Young wine? More like just squeezed from the grapes bought in the shops that morning! But hell, a single (glass!) a day ain’t gonna shake anyone much, Walter.
During the early 80s when we arrived here all bushy tailed and filled with excitement and hope, not to mention oodles of financial confidence, a fine lunch down at a restaurant beside the beach would rush you, for two, round about Pts.3000 or so, including tip. That was fifteen quid for two. For that, we’d have menu food (not del dia), at least a bottle of wine and probably a Campari soda and G&T before we eat, and all the coffee we wanted. I’ll tell you something: in one restaurant, we’d had a helluva great meal, a couple of drinks with some Spanish tourists sitting at the next table, and decided (well, I did) that we needed another bottle of wine. Would you believe, the owner, whom we knew quite well by then, suggested we think again as it was a bit of a long drive home… we did, and didn‘t. Today? Folks would probably sell you what you want till you fall off the chair. And charge you when you break it.
Islands are great for photography, especially those that run north to south, like the southern end of Fuerteventura, or even Malta because it’s small: you can get two cracks at sunrise or sunset just by swapping coasts. And there it stops.
When we started doing our road trips from Mallorca to Scotland, we’d book a two-way ferry with a fictitious return date, and we could then swap the return leg by a simple telephone call to the ferry company later on, depending on how long we really wanted to stay away. Last time I enquired, you either get a single, a fixed return or pay through the friggin’ nose for an open return. And they wonder why there’s a dearth of cars outwith the peak summer period. It’s as if they just want to keep you prisoner here. The mainland of Spain means the whole of Europe’s open to you – no islands for homes ever again!
Car insurance? You’d think it would be cheaper here, being an island; no way: when I asked why, the chap pulled out papers and showed that the accident rates were higher because of the proportion of tourists…
Slobodan, you just knew my trigger!
;-)
Rob C
