Calpe and siestas...

While we were in Spain, we visited Calpe which is just up the coast from Benidorm. It is a beautiful city tucked in between the sea and the mountains. Once an ancient fishing village Calpe now has about 20.000 inhabitants and boasts enchanting views of the rock of Ifach. Ifach rises to 332 metres. The Phoenicians called the Rock of Ifach the "Northern Rock" to distinguish it from the "Southern Rock" at Gibraltar. Today it is a nature park. It was amazing to look down the beach to see a huge chuck of rock sticking up out of the sea.

Another place of interest was the fishing dock. We could see the boats coming into the docks in mid-afternoon. The boat were always trailed by huge flocks of seagulls making the boast look like they were pulling clouds behind them. Once at the dock, the fisherman unloaded blue trays full of sea creatures. There were squid, flounder, eels, shrimp, lobsters, snapper, and a lot of other types of fish I did not recognize. I watched a man on a boat preparing a tray of squid. He had a wooden, cylindrical club (kind of like a rolling pin only without the handles and much wider in diameter) and he would use it to pound the squid prior to putting them in the trays. The squids were certainly alive when they were unloading the trays, so I am guessing that the clubbing was to stun them.

After being unloaded, the fish went into a warehouse, where it was put on a conveyor belt, identified by a man sitting at a computer next to the conveyor belt, then weighed. The trays would travel further down the conveyor belt which ran between two section of seats where the buyers would sit and bid on the seafood. A big board would announce the price per kilo and the buyer who purchased the tray of seafood. The trays moved further down the conveyor belt where a man would shovel ice into it and a machine would drop a ticket into it identifying the buyer. Then the trays were off loaded, sorted according to buyer, packed with more ice and then loaded into trucks where the seafood was taken to supermarkets and restaurants. The whole process was amazing to watch! The kids enjoyed watching the squid try to make their escape. They reached their arms over the edge of the trays and slide out onto the conveyor belt. Many squid were picked up and pitched back into their trays throughout the process.

After viewing this process, we had no doubt that the seafood in our paella in Calpe was as fresh as you can buy.

Benidorm, Spain, Altea and the flipflop...

We traveled to Benidorm, Spain during the kid's term break, February 10-17, 2007. Shortly before our trip, we stumbled across a TV show making fun of Benidorm as the home away from home for the British. Benidorm claims to have more pubs than any other Spanish city. This concerned us greatly since we were aiming for an authentic Spanish city, not "Little Britain".

Upon our arrival in Benidorm, we discovered that we indeed had found the British escape. We also found that the average age of the visitors was 60+. We chuckled about this most of our trip. We decided that if ever we were feeling old and slow, we could just nip down to Benidorm to feel young and agile again. There were very few couples there that did not include a walking cane or a wheel chair.

The first item on our travel itinerary was to escape Benidorm, so we ventured up the coast of Costa Blanca to Altea. This is a wonderful Spanish city that is relatively new in Spanish history (Altea's church is only 100 years old). Surrounding the city are mountains, making you feel safely tucked in and safe from the everyday craziness on the other side. The beach (la playa) is covered with rounded, white stones and when the water recedes it makes the sound of water being sucked from the bottom of a glass of ice by a straw.

As you venture into the city, you find that all the houses and shops are pressed together on steep hills. The mountains come right down to the sea, so any direction away from the sea is up a steep hill. We climbed 250 steps to the church placed at Altea's highest point and got a wonderful view of city and the sea below.

Alyssa and Nathan loved playing in the rocks by the sea. I was constantly reminding Alyssa about her shoes and several times she had to run back to retrieve them in the last place she was playing. No matter how much I bugged her, she did not want to wear her shoes near the sea.

After lunch, the kids found some much larger rocks to climb on. They had run ahead to play on them as Dale and I walked slowly behind. Upon our arrival, Alyssa was in a state of great distress because one of her flip flops had slipped off and had fallen in between the rocks. The sea was lapping the rocks below and if we had laid on our stomachs on the rocks we would have been able to touch the water. Dale told Alyssa, who was now quite distraught, that the water coming into shore would push her flip flop right back to the rocks. However, we waited and waited, but still no flip flop. Suddenly, Dale said, "Uh... there it is." I turned to see where he was pointing and there was Alyssa's flip flop gently floating on the top of the water, being pulled out to sea by the water. It was already hard to see as it had been pulled away from the rocks a remarkably long way since she lost it. I suddenly had to supress my laughter at the situation because Alyssa had burst into tears claiming that those were "a treasure" to her and now she only had one shoe to get home. Fortunately for Alyssa, flip flops are easy to find especially in a beach town. Once she had the new pair on her feet, the flip flop floating out into the sea was no longer a concern and she was happily prancing down the beach to the next playground.

Now, when I look out to sea I look for Alyssa's flip flop, I giggle at the memory of the loss, and I wonder where it will land or if it will stay out at sea forever.

The pressure to be "green"...

Every time I turn on the radio, I hear reports stating,"Humans blamed for climate change" and "Climate change fight 'can't wait'" and "Scheme to cut 'carbon footprint' ". At home, the only time I ever heard such reports were if I were listening to the science section of an NPR radio broadcast at 8:00am. In the UK, you are given the feeling of desperate urgency about the state of our world's environment. It is as if the UK is now coping with serious problems caused by the climate change. The news reports make you feel like the crops are not growing well and the air is no longer clean.

To encourage Britons to be more "green", the government allows each household only one bin for trash and your trash is picked up every OTHER week. The bins are the kind that have wheels on the bottom and a lid on hinges. You must use the county trash bin if you want your trash collected. If you overflow your bin the lid does not close, you will often see you full bin sitting at the end of your driveway when you get home. You are also given a green bin where all organic waste goes. In addition you have smaller recycling boxes where you can put glass bottles and metal cans. We figured out very quickly that unless we do a LOT of recycling, we will not make it to the next trash collection without recycling. We are forced to find ways of disposing of all our waste in the most efficient way possible.

A family we know here in the village has four children. They found that it was nearly impossible for their family to only fill one bin of trash every other week. They had to beg the county council for an additional bin. Finally a woman came to their house and sorted through all their trash with rubber gloves (YUCK!!) to make sure they were not throwing away biodegradable items! It would make the environmentalists in the States quite proud.

Another way that the government is pressuring consumers to be more environmentally conscience is by levying a "green tax" on fuel. A gallon of gas here costs about $6.80 per gallon. Air Passenger Duty currently ranges from £40 (double for dollars based on the current exchange rate) for standard rate flights to a 'discount' down to as little as £5. When I was recently surfing for airline tickets, I was shocked at the final prices. Most of the time the taxes on the tickets were more than the actual fare! The government is now considering a proposal to double the green tax. Their aim is to enforce the "polluter pays" principle.

The good news is that in their proposal, the government is offering a credit to people who CONSERVE energy. That means money in the bank for all those people that ride bikes! :) Hee! Hee! By the looks of the bike parking lot at the Cambridge Train station, I think this city will be in the black! Everyone start pedaling!