Admiring the view

I slept so badly on Wednesday night that I skipped the Thursday morning walk because I was too exhausted. So we decided to do our own walk today. We drove up to the Mesón Los Prados, a restaurant in the middle of nowhere above Otívar. Perfect conditions for walking, 14C and no wind even though we were over 1000 metres above sea level. A mixture of woods and open fields, with occasional views to the snowy Sierra Nevada. We also collected two big sacks of firelighters from under pine trees on the way back. 

Stats: 10.4 km, 275 m climbing, just under 3 hours. Enough to work up an appetite for lunch at the restaurant, where we were the only customers. We are clued up enough about portion sizes in rural Spanish restaurants to order one starter and one main course between us. The patatas a lo pobre and venison stew were just the right amount for two hungry walkers.

The road up to the Mesón is quite spectacular; we've been along narrower and more winding mountain roads, but none with so many kilometres of amazing mountain views. The road clings to the top of a broad valley with rocky peaks on all sides. Put it this way: at one point we stopped to watch a hang glider passing by below us. However, it was quite hazy, and anyway the views are the kind that you can't do justice to with a photo, especially on such a bright cloudless day. So you'll have to make do with this.

That took up a large chunk of the day; in the early evening we went to the Casa de la Cultura for the launch of a novel by a local author, El Ultimo Tesoro Visigodo. I was a bit alarmed that I could barely understand a word from the mumbling guy who introduced him, but luckily the author himself spoke more clearly and I understood most of what he said, which was quite gratifying. We didn't buy the book though.

On the way home we did a little detour and hurrah, our former neighbourhood bar Los Pajaritos was open. This is a rare event, so it would be rude not to participate. It was crowded with people moved by the same sentiment. Our two glasses of wine and two slices of crisply fried hake served with wedges of salted cucumber were 3.60 euros, so the price of a drink has gone up by 10 cents since we were last there.