The globally known Parrot Club celebrated in Moraira,
Spain this year with our annual visit to Roger & Sue’s villa in Spain.
John & Lyn collected Noel & Jen for the trip down
to Gatwick and our flight on Monarch to Alicante.
The speed of ‘bag drop’ was appalling although we had previously
checked in on line and got our boarding passes and after a good breakfast in a
Gatwick restaurant we were off for the two hour flight.
The hire car that John had selected was excellent and it
had extra seats which allowed the complete Parrot team to travel around
together. Roger has prepared a great plan for the week and although it had to
be adjusted for various reasons we all had a wonderful time with great food,
wine and most important the great company.
Most of the restaurant we visited were reasonably close
and that was great. We also did a one night visit to Valencia to enable to tour
the Cultural sites and we visited the IMAX 3D cinema which was showing the film
called the ‘The Blue Nile’ an excellent film that Noel & Jen had seen in
Charlotte USA some years earlier. The helicopter shots did create some eye
closing to avoid being ill but overall the film was well received. The visit to
the sea life park was great and we saw a marvellous Dolphin show and the choice
of underwater animals, sharks, whales and just about everything that swims was
there. The whole cultural park area is massive and is built in an empty river
bed which runs down to the sea and it must have cost a fortune and it was paid for
by The EEC which no doubt included money from the poor British taxpayer.
We had a really lovely dinner in an open air restaurant
which had been strongly recommended and although it was not cheap the food and
service we tremendous. We used the Metro to get back to Travelodge Hotel where
we were staying at rather low cost, 20 Euros per night, and just across the
road had a nightcap in a street bar only the brandies were massive and could
not be finished by all. John did finish his but the next morning clearly
regretted his decision.
We also took a train ride up the coast to a place called
Denia and we walked around the old part of town and sampled the local coffee
and took some photos and then headed back to the train station to drop down to
stations where we would get off and walk a bit to a nice recommended restaurant.
What we were not aware of is that the train only stopped
if somebody was on the platform waiting or if you rang the ‘Stop’ bell. Neither
of these happened and we sailed through the station at speed with us all
standing waiting for the train to stop, boy what a surprise that was. So we got
of at the nest step and then waited for the next train northbound and got to
the restaurant just in time. Needless to say this event caused us to have a
little extra wine to gather our strength to get home.
As usual during these visits we, the visitors, prepare
for the event to come up with something to laugh about and this year we went as
the Team GB mixed synchronised swimming team as the photo will clearly demonstrate.
All photos for this week in Spain are on the Phanfare
blog at
