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El Castell

Street entertainment while waiting for the horses 
 

Afternoon in Es Castell

E and I were urged by E's brother, B, to go to Es Castell, a nearby village, to see the horse parade. So we made our way there after coming back from town around noon.

The horses took some time to appear so E and I spent some time walking around the square and neighboring streets. The village was celebrating their summer fiesta so there were catchy summer songs blaring from the speakers, people dancing on the street, little old ladies throwing water from their verandas to cool the crowd below (it was hot) and an amusement park. 

The horses showed up after a few hours - their riders in their fancy black costumes. The crowd cheered; some even ran along with the horses. I'm struck yet again as to how the Spanish take the trouble to have fun.

Much better weather today

Blue skies, temperature of 20c something. Very pleasant day to be outside. I went out for a run in the morning feeling motivated to get fit and after coming across my old race pictures on my iPad and remembering how good I felt when I ran daily. There are pavements everywhere. This together with the weather made running easy and thoroughly enjoyable. I made my way to town centre and back. The road signs here are fancy.

Fancy street posts in Menorca

Reminds me of G´s old plates from Mejorca 

The rain in Spain ...

Caught me by surprise. I had expected sunnier skies here.

Let's hope the weather improves.

Running errands

Saturday morning saw us taking a drive to another nearby French village in search of the charcuterie recommended by V2's mum. Presents from Alsace for the inlaws whom we will be seeing on Sunday. I was impressed by the level of care the man behind the counter provided to us (what did we want to to try and then clear instructions on exactly what we have to do) and the products, which he handled with a lot of TLC. A quick nip into the pharmacy next door for a face cleanser which I've run out of. Interesting experience to discover that nothing on the shelves looked familiar. Thankfully most of the bottles had English translation and the shop assistant was patient. I had a zillion of cleansers once. But as we know they are either in the wasteland,with someone else, or on a west-bound ship.

 
Picture from Wikipedia

Dining out -

E and I spent a lovely Friday evening at a friends home in a nearby village in Alsace. The friend, V1, is Swiss Italian and the wife, V2 French. They spoke their respective native language with their kids and with us mainly in English (sometimes Italian and Spanish with E). It was V1's birthday; V2' s jovial parents who lived nearby arrived shortly after us. V2's mum spoke English fluently and remarked that I looked like "Patricia" because of my glasses. We enjoyed aperitifs, salad and foie grass, and a variety of cured meat for starters. The main meal of Tagliata was simply delicious. They sourced the ingredients from South Italy and made cooking look so effortless. This is our 3rd social dinner since I arrived and they have all been at homes (vs. Restaurants): I like it.

Getting with the programme

I've found and read the Spark book on kindle and logged on their website: I am officially starting my programme to eat consciously and healthily as well as building up my fitness level. My primary immediate daily goals (what they call fast break) include drinking 8 cups of water and exercising for at least 30 minutes. I'm reminding myself of all the things I've learned before but have forgotten to adopt: e.g. its a healthier lifestyle I'm after and not just another diet-exercise binge etc. I'm also going to use their trackers to check my progress in all things nutrional and fitness. I would like to lose 11 pounds and my target period is 6 weeks.

My yummy nutrional lunch today (Day 2)

  

Roast vegetables for dinner

I cycled home from the city centre this morning. Today´s adventure related to not knowing how to leave the city centre without having to be at a particular exit of the train station (i.e. my previous  starting points). I gave up after 1 hour of cycling back and forth and went back to the train station to restart the journey. It was drizzling and cold, yet I didnt feel as miserable as when I was caught in the rain in the UK. The key difference I think is the absence of wind of which I was very glad for.  I made a pit stop to the supermarket to buy some extra condiments for dinner (we are having guests tonight) and saw a lot of little old ladies with bars of chocolate in their shopping baskets.

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One item from tonight's dinner menu is roast vegetable which is a particular favourite of E´s. Chopping the items this afternoon made me think of a particular sit down Christmas lunch party I attended hosted by a now retired senior banker living in one of the spacious priviledged apartments on the peak in Hong Kong. I was helping him with the dishes after lunch and noticed him merely wiping his wooden chopping board before storing it away. He subsequently explained to me that the board has not been washed for some 10 years to better retain the flavours. Incredible that I didnt throw up then and there or die of food poisoning. 

My computer related issues continue

  

This time its my lap top - the screen seems to be broken, refusing to be switched on. The computer works fine with an external screen so I will have to wait for my screen to arrive in September (or figure out where I can repair a fujitsu computer in this foreign land and at the same time take a crash course in french, german or both). I've saved the more important files in a thumb drive and am switching my attention to my ipad and also, more reluctantly to E's computer which gives out directions in German and types in Spanish. My love for the ipad has incidentally been rekindled since I started dowloading the kindle app and amazon ebooks and found some pretty blogs. My ipad battery life can't last fast enough for me. Typing on ipad I still find troublesome.