Weekend.

Yesterday we missed a motorcycle race on Calle Venezuela. We had seen notices about it and when we left the bijou residence mid-afternoon we noticed that barriers were up preventing access. We, however, were off to meet a friend who was taking us to his new home in Tomiño, down near the Portuguese border. 

Two politely excited small boys entertained us during the journey, pointing out landmarks such as their favourite supermarkets and a wrecked car propped up on bricks. They also informed us that you can see Portugal from their house. All of this was done in English. Back home, they switched to Spanish. Bilingualism seems to be working in that family: impressive! 

 The occasion was the older son’s sixth birthday party, really an excuse to have a barbecue and get a bunch of friends and relations together to drink beer and eat tortilla and empanada in the garden. Most of the Gallego side of the family had been roped in to make copious amounts of food: also impressive! 

I can highly recommend having sixth birthday parties on sunny afternoons in a garden with a pool, even a fairly small inflatable pool. Small boys and girls bouncing about in the water have fun without needing too much organisation by the adults, who can then concentrate on relaxing. Only those adults who feel like having water-fights need to join in. I’m all for it. 

 

By the time we got back to Vigo, the motorcycle race was all over, bar the people returning home still waving those inflatable plastic things you bang together to encourage the racers. And so we climbed over the remaining barriers, crossed the empty street and headed for home. 

When my alarm rang this morning I heard an unfamiliar sound: rain pattering in the patio. It’s been a good few weeks since I woke up to that. So I re-set the alarm and went back to sleep for half an hour. By the time I awoke again, the rain had stopped and the sun was on its way out. Now, that is what I call an efficient weather system. The sprinklers were still at work up in the Castro but then I suspect they would have been working even if the rain had continued. 

Later on, we set out to walk the coastal path around A Guía peninsular, making our way through Teis, past the huge cranes that look like strange metal monsters from a science fiction story and onto the coastal path by the lower level. This took us past a rather scruffy beach close to the various boat-building sheds and involved a certain amount of daring-adventurer action in order to get onto the coastal path proper.  

It’s a very well made coastal path, built with money from the EU, mostly from northern countries of the EU, if I remember correctly. How kind of the Scandinavian countries to provide such an excellent facility here in Galicia. It was, however, very empty. I think we saw only a couple of groups of walkers on the path. Maybe it was just the wrong time of day but it did seem to be another example of an under-used amenity. This is rather a shame as the views over the bay are worth seeing. But perhaps everyone was waiting until the evening to go out for their paseo. Only mad English people walk for pleasure at other times of the day. 

On our way home we stopped for a refreshing “clara” in a cafe on García Barbón. Ordering our “claras", we were asked “¿con gaseosa o limón?” I have not quite worked out what the difference is in the two kinds of shandy. They don’t always ask. So this time we asked for “gaseosa". Next time the question comes up we’ll ask for “limón” and see if we notice a major difference.