Best view from a urinal, ever!

Blog 4 of the Holiday

8th/9th May 2012

We had interesting sugar butty discussion over breakfast. (For those of you not familiar with a sugar butty, it is literally bread, butter and a sprinkling of sugar) This guy at the side of us was pouring sachets of something onto his baguette and I was asking A if it was sugar. Apparently it was salt. so he had 4 massive pieces of bread that he then poured a sachet of salt onto each one and then he added loads of hams and stuff, but I just found it quite random. Then of course we had a huge conversation about sugar butties. I'd personally never had them but A was saying he only liked them if they were open. As in he wouldn't put another piece of bread on top to close the sandwich.

Random and not particularly interesting. Swiftly moving on.

Another early start, though we did have to keep going back. It was one of those, oh I forgot my hat, oh I forgot a jumper, oh I forgot the key for the bloody car. etc etc. After about the fourth time going back we were pretty sure we had everything and we set off on our exciting road trip to the north of the island.

First we drove to the land of a thousand palms, Haria. This was definitely a place where the phantom flower cutter had not been able to strike. Maybe he didn't like the long drive (50 minutes from one end of the Island to the other) or maybe he wasn't keen on the windy roads. But Haria was definitely untouched. It had all the palms. Practically luscious!

We continued our drive to the Mirador Del Rio designed by (of course) Cesar Manrique. I swear no one else ever did anything. He he. Just kidding. We had a lovely view of the La Graciosa, an island off the northern end of Lanzarote, with yet more volcanoes. Spectacular view and even better due to the cloudy weather.

Here we stumbled upon the coach trips that would plague us for the next few hours. They followed us to the caves. Groups of extremely tired elderly people kept emerging from the caves, exhausted and barely functioning. Poor things. It left me slightly apprehensive. How long were these tunnels and what the hell went on down there. But I soon found out......

We had the best tour guide ever. He was so satisfied with his job (if I was speaking this, you would hear the words dripping with sarcasm). Put it this way, I could understand more of his Spanish than his English. And I don't know a great deal of Spanish. I think his greatest catch phrase was, "Mind you head." which was completely nasal and went higher pitched as he moved through the phrase. Another of his classics was "Let's go down. Follow me down." And to be honest, I didn't really understand much else, but the caves were amazing.

There was loads of ducking and dipping and some almost crawling bits but the best bit was when A forgot to duck even though he'd been told to "mind your head". Silly sod, he really cracked his head. Luckily he had one of his lovely hats on and that cushioned the blow somewhat. Daft thing.

We skipped along the the next set of caves, Jameos de agua, meeting a lot of the coach trips once again. It was like, oh look there's the lady from earlier who could barely breathe and there's her husband who was yelling for water but he wasn't allowed because he had to get back on the coach.

In the caves there was a beautiful lake, an oasis of palms and an amazing auditorium. And not forgetting the best view from a urinal in the world. There was a window looking out into the non pedestrianised part of the cave. Lovely. A nice view whilst you pee.

The caves had been remodelled and enhanced by none other than Cesar Manrique. He'd really been a busy boy. Well done. In the lake A found the famous blind white crabs and the visit was finished off with the house of volcanoes. It's nice to have the little science geeky bit at the end.

We found a random and rather empty place to eat just down the road from the caves. Lovely haddock and bizarre red coloured potatoes that literally looked as though they'd been freshly dug up. Yummy.

On our way back we called off at the garden of cactus by Cesar Manrique and of course the sun came out to frazzle me. There were lots of funky varieties of cactus and plenty of phallic ones. Most of them looked like some sort of weird willy worms. Though they were extremely hairy and spiky. Ow.

I went back for a quick writing session before our final soak in the pool. I managed 10 laps of the pool and lots of turns on the slide. Though the evil woman lifeguard switched the lights off early again. BOOOOOOOOOO! Spoiling our fun! Well that just gave us time for a final extreme vodka and lemonade and our last meal with plots of paella and vino.

A last walk along the marina and shock horror we ended up in our cocktail bar, drinking the original sex on the beach and long island that had us completely caned the first time we drank there. He he. We were accompanied by lovely Spanish music this time, no dodgy covers this time. And I could see Venus again.

At this point I'd like to say how frickin' difficult it is to write on a train full of drunk, rowdy QPR/MAN CITY fans, that are singing some lovely renditions of Oasis and Tom Jones. It's brilliant. No distractions at all. My god they're loud. I think I should have gone and sat in the quiet coach, or possibly upgraded to first class. I think it would have been worth the 15 quid not to have this head ache. Knobs.

Well, I don't think I can carry on, so the last day 9th May (coincidentally my year anniversary of the blog) may have to wait until tomorrow. Right now I'm having to stop myself from donning the teacher voice and teacher glare and asking them to shut the fuck up!

There's one particular guy who thinks he's hilarious but it must be a weird southern type of humour 'cause I don't get it. Oh I've just got it. It's drunken football fan humour. My lord, this late onset hangover from last night is not helping matters.(My friend Charl's 30th. Meal and drinks and karaoke.) My temple is throbbing and I'm burning up. I can't stop drinking (Not alcohol, pop and water). I've been attempting to rehydrate myself all day, but right now I don't even think a bath of vimto would be enough.

Oh god, they're getting ready to sing another song. ARGH! And there's still 34 minutes left of this journey. It's gonna be the longest journey of my life, despite only actually being a 2hour and 15 minute train from Manchester to London. ARGH! Turning my Ipod up is not helping.

I did actually just type another 773 words of the book but to be honest I'll have to read back through it tomorrow because it could say anything. It could just be football chants over and over again.

Okay I think I'm gonna give up on this and just finish the journey with a few pages of Game of Thrones. I'm almost finished. I'm about 705 pages in. And then I've got my new Cassandra Clare book, number 5 in the Mortal Instruments series, waiting for me at home. I cannot wait.

OH things seemed to have quietened down a little. Maybe they're giving me a bit of peace for the last hurdle of the journey. Please! (Fingers crossed and praying to the heavens).

Hope you've all had a fabulous weekend. And have the best week you can have.

Ciao for now.