Get out of town...

Andalusia, this place they call the real Spain in the in the seventeen autonomous communities in the Kingdom of Spain, an historical nationality, 8.3 million souls (official) and a few million pommy ex-pats along the costas (un-official), along with the few scattered inland like us. The capital of Andalusia is called Sevilla. Currently the hottest place on the planet with the sun beating down on us from early morning till late at night which time the general population has turned crispy and crackly.

But what has this to do with being a month late with this blog? Ok, well not a lot, but, we did get out of town and down to the coast to slightly cooler temperatures and relief from the daily grind of long breakfasts, siestas, tapas bars, hanging out at the local attractions and monuments (note: when you´re a registered local you don´t pay into anything that tourists do ...handy for us and the budget) and generally trying to stay in the shade or shady places.

The coast is about an hour and a half away, Cadiz and Huelva are the main towns. Cadiz is beautiful, old and one of the most densely populated cities in Europe for it´s size and also home to the Spanish Navy, formerly the Armada, you know, tall ships, invasions, gold coins, pirates etc etc... Anyway, we hired a car over the past few weekends and ventured south in search of sand and surf. This is what we found.

Cadiz is lovely, old, interesting and great beaches. So we´re told but didn´t get to the sand that day we were there. Huelva is a bit more industrrial, more of a port city than Cadiz which was useful for Christopher Columbus spreading his Spanishness throughout the Western world.

Inland from there we stopped in a village called Vejer http://www.vejer.com/ a typical ´white´village but the most beautiful we had seen. If you were to sit in your garden sipping a mojito, listening to Paco de Lucia, chewing on a cigarello, tapas of olives and serrano jamon under your almond blossom tree (bliss) and trying to imagine in your mind the perfect Spanish whitewashed village, perched precariously on the side of a hill, then Vejer is it. So far by a long shot, our favourite Spanish town. If we get kicked out of Sevilla for complaining too much about the heat (que calor), then we will slip quietly into Vejer.

Anyway, back to reality. World cup fever has gripped the nation. The country are convinced, at the time of writing this, that Spain will annihilate the Germans and however, Mags has other ideas and believes that Holland will take the cup, I tend to agree.

This is the end of this report. Will add photos tonight and another report tomorrow. Hope you are all well...and keeping cool :)

M&P