We wake to lovely sunshine. Judy is all packed and ready for her flight home today. We all decide to go into Luz to have bacon rolls and coffee. Today we are going to Seville for a few days. On the way we drop Judy at the airport. Such a shame she can’t stay longer but she has her own reasons to to rush home. Wink wink. It takes around 45 minuted to the airport in Faro where we all say a sad farewell to Judy. Rita does a fabulous drive into Seville. It takes around two hours and with great sat nav directions we make it in great time. We find our booked apartment quite easily. Unfortunately David can’t get the keys to work for the doors. The boy have to wait for the cleaners to turn up to find our what’s wrong. Us girls are dying for the loo. So we trot off to the bar on the corner where we enjoy a couple of glasses of wine. Much later the boys join us and we find out the cleaners have serviced the wrong apartment and we have the apartment above it. Just five flights of stairs! Also they had quite a way to find the car parking space allocated. By now it’s 5.30 pm. We all move on to a bar by the river as we are starving only to discover that the restaurants don’t open until eight pm? We wander along the river to the bridge where it seems very lively. We see a tapas bar that’s open which is all we want. We grab a seat outside and sit down and peruse the menu. A very sweet young lady approaches us, we assume she works for the restaurant but she was just from a very friendly crowd of youngsters enjoying an early evening drink. She helps us chose items from the tapas menu and tells us all the places we should visit whilst in Seville. We have a few laughs with her and agree her choice of tapas are really good. After we have eaten we stroll back in the direction of our accommodation. We stumble across a small traditional Spanish bar in a back street. It’s full of atmosphere with many hams hanging along the ceiling and delicious tapas displayed in cabinet’s. Rita, DT and myself continue on the vino whilst Roger orders a brandy, they serve him a treble. We are enjoying the atmosphere so have another round. This time Rogers brandy is even larger , I’m not sure I’ll get him up the five flights of stairs. Back at the accommodation which is almost next door, the keys wouldn’t work in the outside lock again. Luckily we have two sets & Roger’s work. The accommodation is spacious and light but in need of a little TLC. Nevertheless we all agree it’s in a perfect location of Tirana a now favourite part of this beautiful city. My sore throat has now turned into a full blown cold.
Next morning we decide to explore the other part of the city so walk along the riverside and cross the bridge towards the cathedral. We have all been to Seville before, the last time being with Norwich Inns (our pub buying group) in 2014. Another memorable trip. We find a coffee shop and partake of ham rolls or toasted sandwiches with fresh orange juice and fabulous cafè con leche. We wander on and Rita spots a famacia so we both get some meds – me for my cold and Rita for her allergies. We book the hop on hop off bus and as we are waiting for the next bus David feels he need the loo badly. He is no longer interested in the bus tour so wanders off on his own to explore the loos of Seville leaving the three of us to take the bus tour. After a while we pass through a very atractive large square in Alameda area so we decide to hop off and find somewhere to meet up with DT. We choose a rather traditional looking place called the Maestro Rufino in full sun, with a spot of shade for Roger and order some white wine. The young portly waiter is very friendly even telling us he is hung over with a dicky tummy ( not sure we are happy to be served by him) but cheerfully manages to upsell a bottle of wine to a magnum, suckers that we are. We text DT our location unawares of the distance he has to walk to find us. We are peckish by now so order some tapas which are amazing. We have smoked salmon and advocado on orange biscuits, tuna loin with juicy tomato, tomato salad, potato salad and braised oxtail of those that I remember. We watch out for DT and wonder how long he will be. Eventually he turns up having done 16000 step to find us, it was way further than we thought. He arrives a bit hot and bothered poor boy with quite a lot of wine to catch up on. We hear of his escapade’s including having the set of keys that didn’t work so couldn’t get into the apartment. He found a little bar on route to relieve himself luckily. As he soon resumes usual cheerful self he soon perks up but is not hungry so we have another magnum of wine and put the world to rights. After several hours sitting in the sun enjoying life we decide to make a move and stroll around the streets of this area admiring the architecture. We are way off route so decide to take an Uber back to our local area. DT is still not 100% and my cold is raging so we head home for an early night. Around 9pm.
Wednesday morning we are woken by dustmen at 7am. Any slight noise in these narrow backstreets echo’s, much different from the day before which was a Holy holiday and very quiet. We pack and leave the apartment at 11.00 as DT has arranged a late check out for us. We turn in a different direction today and stumble across a wider lively street with many café bars and shops. We have breakfast much the same as yesterday in a traditional Spanish café again the ceiling full of drying hams. A lovely cheerful seniorita serves us. We wander on through this pretty esplanade Rita buys some delicious looking epinadas for our friend Joe who we are meeting later. We visit the market. We all say we could spend a day in the market trying out all the little tapas bars. The food looks awesome. Time is getting on so we head back to the apartment where Rita and I sit on the sun terrace and wait for the boys to collect the car. Time to leave this wonderful city. All of us decide our visit has been so enjoyable that we plan to visit again soon. Rita drives us back to Portugal. The scenery is wonderful. We pass olive groves and many orange trees. The land looks very dry. They are seriously in need of rain in the this part of the world. Especially Portugal. David tells us there is a serious water shortage here which is very alarming.
We stop over in Carvoeira to meet up with Joe – his wife Marie is still in Norwich. Joe has driven over from the UK with Ché the Yorkshire terrier. We meet in a fabulous restaurant called Villa Medici where we were greeted with a glass of Moët by Joe. We all had great pasta, more wine and a grand catch up. Later we drive back home to Luz where we chill for the rest of the day and watch TV – sadly DT can’t get the Norwich match so we watch a girlie series then a thriller film.
Liquid Tales 