Sunny Spain

Guess where I've been !!!

Yup, that's right - George and I flew to Gibraltar to visit my brother who works there, although he and Annette actually live just down the coast in Sotogrande in Spain.  We had a wonderful time, the weather was perfect and Annette is a very good cook so we had some delicious meals.  Their house is just fabulous with a delightful garden and pool and so many courtyards and terraces and arbours that I got very confused and frequently found myself lost!  We haven't been to this house before.

This is one of the terraces - it is hard to realise that you can just go in and leave all the cushions and lamps out all night!   And this is PART of the dawing room! There is a lovely garden and during the night pipes rise up from the lawn and sprinkle away so that the grass is always green.  Sotogrande boasts the Royal Golf Course and several polo grounds and the whole village is within a cordon manned by armed guards who monitor who goes in and out - they are very security conscious, with iron grilles at the windows and electronic steel shutters.  It took a lot of getting used to !  One day we went to the market and I spotted these -  SNAILS

But more excitingly I also saw this wonderful stall full of the most vibrantly coloured fabrics - Annette told me it was all in preparation for the Flamenco season.  Stupidly I didn't buy anything (I could fill a market stall any day with the stuff I've got in my workroom) but when I got home I thought what wonderful bunting it would have made for Open Studios!

There were mountains of rolls in every shade and pattern you could imagine!   We went to Tarifa, the nearest village to North Africa where the Africans brought in their goods, which were taxed - hence the word tarif ! You could look across the straits and see all the houses on the opposite coast, it was so clear.   It was a delightful little village where we had coffee and browsed the shops -  I bought a very colourful cotton skirt for 10 euros. Then we went  to find a little shack near the beach where we had plate upon plate of wonderful fish, including fried sea anemone!  It was very windy on the atlantic coast and the sand was so fine it whipped against your legs and really stung.  Oh, and I also bought that necklace that I am wearing !

It was lovely to spend time with Ian because he has always lived and worked in Europe and therefore I don't get to see him very often. They made us so welcome and it was nice to see how the other half live !  But it was equally good to get back home and smell  the honeysuckle festooning the dead tree and the daisies growing in the grass.   Sometimes things can be just too perfect !  I don't have a maid or a gardener but I do have lots of special  friends and the lovely Brenda and George next door invited us in for a BBQ when we got back so I didn't have to think about cooking. Home, sweet home !