Trio enroute to Maine

Here is the happy trio wandering the streets of Murcia heading for Bistro Zaher to try the fabled Pastel de Murcia.  It is my favorite reason for going to the city, other than the art supply store and gallery Angie Meca.  We were happy to see that the store hadn't been badly affected by the recent flood, though the waters were probably only inches from their front door.  Sad to say, my favorite painting was not there-no mean feat to buy since it had a tag of Eu.650.  Anyway, the pasteles were fine, as expected and Jordan was delighted by the merengues and eclairs she chose.  The proprietor showed his gratitude by giving John and me a "secret" drink that was delicious and powerful, mixed with two shades of firewater.  One was clear and quite tequila-like on its own.  A small amount of that was mixed with about a jigger of some sort of Jerez brandy.  I'll have to check it out further when I have more time.  

How they wound up having lunch in Murcia is a long sad story.  In a nutshell, I mis-interpreted the train schedule and we wound up buying tickets in Callosa for a train that wasn't coming until their Madrid train left Murcia.  So We "raced" there in a car, sometimes listening to a lying GPS and sometimes relying on gut feelings and/or my recollection of landmarks glimpsed briefly while travelling in a speeding peloton.  We arrived at the station about five minutes after their train left.  So, after buying seats on the four-something, they had seven hours to kill.  Unfortunately, Is and I had to drop them with baggage (which had been locked in the car while we lunched), as we had to go home to straighten out baggage snafus with our London flight.  

The tired trio should be checking into their hotel room across from the Palacio Real in Madrid right about now.  My error lost them an afternoon in a beautiful city, but I'll make it up next time.  The rest of their stay was hectic with lots of sightseeing, some swimming, giraffe-feeding and cycling.  Jordan's favourite site was Guadalest, a Moorish castle built on a mountain top in the mountains West of Benidorm.  I was quite impressed with the view.  Had been there before on the soaking, almost-freezing and clouded-in cycle trip last December, and hadn't seen a bit of the castle due to the clouds and rain.