It's about a five hour drive from Barcelona down to the little town of El Campello, where our rental house was waiting for us.
We slept in, had a hotel breakfast and headed out around 10:00, planning to take it easy on the drive down. The highway is a toll road, but there is a road which runs parallel to it nearly all the way which is in very nice shape and has less traffic, so we saved ourselves the cost of tolls and stuck to the side road.
About three hours in, we started to look for gas. Our car is a company car, and one of the most fantastic things about having a company car in Germany is that it includes gas, even when you are on vacation! I nearly fell over when I learned that. We have two gas cards that we can use and the bill goes directly to the company--the challenge while travelling can be finding the right brands of gas to be able to use the cards.
So, we used our handy dandy Navi (GPS--but having only owned one in Germany, the German name always sticks in my head; you might as well get used to it!) and searched for a Shell station. There was one about 5 km off the main road and we set a course. We arrived to find a long shut down station and nothing else in sight. But the Navi said there was a different Shell about another 6 km along the road, so we headed off again. All in all we were very glad we started to look for gas with plenty left, as we kept heading to the next Shell in the general direction of where we needed to go, and kept finding either closed stations or no indication of a station ever having been there We were getting into smaller and smaller "towns" (do 6 houses clumped together between oranges fields qualify as a town?) and not passing ANY stations of any kind.
We had enough gas, and plenty of time so we enjoyed the scenery and the smell---the scent to orange groves surrounding us was oh so delightful! So, unlike my father who is NOT a melon felon (those of you who read his blog will know what I mean), Dave couldn't stand it any longer and stopped to pick up some of the oranges that were lying on the ground, while I stood by the car expecting to be yelled out by an angry Spanish farmer at any moment:
Shortly thereafter we finally found an actual, operating Shell station and were able to complete the rest of the drive uneventfully.
Following directions,we called the caretaker to bring the key when we were 5 minutes from the rental house. He was right on time and let us into the parking garage, took us on a quick tour of the house and then left us to settle in. Marika had made lovely paper snowflakes, and we brought our Christmas stockings, crackers and our little felt tree topper with us to make the place festive--and were happy to see other little touches already in the house, including some small tree decorations on tables in the dining room and each bedroom. I know some of you are interested in what rental houses are like in Europe, so I took some photos as we were unpacking:
The Master Bedroom
Dining Table (in living/dining room combo)
The Small Lower Terrace (with spiral stairs to rooftop terrace)
We had paid a little extra to have a "welcome pack" waiting for us--with juice, soda, sangria, bread, butter, etc. and used it to prepare a little snack and enjoy the upper terrace before we headed out to grocery shop (remarkably, the stores were open, on a Sunday! From the best we could tell reading signs, this is not normal, but during the month of December they are open on Sundays). Here are Rio and David enjoying our snack and Marika enjoying that the wi-fi worked up on the terrace:
Later on, we wandered out to the grocery store--only a 5 minute walk away. We were really at a loss as to what we would have for Christmas Eve dinner. Traditionally we have chicken enchiladas but the ingredients are very hard to find in Germany and when I lived in Spain way back when tortillas were not available. Imagine our excitement when we saw cilantro almost right away and soon found corn tortillas salsa, refried beans and pretty much everything we needed and then some! So we happily stocked up on everything we'd need for Christmas Eve and day and headed back to relax and enjoy having truly arrived at our destination.
Up next, will be our Christmas and the beach in El Campello. In the meantime, enjoy whichever destination you find yourself at now.
Happy Monday,
Hadley
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