A postcard from Playa de La Zenia

Well, here we are safe and sound in southern Spain. The airport and transit experience in general was surprisingly stress free, despite our increasing tiredness after at 3am start.

Liz didn't even go to bed at all, whilst I only managed a couple of hours. somehow, the fine-tuning of what to take on a plane seems to take me forever. I must have been tired already, because I remember puzzling long and hard about whether to take just a phone to mini-jack cable, or whether to take a full phono-phono cable in case I needed to channel composite video somewhere.

Just sometimes, I hate my nerdyness. I really do.

Once in Spain, after the two and a half hour flight, we quickly located the hire car and I familiarised myself with the controls, sufficiently to get us on the way. Forty minutes away from Alicante airport is La Zenia - a small town right on the coast.

We discovered the apartment easily enough and, despite the four flights of steps up to the door, it is a very pleasant place indeed. A breeze blows across the town, getting gradually more gentle as it gets inland. Just enough to seduce us into believing the rays might not be too dangerous.

We have cable TV here, British channels laid on for the ex-pats, so we are able to keep up with the happenings in Big Brother. Thank goodness. The distressing thing is that there is no wireless internet. I had fully expected to find a commerical wireless service for the holiday trade to enjoy, but not a sausage.

The result is that there will not be a lot of blog entries from here. That said, aside from meals we eat, there probably will not be much to say. This is a very typical holiday for British people to have - and I almost hate and resent that. I don't really want to be somewhere where the Brits out-number the Spaniards. I dislike the shops and signs all being in English - the radio being English - the products being strangely familiar.

And yet, I like it. I hate that I like it, but the convenience is lovely. I have heard what this holiday and “second home” trade is damaging the south of Spain and causing a serious water shortage, and I am not surprised that the Spanish are starting to resent our being here. We have taken the area over and created a real “home-from-home” atmosphere - except with very warm weather.

It may not be colonial, but it feels colonial, and carries with it much of the unease I feel about our awful colonial past. I wonder, if the weather was this warm in the UK - would we still travel over here and make holiday homes? Do we really “love the place” ?

Now, I understand that this is just a postcard, and I would have had to write very small to get all that in.

Weather's lovely, wish you all were here with us to enjoy it. No sunburn yet.

I'll writer more in a day or so. Now, to try and find an internet cafe.

Comments

[Rebecca]

Oh I wish I was there too, basking in that warm sunshine, thinking about what to do today. You and Jason are so alike with your internet needs and we love that, but so different in your approach to language, I think Jason may have liked a little more English and he has said he found the language barrier so frustrating. I like the fun of it and laugh at myself when I get it wrong and the country I am visiting laugh too, so win win. Enjoy your wonderful break and yes I think you are right, if we had lovely weather here, I think we would be less inclined to live abroad. We went to a little place calle Javai and still had some of the old Spain, I daresay a lot of what we witnessed has gone now as there was mass building work when we were there.

[AndyC]

You'll get a chance to make us all jealous, I'm sure. It's actually too hot for me here. Just sitting and doing nothing at all is enough to get me sweating uncontrollably.

Horrible!

[Ruby]

The reason I find it so hard to imagine living anywhere else in the world again is that the weather in LA is almost always perfect. Warm and sunny and beautiful. I relate to the love/hate feelings you have about finding such a British presence there. I feel the same way about an American presence when I'm abroad. That said, when I returned from vacation a couple of weeks ago, I was sort of aching to return to my American conveniences and the things I actually like about the place I live.