder and his optimistic electricity bill to sort out…

Paintbrush on the ready….

With Maureen called away to America to go see her dad (who is not at all well)… and having already booked tickets for the Alhambra Palace, rather than sit around, Jonathan, Suzanne and I on Friday took the long drive down to Granada. Most of the way the weather was warm at around 25c or so and our first stop was a brief trip to Carrefour (well, you can’t go to Granada without at least calling in).  We then went off in search of Alhambra.

You would think in this day and age it would be a simple matter of plugging the name into the Sat Nav – but no, TomTom wanted us to go the wrong way up nearly every one-way backstreet in the city so we soon gave up and started to follow the street signs. Just as these were getting us no-where, a complete stranger on a motorbike knocked on the window.. “Alhambra?” he said?  We nodded – and off we went.

A couple of times we took a wrong turn or had doubts about some amazingly narrow street – he patiently waited and on one occasion backtracked to help us out.  Of course none of this was out of generosity – he wanted paying for the service – but compared to driving around Granada for hours getting lost, we figured this was a decent trade-off.

At this point things started to go REALLY wrong as Maureen had booked the tickets on an online service and I recall she’d had difficulty getting the final payment page. When the attendant at Alhambra Palace could find no trace of Scargill in the computer, we knew we’d had that. A big sign said “FULL” and indeed no tickets were available.

Not ones to give up we popped over to a cafe I know from old across the street and had a nice lunch in the shade before hopping on the tour bus for a nice long tour of the city. GREAT idea. Some day I’ll bother to look up Alhambra because it’s used for everything from the name of the Palace to my favourite beer when I’m over there. The sign on the right is advertising the latter.

Apart from one episode sitting waiting for the bus to move, on the open-top top floor at 40 degrees which wasn’t a lot of fun, the whole trip was excellent and gave us a good view of the city. I recommend this to anyone on their first trip. I’ve been to Granada several times partly because the best hardware store I’ve been able to find “Brico Depot” is there and is, handily near Carrefour and a load of other large stores but the bus tour with audio gave insights to the city that you’d never get in a million years by driving around in the car.

Very nice – a shame Maureen could not be with us.

Another day, another trip to Embalse Del Negratin. This time Jonathan had some stomach issues and so there was just the three of us while he stayed back at the cave. We took a packed lunch and lots of suntan lotion. This is going to be a new regular trip for me, just a short distance away from BAZA, this lake has the most wonderful colour and although a little chilly when you first get in the water (which is chocker-block full of sizeable fish!) you don’t want to come out.

We took a cheap Chinese blow-up with us and could have stayed there all day. We met an Australian couple who were camping and had a good chat with them but largely simple enjoyed the sun. There’s a nice restaurant there of course but if you’re just out to sunbath all you need is suntan lotion, some grub and the weather and we certainly had that.

Rather than rant on about what was entirely a visual and tanning experience, here are a few photos here just to give you an idea of the place….