The first challenge of the day was to try and find the bakery. This was difficult for two reasons – firstly the woolly instructions we had been given on where to find it and secondly because shops don’t look much like shops here but more like private houses. It felt like a real triumph when we stumbled upon it. We bought a couple of the largest pain au chocolate you have ever seen – they will easily do a couple of breakfasts but, due to a continuing lack of Spanish, we also managed to end up with two bread sticks when we really needed only one but it was easier to pay up and look big than to try and explain we only meant one!
The day’s second challenge was to try and find the castle over looking the town of Almuñécar and on this one we utterly failed. We did drive around a bit but saw nothing that was remotely castle like so in the end we gave up and went onto Salobreña which had a pretty obvious castle to satisfy our need for fortified ruins!
We arrived just after two o’clock and the town was closed for the siesta with the shops not opening again until gone five. Fortunately there was a nice (but hot) walk around the narrow streets of the old town to occupy us with each street lined with pretty white-washed houses. Half way up we found a bar and stopped for a drink. Once again this was accompanied by a small snack – this time some courgettes in batter, which was really delicious. This is the equivalent of popping into your local pub, ordering a pint, and it arriving with a small plate of unrequested savoury snacks. Of course that wouldn’t happen in the UK as it would eat into the profit margin.
Having completed our drink and snack we went on to the castle. As it turned out the castle itself was best seen from the outside as there wasn’t much going on within so we made our way back down to the car and drove on to the beach front.
After a short walk along the beach we found a restaurant that looked promising and had outside seating. It’s early in the season here and many resturants are still closed but this one was doing a good trade. We ordered and almost immediately a plate of fried fish (we think) that we hadn’t ordered arrived. They like giving food away here obviously. I ordered the grilled fish and was presented with the following. Unfortunately it was heavily doused in garlic butter so that was the predominant flavour which was a shame.
Tomorrow Granada.