Weather Warming - Got a Bit of Sun

Typed Wednesday 30 April 2014

 

Ladies and Gentlemen I must tell you that I am very excited because I have the best wi-fi connection we have had since we left home!!!  It has let me do heaps of stuff that it would not let me do elsewhere.  I have even been able to send email through Bigpond via the tablet, although it is too much to ask for it to send through them on the laptop.  Still I have finally got a connection that would let me load Kenneth’s email addresses onto the tablet so that he can send and received there as well as me.  All is good.

 

One thing that we have had a problem with though, was that we thought tonight we would watch some catchup TV - seeing that we had such a good wi-fi connection - but apparently one can only watch  catch up within Australia.  What a bugger!!!  Never mind, back to the books.

 

We stopped at Burgos only long enough to use the internet and go to the supermarket.  Macca’s was Macca’s with useable wi-fi and that was a plus.  The supermarket was something else altogether.  I am inserting some photos here to show you what I mean.  The selection in the delicatessen and seafood sections leaves one drooling.  The old rule about ‘never shopping on an empty stomach’  has to be remembered religiously here, otherwise you buy trolley-fulls of stuff that you can’t possibly eat before it goes off.  And they also have some items that the average Australian would find quite daunting - note the octopus arms.

Whole legs of proscuito - yum!!!

 

Octopus arms

From Burgos we did not travel far, but on to Palencia, which has been recommended to us, and it was the site of an Aire de Stationment de Caravanas (I know I have spelled that out a bit in the last few posts, but I love the expression - it is soooo Spanish!).  The Aire was just across a lovely old bridge from the centre of the city, next to a park, and we were parked up with 25-30 other vans in a car park type situation.   However, all the vital services for motorhomes were available - toilet dump, grey water dump and fresh water - with those one can manage without electricity, because we all have good 12v systems.  A lot of the van here run their TVs under those conditions.

Beautiful old bridge in Palencia

Trees trained into trellis for summer shade along the footpaths - not just in Palencia, but all over Spain

 

Kenny with St Lazarus and his dog in Palencia

The weather was lovely, sunny and warm - for the first time since we got to Spain.  Warm enough that at 5pm, I stripped down from 2 long sleeved T-shirts, heavy tights and jeans, to a skirt and a singlet top, and got a chair out and sat in the sun long enough to get a bit of colour.  Whilst I was doing that, Kenny was wandering about making friends with the other English-speaking motorhomers.  (We see many English, French, Dutch and now some Germans and less of the Spanish now that the school holidays have finished.)  he gets lots of home hints that way, and advice on where to go and what to see.  I just wish he would write more of it down because by the time he gets home he has forgotten the vital bits!!  

 

The fine weather continued yesterday, but unfortunately I got some sort of bug and was a bit under the weather all day .  I slept on and off most of the day which left Kenny to wander around town looking for bread for lunch (one of our common quests) and working out what was worth seeing.  He stopped for a beer at a Taberna mid afternoon, and was taken by the fact that whenever you buy a beer/wine, you get a tapas thrown in.  We are starting to take notes on how they are made up so that we can do some when we get home.  Basically, they are chucks of baguette with toppings and anchovies still figure highly on them, although today we had one that was just the bread, a half cooked quail egg and a sliver of pastrami - very interesting, but my stomach didn’t feel good enough to handle that one.

 

We stayed for a second night at Palencia, Kenny stating that if I still felt crook, we would stay another night, but I felt better this morning - about 90% - so we had a wander around the centre of town together, and took off about 11am at travel all of 6.9kms to Cerrato, neighbouring village, where there were SUPPPOSED to be Roman ruins.  We couldn’t find them.  We asked a local lady (who had neither English nor French) and she didn’t have a clue what we were talking about - and I even showed her pictures.  I am sure if there was anything around remotely like the photos in the tourist pamphlet, she would have known where they were!  So we gave Cerrato the flick, ‘cos it didn’t have anything else going for it that we could see - although we did find our bread for lunch - and continued our journey southward towards Valladolid.

 

I must insert a note here that our GPS - donated to us by our Engish friends - when it comes to pronouncing Spanish locations is not real good.  I feel for her.  For instance, Valladolid, we would in English call “Val a Doll id”.  In Spain (because double L is pronounced as a “yuh”) it is pronounced as “Vay a Doll eed”.  Poor old GPS lady (English Serena, I think) calls it “Vally a Doll eed”.   We actually have to know where we are going to make sense of a lot of the places she mentions!  Another interesting note here, is that Z and C are both pronounced as TH when one speaks Spanish - ergo, Muchias Gracias is NOT “Moochus Grassius” but Moothiuth Grathius.  Palencia is Palenthee-a - it is all quite confusing and very lovely.  We have a wonderful time as we drive along trying to figure out how to pronounce the places on the roads signs - not to mention working out what the hell they MEAN!!!  Apparently many years ago one of their kings had a lisp, and the entire population changed their pronunciation so that he would not feel like the odd man out - true story!!

 

When we gave Cerrato the miss, we decided that we would look for a camping because the washing bag was full and we needed a washing machine.  Told the GPS to take us to a camping on the way to Valladolid and, bingo, here we are at Camping Cubillas (that’s Coo-bee-yas) where the washing machine was a bit dodgy, but the wi-fi is great.  And truthfully, the washing machine was OK - I just tried to stuff too much into it rather than pay for a second load!!.  To do a load of washing over here is very expensive - at the last camp it cost me €9.50.  Here it was €7.50 to washing and dry - but the dryer was non-existent, so it was only €1.95 and I could hang it out on the undercover clothes lines.  As half of it didn’t get actually wet, it dried quite well.  Next time I will split it into two loads.

 

Tomorrow we are planning to drive the 30 or so Ks into Valladolid and have a look around, and then go on to a small place called Cuellar, where there is supposed to be SOMETHING to look at.

 

Kenny is ready for bed so I have to pack up now.  Hope I haven’t waffled on too long.  Thank you to those people who have posted a comment - it is lovely to know someone is enjoying my rambling.  I have also discovered that I can reply to comments via the blog and avoid the stress of Bigpond not letting me send stuff.  So everyone, please feel free to comment or send us a message via that means.

 

Signing off for now - keep well till next time

 

Ran out of time for the photos - next time, promise.  W