You are now entering Alicante

My old chum Alan Crawford, very decently, came to see me on his way to Seville. I usually try to entertain visitors though I usually forget to feed them.

Fortunately the fiesta season is well under way - we could have got involved in a couple of romerias (a sort of short distance pilgrimage) or any number of local patron saint festivals but we chose to go and have a look at the Moors and Christians procession in Petrer instead. It was alright. Moors and Christians are definitely a local thing.

Feeding has to be relatively traditional too, well at least once during the visit of any guest. So we avoided the chop and chips establishments which represent my normal eating out price level and went to the restaurant in Encebras where they do all three of the very traditional local dishes. We stuck to the rice, cooked in a paella, served with rabbit and snails. In fact we did really well on traditional stuff, tomate y ali oli, embutido seco, the rice, perusas and a little glass of mistela. The waitress was very keen to stress that although the wine bottle label said it was from Yecla this was a simple geographical accident and the wine belonged, emotionally, to Pinoso. I think Mr Cs favourite was the fried cheese with tomato jam which has no particular link with the area so far as I know! Awfully pricy though. We winced when the bill came.

And to round of the day in a nice Spanish way, as we drove home from the theatre at around 1am, we were pulled over by the Guardia for a licence check. I must have taken too long finding it, or maybe I was over familiar with the little lad who was wearing the Guardia uniform, because they also checked the car documentation at the last minute. I think that's about the fifth or sixth time I've ben pulled over and I still find it slightly nerving.