Tag Archives: City

Cami de Cavalls day 17 (1) – The Rain In Spain

Wednesday 19 September 2021 – Before I get on to any further details of What We Did On Our Holiday, I thought it was worth reporting that both Jane and I were declared free of the dreaded lurgy by the Spanish authorities, which means we are free to leave the country tomorrow. So, we had just one more full day in the delightful city of Ciutadella.

The weather has been lovely these past couple of days – sunshine and not too much humidity. The Met Office forecast for today, though, suggested a 40% chance of a light shower. So when this happened

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it was a bit of a surprise, not least for the hotel. The restaurant is in an open courtyard, and has many umbrellas and suchlike devices for shade; but these were not equal to the task of withstanding this deluge. After the rain stopped, we went to get breakfast and were confronted with scenes of mild chaos. I have a suspicion that the restaurant is a little undermanned (like the hospitality industry everywhere, really), as the staff there always seem to be scurrying to keep up; so when half the tables and chairs were soaked (and, I might add, cornering at speed in the courtyard was a tad perilous), they were really struggling. So we went back to our room for half an hour to let them catch up, and when we went back things were somewhat better, though not completely under control. The practical upshot is that we got our Earl Grey and I got my Marmite, so this, along with our clean bill of health, made for a reasonable start to the day.

Ciutadella is a lovely city; we know this from a previous visit and time here during the Cami walks, and it is the reason we had decided to stay here for a couple of days’ relaxing after our exertions. Actually, this was possibly a very slight tactical error. Yes, it’s lovely, but it’s also quite small, and we’d by now explored most of the easily-accessible nooks and crannies. It might have been a better idea to find somewhere new on the island for these relaxation days so that we had better scope for exploration and discovery. On the other hand, the Can Faustino is a delightfully luxurious hotel, which has been a pleasure to stay at.

We decided to walk around the city some more, and, to give us a sense of purpose, rather than simple aimless wandering, we conceived – and superbly executed – A Mission Of Importance:

but, in discharging this solemn duty we got some more pictures from around the city. Buildings and harbour area are really striking

and there were also some lovely quirky little vignettes, starting with this unusual piece of garage flooring.

There were also some nice instances of street art of various sorts

(actually, I think the last of these is more likely to be an advert for the supermarket round the corner, but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt, eh?) So it was a pleasant walk in sunshine and relative cool – about 25°C; looking at the weather forecast for Surrey, I think we’re in for a bit of a shock when we get home tomorrow.

Before we headed back to the hotel, we decided to revisit a scene of horror and gruesome memory from our previous visit to the island, two years ago. Then, we were staying in Mahón, and took the bus to visit Ciutadella. Very soon after leaving the bus station here to walk into the centre, we happened upon this scene, which I reconstruct for you today.

It was sufficiently photogenic that I thought it would benefit from being just a little above street level to take a photo, so I stepped onto the nearest of the planters you see in the foreground. Imagine my surprise! when instead of supporting my weight and giving me the elevation I had expected, the thing tipped over as I stepped on it with one foot, with the result that its cast iron edge arrived with some force on the big toe of my other foot. It bloody hurt – and I use the adjective advisedly, as we had to find a café fairly sharply so we could steal handfuls of their paper napkins to stuff into my shoe to stop the blood making even more of a mess of it than it already had. Amazingly, these deadly dangerous devices can still be found lurking all over Ciutadella, lying in wait for other passing unfortunates to victimise, with not a single health and safety warning sticker to be seen. Disgraceful, I call it.

After this opportunity for closure (my toenail has by now just about grown back, thanks for asking), we decided it was time to head back to the hotel and gather ourselves for the evening’s delight – an evening meal in the lovely Moli des Comte building that I first mentioned about a week ago. That’s why I am writing this blog entry now, because I’m likely to be too ~~pissed~~ tired to finish it later. I will report further; I’ll post an update when I can.

Cami de Cavalls day 16 – At leisure at last!

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Tuesday 28 September 2021 – No more long walks in Menorca, then, since we’d completed the Cami de Cavalls. That didn’t mean no more walking, and it didn’t, today, mean lazily getting up late, either, as we had A Mission Of The Utmost Importance.

It’s two days until we fly home, and so we have to prove that we haven’t picked up the dreaded lurgy while we’re here. Similarly to Iceland, the procedure is very well organised, straightforward and swift. Having booked the test slots online before we left the UK, on the day you present the paperwork for your requested test slot; take a tube with a barcode on it; wait a few seconds to be called in to the test room; suffer the indignity of a swab being inserted into your nose so far it feels like it’s come out of the back of your head; say “thank you” (for that?); and leave. We are promised an e-mail in 24 hours telling us the result.

Fingers crossed.

The walking bit we had to do today was to visit the Cami360 office here in Ciutadella, since the Spanish idea of what size L T shirt means and mine are somewhat at odds. Both Jane and I wanted to swap, and the lass in their office was very helpful without actually being able to speak a word of English. I came away with an XXL cycling shirt, which is actually pretty tight; and Jane also swapped her T-shirt for a different size, too (although she had to go back again later because of a misunderstanding about the difference between Women’s and Unisex sizing). Suffice it to say that by the end of the day, we were both happy with our commemorative clothing to mark the successful completion of the Cami.

Since we had a day of leisure and I believe in draining the cup of life to its dregs, I did a spreadsheet analysis of the various mileages and ascents entailed during the Cami. I used my phone’s GPS to provide location information to three applications and we had the Official Cami360 Booklet, giving the Official Version of length and ascent, section by section.

Long story short: Garmin Connect over-reports mileage and altitude gained by an average of around 10%, if you accept that the Official Version is probably correct, so I’m using Relive figures, as they seem to agree with the official version better. The official length of the Cami is 185km (115 miles), and we walked 210.9km (131 miles), according to Relive; the extra kilometrage(mileage) was due to diversions and/or having to walk to get to the start or from the end of a stage for a drop off or pick up. We ascended 3,224m, slightly more than the 3072m specified in the booklet.

Peripherally, Garmin has recorded that we have walked 256km (159 miles) in total, which includes our searching out Nice Lunches, etc.

We spent more of the day’s leisure walking around reacquainting ourselves with Ciutadella, which is a very attractive city. Here are some photos I took as we walked.

Above is the municipal market, quite busy today

Above are municipal offices, and below are photos taken around the ridiculously pretty harbour.

I also tried my hand at a couple of candid street scenes, with which I’m not unhappy.

(Hmmmm….this last picture has just given me an idea….)

We took lunch at a fish-specialist restaurant we knew from our previous visit, a harbourside place called S’Amarador. It’s really very good, even though they had run out of the razor clams Jane was looking forward to.

And now we’re back at the hotel, where the birds have been twittering away like mad as they joust for roosting space in the trees in the hotel courtyard.

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Of such lovely laziness is a day of leisure on holiday best constituted, particularly when set against the hard, hard labour of the previous fortnight. We have another lazy day tomorrow, for which our Plan A involves eating at the Moli des Comte that I mentioned a week or so ago. Come back tomorrow to find out what we really got up to.

Day 14 – We stood the time of test

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Monday 12th July 2021. When we originally made the holiday arrangements with Dagur, we added an extra day into the schedule so that we could potter around Reykjavik. I’m immensely glad we did, in the light of the hoops one has to jump through in order to travel internationally in these pandemic times. UK requirements were that we had to be able to show a negative Covid test taken no more than 72 hours before departure, and the exceedingly well-organised Iceland authorities made this a very straightforward process – we booked the test online for the morning of our free day, and the leisurely 24 hours we’d added into the schedule on spec would give us a cushion in case the tests took the full 24 hours to come through. All in all, another example of the remarkable good fortune we’d experienced on this holiday.

That good fortune didn’t entirely hold. We had to get to a testing centre which was a couple of miles from our hotel and we decided to walk it. In the event, the walk there was into the teeth of the driving drizzle that, as I’ve said before, there is probably a special Icelandic word for, almost certainly containing some strange vowels and consonants. Also, my fond belief that we would turn up to a largely deserted testing centre and sweep effortlessly through looked a little optimistic when we saw the queue.

In fact, the queue moved swiftly and the process inside the building ran with an efficiency that could have been described as ruthless were it not discharged so courteously. The chap who thrust a cotton bud so far up my nasal passage that I feared it would come out of the top of my head was very polite and helpful whilst going about his business; it took seconds and there was a steady flow of people, which made me wonder how much he is enjoying his days at the moment.

The walk back to the hotel was much more pleasant, with the wind behind us; and having got back to the hotel to change into Being A Tourist clothes, we went out to look around Reykjavik in a little more detail than we had on our arrival day.

The first thing we did was go up to that “Space Shuttle” church (you remember – this one)

and took a look inside. It’s a Lutheran church, so the sort of ritzy decoration that typically adorns Catholic churches (often at the expense of the peons they purport to serve) is absent, leaving a clean, calm environment – somewhat reminiscent of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

The church features a very impressive organ. Stop sniggering at the back.

One can go up the tower, at a cost, but we decided not to, instead opting to follow a suggestion from Dagur to cross the road and look into the sculpture garden of the Einar Jonsson museum opposite the church.

He lived from 1874 to 1954, and the sculpture garden has some lovely examples of his work.

(Obvs I have many more photos, but I wouldn’t want to bore you, not really.)

We went back to our hotel and about 5 hours after we had undergone the test, again with no fanfare or choir of angels but rather via a text, I received the following:

“Sóttvarnalæknir og Almannavarnir: Stephen. Skimun sýnir að þú ert ekki með COVID-19 sjúkdóminn.”

Thank goodness for Google Translate, I say; this helped me establish that it was a negative result. To be fair to the authorities, they also e-mailed certificates to us. In English.

After that we wandered round the area close to our hotel, marvelling at the time and trouble taken to make the buildings interesting.

There are many more interesting and quirky architectural sights that we saw, but, again, there’s a limit to your patience with my photos, so I’ll spare you for now. If you come back tomorrow, you’ll see some more, I can promise you that.

We had made an arrangement to meet Chris Foster, you remember – the folk singer and artist contact from Jane’s dim and distant [slap! ouch!] for drinks in the evening. We thought that it would be a good idea to have a bite to eat beforehand as ballast, but equally thought it would be nice to get away from the arctic char/lamb/beef options that so often figured in our diet over the last fortnight. So we went for a Thai meal and I can now vouch that the beef salad in Krua Thai in Reykjavik is a belter.

After that, we met Chris and his wife, Bára Grímsdóttir, who is a legendary force in Icelandic folk music and song, for “a couple of drinks”, which actually resulted in us getting chucked out of one bar as it closed and then still knocking further drinks back as the hotel bar closed; it was a good evening meeting a couple of really interesting people, in my case for the first time.

And so, rather blearily, to bed. We still have a morning in Reykjavik before we have to go to the airport and bid farewell to this remarkable country, and so we might well go out and see a few more of the sights. Come back and find out if this was the case, why don’t you?