The days are beginning a little later and cooler now and the sun is taking longer to appear over the high hill behind us. The garden is recovering from the summer dormancy, greening up and blooming again.
The dogs have more energy and are chasing each other about and the people have stopped mopping their brows and exclaiming 'hace calor' when we meet in the streets or the shops.
A Day Out........
Up early yesterday for a rare excursion down to Ikea at Malaga. A veritable treat indeed for us shop starved expatriots. The journey takes an hour and a quarter and after picking up our friend Patrick on the way, we arrived around 10.30, herself eagerly grabbing a couple of the free catalogues for herself and the daughter to pore over for the next few weeks before ascending the escalator to the top of the nave.
What seemed like hours later, we emerged with yet another Ikea bag having forgotten of course to bring at least one of the dozen or so Ikea bags stored in the cupboard at home ready for future Ikea visits.
Why oh why can we never remember to take a bag with us? Not once ever have we remembered.
So what did we buy? Well... candles of course, it's always candles and tea lights and two or three of those kitchen gadgets that we didn't realise we needed until we saw them. Lots of the small yellow batteries, a powerful lamp on a flex for himself, and a cushion for himself for his large wooden patio chair.... that's the one that was rescued from the skip early one winter morning... a real good find, oh and a doormat for the campervan and the most expensive item at 7.99, a shelf for the wall under the new this Spring, outdoor room on the roof which is only just coming into it's own now that the sun is losing some of it's strength.
The main topic of conversation after emerging from Ikea was, 'where shall we lunch'. How about a curry someone said? Brilliant idea so we set off for Almuñecar stopping at Nerja on the way at the small nursery that our friend Patrick had discovered on one of his outings. That proved to be a real treat too and la jardinera found four 'must have' new plants.
It was well after 2 o'clock by the time we had parked in the underground car park on the sea front at Almuñecar and we were all thirsty and looking forward to the curry, another rare treat but.... as luck would have it, as we rounded the corner we saw that the restaurant herself thought never closed, was closed. Ah well, the tourist season being well over, we shouldn't have been surprised.
So, we opted to eat at a restaurant not long opened by a German lady who we first met years ago working at the famous Sunday 'paella on the beach' place at La Herradura. It was a poor substitute for our curry I'm sorry to say.
After dropping Patrick off with his purchases we arrived home just before 5 pm to the the most wonderful welcome from Layla & Dobby dogs. As I said before, we rarely have such a long day out.
