A few days at the seaside, the annual summer visit to Santa Pola

Our beach just before sun set one night, Alicante on the horizon
Hi again

Just a few lines to report our stay this summer at our holiday pad in Santa Pola. I was a bit hesitant about going as we’ve been there so often we’re a bit tired of it. But as always when you don’t look forward to something it usually turns out ok and it did. We went last Wednesday and returned yesterday; all in all 6 nights, that is me and my two men. Unfortunately the girls never really come on holiday with us anymore. I suppose that will change when they become Mothers themselves. Who knows?

After our lavish holiday in Galicia at the Paradors, Eladio is in a tight saving mode (how I hate that!) so we had a picnic on the way. The problem about that was finding somewhere nice to have it as, on that road, the A3, there is literally no nice picnic spot.

Our days were spent in a very relaxed way with reading time at the swimming pool or in the flat, then lunch with the news (mostly the Olympics), a siesta or more reading and then down to the beach at around 19h, just when most people leave. The idea behind that is avoiding the extreme heat and sun. At the beach, apart from swimming of course, we always took a long brisk walk to the end. This year I took loads of pictures as I suddenly realised just how beautiful the Arenales beach really is.

Of course this was all peppered with my intermittent working to keep up to date with my job as I have some important events coming up in early September.

While we were at Santa Pola we were happy to see Rafan Nadal garner the gold medal in the men’s single’s final. He is doing so well this year; Roland Garros, Wimbledon, the Olympics and now he’s the number one in the tennis ranking; superb for someone aged only 22! On top of that he seems a nice guy which you don’t always find in top sports people.

I managed to break Eladio’s saving mode just once to go out to dinner to our favourite local restaurant María Picola to have the dish we love most when we are in the Alicante area, “arroz a banda”. Funnily enough I saw later that it is in the Michelin Guide. Cool.

The only day we broke the routine was to go and see my poor dear Aunty Masha who has just recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer. She lives in a flat overlooking the sea in Benidorm and now has a living in nurse 24/7. Zania who is Bulgarian was already my Aunt’s friend and taking care of her before the diagnosis.

Aunty Masha looked certainly worse than when we had seen her at Christmas. She did however recognise us all and was lucid most of the time; enough to say “don’t forget me here” which tore my heart of course. It was amazing to see her at the age of nearly 81 and despite the illness switching from Russian to Spanish to Bulgarian and then to English. She is no perfect linguist but can communicate with almost anyone.

To cheer ourselves up after the visit we spent the afternoon at the “German beach” which is actually called la Playa de Poniente and is the quieter of the two big beaches in Benidorm. My Father coined it that in the 70’s because of the villas owned by the Germans and other foreigners there. In line with Eladio’s saving mode we had another picnic but on the beach this time and actually quite enjoyed ourselves.

La Playa de Poniente is a bit like going back to the scene of the crime for Eladio and I as it was where our relationship was forged some 28 years ago last month. It’s funny how the Alicante area still means so much to me because of all the time spent there in the summers when I was a teenager. It’s also the place where I fell in love.

And talking about falling in love, tomorrow is our 25th wedding anniversary would you believe.

But more about that next week.

Cheers
Masha
And here is the full album of
photos on Facebook of our holiday in Santa Pola, not many really this year: