Life in Culebrón

No blog last week because we popped over to Mallorca. Mind you, the airlines and the booking agency did their best to complicate it all, going so far as to cancel our hotel booking without mentioning it to us. It all sorted itself out though, as these things so often do. I sort of enjoyed Mallorca and I sort of didn’t. It had some big hills, the sea was sparkly and clear, there was a pleasant greenness to the island and lots of the villages are architecturally worthy even when they’re swamped with visitors like us. I’ve been on the island a few times but, when I checked when we were last there, and it turned out to be over 15 years ago. Naturally, we tourists were everywhere. After our experience in Seville back in June, that came as no surprise. We’d expected the island to be busy — it’s one of Europe’s most established holiday destinations — but some things were worse than I’d anticipated. It seemed that Mallorca had given up on being Mallorcan, or even Spanish, and just become touri...

There are fifty provinces in Spain and two autonomous cities on the North African coast. Then there are the islands. Each province and all of the islands have a capital and Ceuta and Melilla have a similar sort of "capital" status. Over the years we've bagged most of those towns so that it's just Palencia and Melilla to go. Until last week we were also missing Ibiza and Formentera. But not now. It takes only 35 minutes in the air, more or less, from Alicante to Ibiza. Nonetheless, it took us something like six or seven hours to get there. The plane being four hours late didn't help. Then there was a slight hiccough with the pickup minibus to take us to the hire car. Actually the car was quite odd. I'd taken out insurance to cover the 1200€ insurance excess, which cost about 50€, but the car hire itself was flagged as being something less than a euro a day and that proved to be true. There was a bit of a trick though, I'd been expecting something becaus...