A weekend off from the necessities of life Spanish style

Well after the frenetic past weeks today (22/04/12) we reached a minor milestone, it is 3 weeks to the day since we landed on Spanish soil and this weekend allowed us time to breathe and take stock. 


Looking back it really is amazing what we have achieved in so short a space of time. For people reading this blog you will all have an idea of Spain's reputation for mañana and this fact can obviously impact on how quickly you can cut through official red tape. When you consider that we arrived on April 1st and Easter followed within days you can effectively carve out another 4 days from the three weeks for holiday downtime for the Spanish people. We managed to get our NIE applications in before Easter, then we had our week of villa viewings, then picked up our NIE's the following Friday. This week we went from that to second viewings, applying for our Padrone so we could then go to buy a car, we put an offer in on a home, bought the car and then it was this weekend - doesn't sound much looking in from the UK or the USA but honestly we didn't expect to be at this stage until possibly late May not late April! We had spent a lot of time between Stuart arriving back in the USA in January until we both departed our respective countries planning, researching and gathering information that would assist us in our settling in as smoothly as possible. That we managed to do be at this stage in 3 weeks has made us think wow too! ;)


So this weekend we have to a great extent compared to recent days putzed around and been a little more relaxed than of late! On Saturday we went for a usual walk on Mojácar Playa, had a Tapas lunch at a favourite cafe and did a little shopping at Mercadona supermarket. The rest of the day was spent watching a little TV and snoozing! I was tired and went to bed at about 10.30 (!) and left Stuart watching a Benidorm re-run (!) and then he watched a film classic "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest". 


Sunday was a day for chores early am, Two loads of washing, sweeping floors - it gets very dusty here - then mopping them while Stuart took a walk to the local supermarket "Super Turre" to get some ice cubes and fly spray! I then took a leisurely shower and waited for Stuart to return with the spoils! We decided to take a trip to Villaricos after an early lunch for it's street market. 


Sundays in Spain generally are reserved for relaxing and leisure and I guess religion too! Unlike in the UK or USA the shops generally are closed and only cafes and restaurants are open. One thing that doesn't observe this practice are the street markets and these run in different towns on different days Monday - Sunday. Some markets run in multiple places on different days and as we saw on Friday in Turre some have smaller ones than in the bigger towns like the one in Vera we visited the previous Saturday. 

Indalo Man

They all generally have similar stalls though, ranging from all the knock off stuff you can imagine, fake designer names on bags, watches, clothing etc to some very reasonably priced locally grown produce. The fresh produce is worth making the trip for alone as it is priced very cheaply and is really fresh and when you consider you are paying prices like 1 Euro for 3 kilograms of fresh oranges or 1 Euro for a kilogram of Tangerines for example you can see why it is worth a visit! you also see the odd stall at different markets that seem to be unique but I am sure move around and do different markets but since we've only seen 3 so far they are unique to us!

My chain

Today we saw a stall that was selling hand made jewellery that was in reclaimed Sterling silver. I saw some lovely hand made Indalo man pendants in varying sizes and I thought I'd treat myself to one. If you don't know what this is then I'll give you some background. The Indalo man is a prehistoric magical symbol found in the cave of "Los Letreros" ("The Signboards") in Sierra de María-Los Vélez Natural Park in Vélez Blanco, Almería, Spain. It has been customary to paint the Indalo symbol on the front of houses and businesses to protect them from evil (similar to Kokopelli of the south-western USA) and is considered to be a god totem. The Indalo man has a Levantine origin and dates back to 2500 BC. The pictograph was named in memory of Saint Indaletius, and means Indal eccius (Messenger of the Gods) in the Iberian language.

A bit of the marina in Villaricos showing
the market stalls as far as you can see!

Villaricos itself is a typical little Spanish fishing village with a pretty little marina and winding marrow streets that today were bustling with market stalls and bargain hunters. Of course the local Tapas bars and Cafe's benefited also with scores of people sat enjoying the beautiful weather outside them all! The smell of food was everywhere of course and it makes for a very heady place to walk around! We bought some fruits, Stuart's beloved black olives, Stuart also got a hat with Almería and the Indalo man on it, a t shirt for the gym and a nice leather wallet. All in all it made for a very pleasant early afternoon out! We drove back via Vera Playa, Garrucha, Mojácar Playa and then back to Turre! The Med was looking lovely this afternoon reflecting the lovely blue sky and as you'd expect was a lovely shade of blue itself.


After a bit of a rest tonight we will go for our evening meal back to Tio Tomas but to it's proper restaurant to sample it's night time menu. Then tomorrow it will be back to normal and obviously I will post more blogs about that in due course!