Divamensch
THURS AUG 13
Liz and Tom left in the morning. They flew to Valencia. We had a warm goodbye with them at the house. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing more of them in the city. I’ve known them for almost thirty years but had never spent so much time with them. I love them more than ever.
Francesca and AJ booked us on a cider tour about a 45-minute drive from our house. There were eight of us so we took two cars: Karen, Bruce, Mallery, and me - - and Francesca, AJ, Donna, and Mike. Francesca texted Karen to say that they’d be a little late because they had to stop to get gas. We arrived at the cider mill, parked the car, and joined the tour. It had just started but the guide had only spoken in Spanish so far. He said the same thing in English, that was his pattern throughout the tour. The cider mill had been in operation since 1563. He explained that cider was essential to the people at that time because water wasn’t clean.
He led us up the sidewalk to look at the apple trees. A car pulled up, right up onto the sidewalk, right up to the group. We all looked at it with mild alarm. It was the other four people in our group! I said to Karen, “We don’t know those people.” We had a good laugh about that later. I joked that they puled up and said, “Hi, we’re here for the tour. Do you have valet?”
Would you believe they have 500 varieties of apples at the orchard? We tried four different kinds of cider and I have to say that I wouldn’t want a full glass of any of them. They were all very tart, bordering on sour, and I’m used to Woodchuck cider, which tastes like ginger ale. Not my jam but it was still a fun time.
There were six other Americans on our tour, including a guy in a Wisconsin Badgers at the Rose Bowl baseball cap. Of course I had to chat him up. The two straight couples were from Minnesota (the Badgers dude was originally from Milwaukee) and the gay couple was from Oregon. Of course they had come to the area for the eclipse.
Here are a couple pix from the tour:
Our tour included a delicious lunch - - there were two cod courses (nice and salty), and a salad with three big slabs of beef. This pic of me and Donna catches me mid-chew, always an attractive look:
Some starter I don’t remember. Cheese for dessert, so continental. More yuks at lunch, of course. The whole trip was a yukfest, actually.
Four of our group went to the beach in San Sebastian (20 minutes away) and the other four went straight home. You’re right, I was in the group that went home. I had a bit of a nap in the car, that felt good. Mike shared these pix from the beach. He said there were very few people in the water, people were mostly hanging out on their towels on the beach.
Back home and we foraged for dinner. None of us were very hungry since we’d had such a huge lunch.
