Hay Carumba! All you can eat and drink.

Hi again. Catching up on our blogging now. We are in Spain now - on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. Sadly, a British lady was just killed here a few days ago by a crazed Bulgarian ex-mental patient. It's so scary and random, but we are okay thankfully so don't worry.

We made a brief stop first in Barcelona, where we have been before. We really like that city and would happily spend more time there again. It's charming, has a nice warm climate, lovely and interesting buildings, and a Tapas bar every four feet. What's not to like? Miles also liked the Spanish senoritas who he has noticed are not shy about showing off their cleavage. We stopped into the Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's masterpiece cathedral that is still a work in progress after like 180 years. It's pretty cool.

Now we are at a resort called Barcelos Varadero at Playa de Las Arenas on Tenerife - a dry, scrappy volcanic island with dramatic rising cliffs, black sand, deep turquoise water and a smattering of palm trees and bouganvillea. This resort is hilarious and super cheap so the clientele is ahem, how do we say, not the most upmarket bunch. They seem to have been attracted to the full board option, which includes all you can eat for three meals a day, PLUS ALL YOU CAN DRINK in alcoholic beverages too, from 10 am to 11 pm at night, all for the absurd price of 20 Euro a person. Miles and I have chosen not to take up this amazing offer though as our hotel apartment has a kitchen and we are cooking for ourselves (this means we are missing out on such culinary delights as hamburgers, chips, day glow orange rice and mini frankfurters washed down with plastic cupfuls of beer, but we do not feel left out : )

It is endlessly entertaining here, with the carnival atmosphere, the topless sunbathing by woman large and small (Hay Carumba! That one above is possibly in the whale watching category - no not me, thanks very much), along with the aquarobics, and the cacophony of languages from Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German to northern English accents so impenatrable, they may as well be speaking Swahili. People on the all inclusive board option sport red wristbands, and they also display a passion for laying out in the sun until their skin tone closely matches their wristband!

Needless to say, people watching is our favourite activity, following by swimming, walking, yoga, supermarket shopping and red wine drinking on our balcony. Next stop, Madrid. I'm sure it will be more civilized but not necessarily more fun : )

Crazy child and the singing lifeguard

Okay, okay, we have been remiss in blogging but we've been busy, doing what I'm not so sure - washing socks and underwear much of the time, to be perfectly mundane. So many hotel beds and train rides and bus stops have whizzed by. Our tour of Sicily next took us to the islands of Lipari (that's me in the not so warm mud bath on the island of Vulcano. The sickly sulphur smell is still in our clothes after 3 or 4 washings and could be a permanent fixture. I did invent a good joke from this visit though - "Why do they call it Vulcano? Because it's a hole.") Then we finished up at the beautiful hillside town of Taormina, overlooking Mount Etna, with orange trees lining the narrow ancient cobblestoned streets, which thronged with coachloads of daytripping tourists by day and prominading Italians by night. We just heard that Mount Etna erupted now that we've left. We often felt like exploding too from so much Italian food. Wherever we went in Taormina, we often heard people answering their mobiles. Nine times out of ten, I swear, they all said "Ciao Mama!" Then the conversation would inevitably turn to food : ) What they ate, what they were planning to eat for dinner. It was hilarious. Obviously Sicilian mamas are still concerned that their offspring are nourished sufficiently and call often to discuss this important topic.

We also took the cable car to the beach twice at the foot of Taormina to plunge into the (still!) ice cold Medditerranean. We rented beach chairs one day and were treated to the singing lifeguard. He was a hilarious man in a red shirt who brought drinks and towels, paid special attention to groups of young ladies in bikinis, explained the intricacies of the lounge chair hydraulics (strict instructions were issued which Miles does an excellent imitation of that still gives us hysterics), and also broke into a chorus of "Volare, voooah, cantare, whooah ooah ooah ooah!" every so often. Did we have the camera with us- idiots, no. But I do have a video on my ipod which will commit him to posterity.

As we left Sicily from the Catania airport, I was treated to one more memorable snippet. An elderly woman was in the airport gift shop attempting to buy a small pink t-shirt. She said to the shop assistant: "Do you speak English?" Shop girl: "Uh, Yes." Grandma: "What does this shirt say?" Shop girl (translating Italian writing on shirt): "This is Child. And this is Crazy. Crazy Child." Okay, grandma said cheerfully and purchased said shirt. Somewhere in Manchester, a tot is wearing a bright pink t-shirt that says Bambina Pazza, blissfully unaware of her grandmother's true feelings : )

Ole! And now for Spain.