Alcocebre 7th October 2007

I didn’t sleep too well last night - not sure why as we have an abundance of pillows in this resort - except at one point I did get a little cold and tried to snuggle up to Al but he was so far away on the other side of the bed that I could hardly reach him with the sheets I had on the bed !!!! Woke up this morning thinking I could just stay at the resort all day but we had decided to drive to Morella so off we set. We hadn’t been able to get any bread so said we would just pick up something on the way.

Well, about an hour into the trip I wondered if maybe I had got the wrong town for the market that was on and we were going to get there and there would be nothing on and said as much to Al but then we decided that it had been a lovely drive anyway and we had seen a whole bunch of new scenery so it wouldn’t have been a waste of time anyway. That was until we climbed a mountain (1080m high according to the sign Al read at the top) and I nearly cracked it - I REALLY don’t do heights very well and spent the last little bit dry heaving - thank goodness I hadn’t had any breakfast as Al would have had to pull over and there was no space - only really wide enough for a car going in both directions and there was traffic going both ways !!!!! Plus no guard rails near most of the edges ! It was just awful and I said that the drive had certainly not been worth it after that little bit of the trip !!! Al thought I was being a little unfair to say I didn’t like the whole days driving because of the climb up the mountain. Needless to say Kaitlin offered to sit in the front on the way home so that I could lie on the back seat on the way down - thank you Kaitlin. On the way there we did have some - while not exactly chocolate box moments like we had in NZ - good views.

As we came over a hill we saw this castle on the top of a hill (nothing unusual about that over here) but the city walls were still around the town. As we drove closer we could see so much more of the city. It was Morella and the place that we were actually heading to !!!! (Approx 120kms from where we are staying). As soon as we had seen the city we were reminded of Toledo and as we drove in and parked (2 euros for the day) we all said how much like Toledo it actually was. It was just amazing to walk up and down the little cobbled streets - I would have loved to have been able to go into one or two of the homes to see what they are like inside (especially as we have been a gazillion furniture stores - a really unbelievable amount of furniture stores in this country). The castle was on the top and then the cathedrals and city below the castle. We bought a couple of pastries from a shop (Kaitlin and I had the same) and then a little while later Kaitlin had a sore stomach. A while after that I started with a sore stomach and have been feeling rather green for most of the day since - not sure if it was something we ate (which was very nice) or just a passing bug - I hope that whatever it is doesn’t hang around long. The toilet in the hotel I found was another lesson in using restrooms overseas - the toilet was sideways behind the door and there wasn’t enough room between the end of the toile and the wall for your legs to go so you sort of had to sit sideways - I think I probably would have killed myself laughing if I hadn’t of been feeling so awful !

We wandered around there for a couple of hours - didn’t buy anything but that is OK. Kaitlin found some shoes for work but they didn’t have them in her size in black so no luck there. Afterwards we hopped in the car (me lying on the back seat) and set off home. Luckily Al managed to find a restaurant within the time required as I wouldn’t have made it much further than we were !!!!
We stopped off at the Carrefour on the way home as the ‘shaving gel’ we bought Al yesterday turned out to be gel after shave lotion and not very good for shaving with !! We bought some meals which we could heat up (we thought !!) for dinner one night. When we got home we went to check on the internet place but it was closed - no hours of business posted but think that they open and close when they feel like it because a walk across there later showed there was someone inside and he had pulled plants across the front of the door so you couldn’t see he was there !!!! But if we went around to the other door you could see the TV was on and there were lights on as well - so another day without being able to get onto the internet - at this rate we will be home before we have a chance to sent or check mail !!!! It is getting EXTREMELY frustrating for me.

We came back to the unit and read for a while before going for a lovely long walk on the beach - me still feeling a little green around the gills but Al and Kaitlin having a wonderful time exploring the rock pools. Al came back to me afterwards and said that Kaitlin had said to him “Of I had been born 600 years ago I would have been a male explorer.” We assume she meant if she came back as a male she would have been an explorer and not that she would have been exploring males !!!!!!! We were out for about an hour before starting to walk home - stopped at one place to see what dinner they had to offer but there were only old people there playing cards and no food in sight. So we carried on walking home and went past the resort to another restaurant but their menu didn’t look very enticing and, as I didn’t actually feel like I could stomach something, we came back to the unit and Al and Kaitlin decided to have the meals we bought today.

That was OK for Kaitlin’s meal which just needed to be heated up in the microwave but then Al took his meal out and found that it had to be cooked but of course, we couldn’t understand the instructions so Kaitlin sat with the Spanish - English dictionary and worked out what Al had to do to get his dinner into an eatable form !!! It took a little longer than just being able to put it into the microwave for a few minutes but at least he was able to have something to eat without having to go out and buy something.

Something that has amazed us for most of the holiday has been the number of cats we have seen wandering around - no matter where we go there are always plenty of cats wandering around - not sure if they are wild or if they belong to people. Most times they run off if you get too close to them. We still continue to be bothered by flies - they seem to be everywhere and even when we were walking along the beach tonight we had to keep on waving our hands to chase them away - a real pain I have to say especially when we come from a country supposedly renowned for the flies but where we very seldom even see one !

I am not sure what we are going to do tomorrow - I guess it will all depend on how I am feeling and how my stomach is. We did bring some Imodium with us but will wait a little while before taking that otherwise you can land up going from one extreme to the other !!!!

Al is watching Scotland play Argentina - last night he saw France beat NZ - that is the first game that he has been able to watch (even if it the commentary was in French !!). We thought that we would see all the games given that we are in the same time zone as France but the Spanish TV has shown no coverage - it is all on satellite TV and this resort is the only one which has had the right satellite channels - we have had satellite TV in other places just not the correct channels. The local TV stations show soccer, tennis, table tennis and snooker - they even show show jumping instead of the rugby !!!!!!

Kaitlin is on her way out the bath and I think that I will hop in before hitting the bed and hopefully getting a good nights sleep. We do need to download and label some photos - haven’t done it for the last couple of days although we haven’t taken many photos the last couple of days either so that does make it a little easier (and quicker).

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