Eli Left to Open the Bar Restaurant Alone. Pain Clinic, Injections Into the Spine. We Meet Ildefonso Our Architect in a Bar Malaguena.......

A Good Architeect (Ildefonso Perez) Who Will Get Your Project Finished Without Delays And Provide All the Correct Papers That You'll Need to Make it Legal.

The Bar Malaguena, Where We All Had Breakfast.

Got a Spare Million? An MRI Scanner.

Intra vertebral Injections, Way Down on my Wish List.

Wednesday 31st October

Hi,

We got up early and after a coffee we took Sami’s temperature which was 37.55, this told us that she probably wouldn’t give birth today, in any case, we had left Victor at home, fully briefed both with how to handle the delivery of a litter of Yorkie puppies and who to call for expert help. Once all that was sorted we made a beeline for the bar restaurant.

After putting out all the tables and chairs on the bar terrace with Olivia and cleaning the bar ready for Eli to open up for restaurant later in the day, the time was 7:30am.- Time to set off for Hospital Civil in Malaga City.

I was supposed to have “nil by mouth” this morning so as to be prepared for whatever tests the neurosurgeon might want to make on me, but we decided to stop at the services on the E-15 motorway and went into the bar restaurant to have a quick coffee. Surely one little coffee wouldn’t affect any test results?

When we arrived at the hospital there were tons of cars fighting for very few parking spaces. We have a Mitsubishi Jeep and it does have its advantages. I simply slipped it into low gear and drove up a steep bank, parking the car there at a precarious angle.

We left the car and as we were walking towards the main entrance, I gave Eli a quick ring to remind her that she’d be opening the bar restaurant on her tod this morning. She was half asleep when she answered her phone, but she thanked me for reminding her about the bar and then I guess she went straight back to sleep again.

On arriving at the Pain Clinic we were confronted by a large crowd of people doing as we were, waiting to be seen by a neurosurgeon. I used my fold up sun-lounger and spent an hour doing sudoku puzzles between dosing off into wonderful catnaps.

Eventual after about an hour, people stated to be called in to see their specialists. It was a great relief to see that out of every four people waiting only one was an out-patient and the other three or four people were just part of the normal Adalusian support pack. It’s not unusual in an Adalucsian hospital ward for a patient to have 10-12 visitors in the ward all at the same time.

At about this time; an hour after our arrival a nurse came out and thrust a set of papers into my hand asking me to. “Sign here.” After signing them, she directed us to another part of the hospital, which was where the actual skilled staff were going to see me. Getting from where we had been administratively processed, to where I was going to be sorted-out, was a job for a MENSA student. I won’t bore you by describing the whole journey, suffice it to say that we had to go up in one lift walk what seemed like a mile and then descend in another lift to get to our correct location, it was not unlike being in Hampton Court maze, but built in three dimensions instead of just two.

Now that we had arrived at he sharp end of the “Clinica de Dolor”, we made another quick call to our bar restaurant to check that our staff had arrived and that there were no problems in the bar and fortunately there weren’t.

I was called in without delay and asked by a nurse to take all my clothes off, barring my “slip” and then put on a pink gown, green plastic shoes and a green plastic hat, not that dissimilar to my normal attire. The comedy didn’t last long, as they called me in and asked me to lay face down on a gurney, which was surrounded by expensive looking scanning equipment. There was a team of specialists around me, just like you see on the telly. They were scanning and monitoring as a female neurosurgeon pushed her hypodermic deep into my spine. The expansive team were using loads of expensive equipment to tell here exactly where to locate her needle; this was a little bit painful, but it was nothing to the surge of pain caused once she had the needle precisely in place and started pumping fluid into my spine. I counteracted the pain by chanting the Buddhist mantra; “Nam Myoho Renge kyo”. The chanting really helps and if any readers would like to know more please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll be only to please to elucidate.

All that completed, I was out in a jiff, a bit dizzy and a bit woozy, but out and free again! I really wanted to try and meet our architect who had done such a good job on our bar restaurant recently (Ildefonso Perez ), so I gave him a quick ring hoping that he would have time to meet with us prior to his shooting off to Granada, a mission that he had previously told me about. We were in luck and he said he’d be able to meet us in the bar right opposite “La Rosaleda.” So we finished off the unpleasant hospital trip with a very nice Spanish breakfast in a lovely bar Maleguena with our good friend and architect Ildefonso.

(If you are looking for a really brilliant architect who is bi-lingual and will convert your house or build you a new one, together with all the correct legal papers; please email me through my website for more details).

Cheers

Graham

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Bar Restaurant Flooded-Out. Graham to the Rescue!

Happy Sweepers, After Their Shop has flooded.

Flexible hoses don't use them they can burts at any time.

A marvelous Louis Quinze set of drawers.

Wednesday 30th October

Hi,

Arrived at the bar this morning and shock, horror, probe; there was water creeping out of the front door. I unlocked the door and rushed in to find that one of those silly metal reinforced rubber hoses that are use in bars and houses to connect the mains supply to the taps had burst in the night and the floor was about 1cm deep in water. In the UK plumbers use copper pipe everywhere and the only place you’ll ever find rubber-piping carrying pressurized water is on a washing machine or dishwasher. In a bar or in a house you should always turn off the stop-cocks located behind your washing machine whenever you go away, but of course then you have to remember to turn them on again next time you use the machine.

One of the customers in my bar had a rubber connecting hose burst in her bathroom, whilst she was away from her home in Estepona and you can imagine the damage that a burst hose had done to her home over a period of a week or so. A lot of her furniture including some wonderful Louis Qinze pieces, so once again this serves as a reminder that we should always cut-off the water before we go away. Fortunately a neighbour reported it to Olivia in our bar and we were able to contact the lady, so that she could get a plumber in to deal with the problem.

A few years ago in my bar restaurant, I was in the habit of turning off the water each night at the stop-cock before I went home, but recently I have been more complacent about taking such precautions than I should be, so I landed myself with an extra hours work in the bar mopping the water up. Most bars in Spain have good quality ceramic tiled floors throughout, so a flooded bar is not the nightmare that it would be if it were in the UK, where wall-to-wall carpet is the norm.

Actually in a Spanish bar restaurant, flooding is not a big problem as long as you deal with it within a few hours. What I actually did to get my bar ready for opening today was, open all the doors and windows and then sweep the water out the doors into the street and then finish off by pulling all the big equipment away from the walls and mopping behind it. With the sun shining and a nice breeze flowing through the place was pretty well dried out within an hour, so all’s well that ends well, as now into the bargain we have the cleanest bar for miles around .

Tomorrow the bar will be left in the hands of Eli, as I’m off to Malaga to see a neurosurgeon about my lumber pain. We are hoping that when we’ve finished at the Hospital Civil Unidad de Dolor, we will be able to meet Ildefonso for breakfast in Malaga City (He’s the architect who handled the project for completely modernizing our bar and getting our new restaurant Opening License). He’s a really great guy and if you need any construction work done medium to large projects, just contact me and I’ll pass on his details to you.

Cheers

Graham

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Halloween. We're Closing Our Bar and all Going Off to Celebrate in a Friend's Bar in Benalmadena.

A Yorkie Litter is on the Way. Any volunteers?

We will be Celebrating Halloween in a Bar in Benalmadena This Year.

Monday 29th October

Hi,

After selling second hand English books in our bar for a couple of months now and raising a regular trickle of income for our Street Children’s charity in Nepal, we have reacted to requests from customers to introduce Spanish books also. We had about 500 books Spanish and English cluttering up our apt, so I boxed them all up and my son Victor took them down to the bar and I must admit that we have reclaimed a lot of space in the apt through this move and the apt looks a lot better for it. More like an apt and less like a public library.

We have a kind of breakfast bar arrangement in our restaurant, which rarely gets used, as most people prefer to eat and drink on the terrace or at a table, so we have used this breakfast bar to display both Spanish and English books for sale. We take a few euros each day towards our preferred charity, but over the course of a year that should amount to enough to sponsor a Street Child and send them to the Buddha Memorial Children’s Academy for a year.

A lot of customers at our bar want us to put on a Halloween party on Wednesday night, but this year we are going to close our bar and go to a party in a friend’s bar in Benalmadena and let other people do all the work for a change, whilst we have a good time.

Very conveniently Victor has a good friend Pablo who lives in Aroyo de la Miel, near Benalmadena, so they are going to meet up in a bar in Fuengirola and go to a club to celebrate Halloween mob handed; all rather handy, as we can all travel from Estepona to Fuengirola in together in one car.

Sami the Yorkie: She is expecting her litter of three or perhaps four puppies around the 7^th November, so we have to have a baby sitter for her when we decide to go out, just in case she has the puppies when we are not at home. Eli who works for us in our bar is very in to whelping bitches, so once again it is rather convenient that we have Eli available to stand in for us when we do go out. We also have the mobile number for Lucia, who is a really great and extremely caring vet. And we can really recommend her to any readers who are looking for a good vet in the Estepona/San Pedro/Marbella area.

We have made a whelping box from a cardboard box and filled it with shredded news paper, an idea we got from a customer in our bar and I’ve also seen it described on the Internet. The idea is that once Sami has delivered he puppies, we change the shredded newspaper every day to keep the environment hygienic.

I simply can’t imagine what life will be like in the apt with three to four Yorkie puppies running around. There’s going to be a lot of cleaning up to be done. Any volunteers?

Cheers

Graham

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Driving Test easier, Cheaper Here or in the UK?

Friday 26th October

Hi,

We have a pretty young lady who often comes to our bar after work. She has nicely groomed auburn hair and delicate features with quite high cheekbones. Her name is Jilly and I know that she worked in a bar on the Costa del Sol (Estepona I think.) for a couple of years after finishing her A levels and then left when the owner put the bar lease up for sale.

Now Jilly is working in an office, in a sort of small solicitors in Marbella, which here in Spain is called a gestoria. Over the last few weeks I have noticed that she has been studying whilst she sits at the bar and has her after work glass of wine.

This morning I plucked up the courage to ask about her studies by inquiring if she was preparing for an exam. She told me that she was preparing for a really tricky test and that the test was for the theoretical part of her driving test. She went on to say that it takes about a month of hard studying to reach the very high standard required to pass the test, but once she had passed both parts of the driving test, she would be able get a car and to look for a much better job.

I asked her why she didn’t simply go back to the UK to take her driving test there and she explained that it would involve taking at least 2 weeks off work with loss of earnings and traveling costs to go to Britain twice; once to take the theory test and then again to take the practical. She told me that she had given the idea plenty of thought and that she would be able to earn some money working in a bar there, as her parents have a bar restaurant in Swansea and also the accommodation would be free. When I said that it sounded like a great idea to me, she told me that as she has not lived in UK for the last 3 years she would not be eligible to take her test there.

Several people sitting at the bar agreed that although the test here is both arduous and expensive, it’s still the easier of the two options, if you have a job commitment here in Spain to consider.

All this information will be very helpful to pass on to other customers in my bar who have children around 17-18 years of age.

One an unrelated topic; I had an email this morning from a guy who wants to sell up in Manchester and buy, rent a bar restaurant on the Costa del Sol, in Spain, but I think from what he says he is looking for a place with accommodation included, so as my restaurant would not suit him I referred him to a friend in Fuengirola who has a bar lease up for sale with a three bedroom apt above. Maybe it’s what he’s looking for.

Cheers

Graham

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Half Term School Reports are out in Andalusia.

Thursday 25th October

Hi,

A lot of our bar customers have children in English International Colleges here on the Costa del Sol, some in Marbella, others as far away as Fuengirola. So one of the main topics of conversation over the bar has been; how their children are doing at school and of course the contents of their half term school reports.

Victor got back form school and popped into the bar restaurant to hand us his report, mostly it was average or above, but he needs to work harder at his A” Chemistry if he is to do well in his final A level grade. He has been criticised for not doing enough Community Services work within the school. This basically means helping to teach younger children. Tomorrow I shall be complaining to the school over this comment. My view is straight forward; if he is struggling to keep up with three tough A levels (Maths, Chem. and Physics.); it is ridiculous that he should be asked to loose time from his course by teaching youngsters. Isn’t that what teachers are paid to do?

One thing that I did feel pleased about was that none of our customers were in a position to boast about their children having a string of A’s on their report. The general consensus at the bar was that education today simply isn’t relevant enough to life. George put it quite well by saying that the only subjects taught by schools today at A level that actually provide a child with life skills are: English Maths and Sport. Actually there weren’t many parents at the bar who could put up a strong argument against that. It seems to me that any other A level subject is just a ticket to get into university, where you really have to start studying the subject in depth, so that you eventually become equipped with the skills and knowledge to get yourself a job.

Changing the subject; Olivia had a mad moment today when she took down all the curtains in the bar and stuck them in the washing machine. Not a job that gets done as regularly as it should, but the restaurant area does look really nice when all the lace curtains have been freshly washed.

If you have any comments on the state of A level education today; I’d love to here from you.

Cheers

Graham

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Unsolicited Advice from the Bar.

Wednesday 24th October

The trials and tribulations of buying a bar in Spain. We are really happy with our bar on the Costa del Sol, but from time to time when vital bar equipment breaks down you can find yourself undergoing some real stress.

Hi, This morning I was called by Olivia to our bar restaurant to deal with an emergency problem with the deep/fryer. The heating element would not switch/off, so the oil was overheating and smoking out the bar. The only way Olivia could stop this was by pulling the plug out of its wall socket.

As soon as I got to the bar, I turned the thermostat off and on, listening for the tiny click that one should hear as it turns on and off. It was immediately obvious that there was no click, so I knew that the thermostat was not working. Fortunately the problem was quickly remedied by slightly undoing the two screws, which secured the thermostat in place. Every single action was carefully watched and useful comments were given on how the job should be done by several regulars who were sitting at the two bars that face into the restaurant kitchen. Needless to say non of my well meaning advisories knew the slightest thing about the job I had been landed with and it would have been quite annoying had I not have found the problem quickly and left myself feeling very contented that the deep/fryer was now back in service. Olivia and I had been worried that we may have had to order replacement parts and be stuck without the machine for several days, but fortunately due to a bit of very good luck we can bash out English sausages and of course chips without any break in service.

Once I’d fixed the thing, I went and sat at the bar and had a good laugh about it all with the advisory panel who had been So helpful.

Cheers

Graham

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Amelia. The Other Side of the Globe from HerThree Young Children.

Amelia mother of three.

Sunset at Paraguay River

Tuesday 23th October

Hi,

A few months ago a lovely young lady from Paraguay called Amelia came to the bar restaurant and asked if we had a job for her and unfortunately we were unable to help her. Amelia had left her three children with here mother in Paraguay and taken a very big step in coming to Spain to look for work, which would give much better pay than she could get in her own country. She ended up working long hours in the restaurant adjacent to ours, but she had a problem. She had free accommodation with friends in Marbella, but the job was in Estepona, so she had to hang around in our bar for 4 hours each afternoon between her two shifts.

Most days Amelia was so tired and so sad because she was missing her children terribly, that she would curl up on one of the bench seats in our bar and fall asleep like a baby. This didn’t cause a problem in our bar, as nobody came inside during the warm season and we were only too pleased to help her in any little way we could, considering her difficult circumstances. However when Olivia went off for a week’s holiday to the Dominican Republic, closing the bar, Amelia was stuck with nowhere to rest between shifts. After talking it over with Olivia we decided to invite her to our apt where she could take her siesta in Victor’s room. That only left one small problem to solve; Amelia’s break from the restaurant commenced each day at 4pm and I would not be back at the apt to let her in until I had returned from Marbella, having done the school run. We hadn’t known Amelia long enough to give her a key to our home, so we had to come up with an idea quickly. Olivia had a brain wave, why not let her wait up on our roof terrace where we had a nice sun-lounger for half an hour each day and then I’d be able to let her in, as soon as I arrived at 4:30pm, so this was what we did and each day Amelia would lay either in the sun or the shade up on the flat roof and then when I got back with Victor she would come in take a shower and then sleep.

Amelia has found it really difficult to be away from her children and has now bought a ticket to return home to South America on the 8^th Nov. She has our email address and we hope that she will keep in contact and also send pictures of her family.

I just left our bar where she was giving Olivia a manicure. Typical of Olivia knowing that Amelia is not working at the moment, she had thought of a way of giving her a way to earn a little bit to help tide her over.

Amelia is a trained hairdresser and hopes to go back into her profession as soon as she is back in Paraguay. I know that I will feel a lot of sympathetic joy for her once she is reunited with her three children. Lets all wish her good luck in her endeavour.

Cheers

Graham

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

San Pedro Feria. Adults in Flamenco Dress on Horse Back and little children Riding Ponies.

Friday 19th October

Hi,

Today is the first day of the San Pedro Feria. Each town has its own feria of which it is very proud. Bigger towns like Marbella, Fuengirola and Estepona have their ferias earlier (in the summertime.) and San Pedro being a rather small town is one of the last Ferias to be held on the Costa del Sol or for that matter in Andalusia.

This morning my son was on holiday from school, so I suggested that it would be a good idea to go out to a bar for breakfast. We wanted to sit on the terrace of Bar El Mastren or Bar Ricardo, in order to soak up some of the colourful atmosphere of the Feria, but we had doubts about being able to find a parking space near enough to either of our favourite bars, as I have to take my bedchair. We decided that we’d go into San Pedro and if it was all jammed up with traffic, we would then continue on and find a bar in Marbella.

We arrived in San Pedro at around 11am and it was surprisingly quiet. We were able to use the invalid space right outside Bar El Mastren, so things couldn’t have been better. The bar was pretty busy, but the streets and pavements were fairly quiet. We concluded that most of the population had had a late night last night and were consequently still preparing themselves for this mornings official start to the Feria.

Antonio the owner of the bar came out to greet us and said that he had had an enquiry for our bar lease for sale, so that was nice of him. We had just ordered when an old man arrive with what looked like a typewriter in a case on a shopping bag trolley. It wasn’t long before we realized that in fact it was a piano accordion. He whipped the instrument out of its case, slung it around his body and went straight into a rendition of, “Viva España, it was note perfect but lacked a little ”Allegro or gusto”. After he’d worked the El Mastren terrace, he went round with a hat and collected I guess around 25€. Not bad for 5 min work. We gave him 60c and I asked him to show me how to play a chord on the instrument with his left hand. He dismissed my request and disappeared as smartly as he had arrived towing the shopping bag trolley behind him, heading off for his next bar or restaurant. I guess that just served as a reminder of how money driven the Feria has become.

From our safe haven of the bar terrace we were able to watch the rich gentry/land owners riding past in majestic style on their beautifully groomed charges, making sure to show off their dressage skills at each bar or restaurant they passed. Hundreds of women from little girls to grand mothers passed us on heir way to San Pedro Church Square, dressed in traditional flamenco dresses in a myriad of different colours and styles. There were even small children mounted on miniature ponies, which were particularly sweet.

Victor and I took a quick walk around the square which was packed but even so a beautiful scene and as soon as we realised that we were soon to be trapped in our place for an half an hour by the marching band we went back to the bar for another coffee before returning to see Olivia in our bar restaurant to let her know that we had definitely caught the flavour of the San Pedro Feria.

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Never be Too Quick to Make Assumptions About Strangers. Claudio from Chile Arrives in Andalusia.

Thursday 18th October

Graham

Hi,

After having done the school run to Marbella, I went straight back to San Pedro to drop Olivia off, as she is doing a short course there in bar management. San Pedro feria starts tomorrow, so the town has twice the amount of traffic as usual and that’s a lot. I had to buy pizza boxes and chips for the bar and on the way past my favourite bar; Bar El Mastren I spotted an invalid parking place, which was free. After having completed my tasks, I went back the same way and unbelievably; the parking place was still available. I parked up and carried my bedchair to the bar, along with Sami our little Yorkie.

For breakfast I had the usual, toast with olive oil and tomato and a café con leche. The bar was really busy and Rocio the waitress was trying her best to keep up with the orders. I told her that I was in no hurry at all and that brought a smile to her face and she told me that I was the only customer who is not in a hurry. I sat there absorbing the wonderful atmosphere of a town on the Costa del Sol preparing itself for Feria Week.

If I am breakfasting alone in a bar I always take my Sudoku book and usually do one level three puzzle. As I was doing this I noticed that the people on the next table were reading a news paper, so I skewed my eyes up and tried to work out which language it was printed in. After a short while, I decided that they were Spanish, as it was a Spanish newspaper. After another 20 min had elapsed in this very noisy bar I noticed that the same people were making a lot of fuss over Sami, so I said to them in Spanish “She is pregnant.” I was rather shocked when they replied in English, telling me that they thought she was a wonderful dog and so on.

All this reminded me just how much we rely on first impressions and assumptions which mostly turn-out to be incorrect and as we progressed our conversation, I learned that he was called Bryan and came from Cardiff and that she was called Alba and came from Argentina and that they spent the winter in Marbella and La Heredia, so I was wrong in all departments. We chatted for quite a long time about al sorts of things and they turned out to be lovely people. I gave them my card and invited them to visit Olivia and myself at our bar restaurant in Estepona, one day soon.

When you have a small Yorkie, it’s so easy to get talking to new people and one of the things I really like about Spain (Andalusia) is that it is really easy to talk to people you’ve never met before in bars or public places. All in all I had a lovely morning.

This afternoon at 4:30 Olivia’s Brother in Law Claudio who arrived here from Chile this morning, is coming to the bar to see us both, it will be the first time that we’ve met each other, so I am really looking forward to it.

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Benylin! Great for Aleviating Coughs, but too much can Cause Embarrassing problems.

Toooo much Benyyliin!

Wednesday 17th October

Graham

Hi,

Victor didn’t go to 6^th form college in Marbella yesterday, as he was coughing badly. Olivia bought him a bottle of Benylin on her way to the bar restaurant and he stayed at home, sleeping mainly. He woke up around midday and finally found crawler gear and started to do some schoolwork. Early evening-ish, he went to the bar and ate there with some of the regular customers. We finished off the evening by watching an American DVD rented from Estepona, which was so boring that we both gave up on it.

Benylin is fantastic for quietening down the cough response. It’s a strong sedative and it works by sedating the muscles that cause you to cough. It’s dead important to follow the correct dosage instructions. I remember once when I was working as an automotive clay-modeller; I had a bad cough and got up in the middle of the night and took some Benylin, which I slugged straight out of the bottle, as I couldn’t be bothered to go and find a spoon and I didn’t want to awaken Victor or Olivia at that hour. The result was that when I got to work I behaved like a drunkard who had tried a shot of everything on the top shelf of the bar. I wasn’t abusive or anything alike that, but I had little sense of balance, kept staggering around and felt very sleepy all day. It was a miserable day, being mocked by my mates for having overdone it in the bar, when in fact I had merely taken too bigger dose of Benylin.

I take Victor to school each day, not because he asks me to or expects to be given a lift, but because I tend to wake up early and I enjoy chatting with him about anything that comes up and I also enjoy being out and about first thing in the morning. The roads are heavy with traffic at 8:30am and there are no shortage of aggressive drivers around; you know the sort of people who simply hate letting you out of a side road or love to block junctions, with absolutely no respect for other road users. Whenever I go on about this aspect of driving in my bar, my British customers are dead quick to remind me that the Costa del Sol is a paradise compared to driving in Britain in the rush hour.

There is all most no road rage here. Drivers don’t get out of their cars and want to fight you. Instead you are more likely to get a vicious flash of headlamps in your rear view mirror or a persistent sounding of the horn. All this is normally simple to placate by raising an apologetic hand accompanied by a smile, although you may well be thinking something rather much more derogative about the angry motorist you are having to deal with.

When Victor had finished eating in the bar restaurant, he called me to come down, as there were quiet a few people there from various places along the Costa del Sol (Estepona, Marbella, Fuengirola and Torremolinos.) so I went down and joined the group who had just met up in our bar by coincidence and spent an hour or so in pleasant company, before going home with Victor to watch the film. As I mentioned before; the film was a non-starter, but there were some good programs on sky, so we still had a good evening. We watched Dog Borstal and Britain’s Biggest Storm and finished off with Singing with the Enemy. As you may have gathered by now; you can receive Sky TV loud and clear in Andalusia.

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

Sami Our Yorkie Goes for Her Ecographia (Scan.).

Tuesday 16th October

Graham

Hi,

Yesterday the bar re-opened after Olivia’s holiday and business was steady, but today after the lunch time session Eli is going out for a couple of hours delivering menus from house to house. The menus have coloured images of the main food dishes and very importantly the phone No of the bar so people can call-in their order to the bar restaurant if they don’t want to wait and have a quiet drink whilst their food is being prepared. Usually after each leafleting session the bar is about 30% busier, so it’s a practise that’s well worth doing.

Sami our 2 ½ year old Yorkie went for her scan this morning at 10am. We left the bar restaurant in the capable hands of Eli and went off with Sami. The vet Lucia is also located in the Diana Comercial Center. She is very dedicated to her job, loves all animals and is a very, very nice person. She often pops in to our bar to catch up with the news.

Firstly Lucia turned Sami upside down and shaved the fur from her underside, she then applied tons of blue gel and started scanning, with a hand held thing that looked like a microphone. We could see the puppies as she pointed them out to us, although they were moving about a lot and counting them proved pretty well impossible, in the end Lucia and myself agreed that we thought we had seen four puppies in Sami’s womb.

Lucia said that as there were probably four puppies, they would be very small and that the birth should be easier. It was miraculous being able to see the tiny Yorkies moving around inside their mother.

The puppies are due three weeks from now and it is important that Sami eats really good quality food. Lucia has recommended Royal Canine and to get Sami to eat this, firstly I have to soak it in hot water, mash it up and then mix it with either tuna or chicken, which Olivia cooks for her in the bar.

>>Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Rent, Sale, Costa del Sol, Spain<<

San Pedro, Costa del Sol, a Brief History.

El Inglesia San Pedro de Alcantara, Marbella.

El Marquis del Duero, San Pedro.

The beach at San Pedro, Marbella, Costa del Sol.

Beach front apartments San Pedro, Marbella.

Agriculture to the north of San Pedro town, Costa del Sol.

Monday 15 th October

Graham

Hi,

San Pedro de Alcántara is one of the most strangely situated towns on the Costa del Sol , it is packed with restaurants, bars and has a vibrant social life, apart from having all the shops and schools that you would expect a town to have. Most towns like: Estepona, Puerto Banus Marbella and Fuengirola are located right on the coast, so why is it then that San Pedro is located one kilometre back from the shore line?

This version of the history of San Pedro was kindly related to me in our bar, by a Spanish customer, so if it is incorrect please let me know, so that I can put things right:

About 250 years ago there was nothing where San Pedro now stands and General Manuel Gutiérrez de la Concha e Irigoyen, first Marquís del Duero, came along and decided that San Pedro would be a great place to set-up an agricultural Colony, so without further delay he founded the Agricultural Colony of San Pedro Alcántara The Marquís del Duero, built himself a Manor house about 1km inland from the sea to make sure that he was away from the strong winds and the salt that they deposited on anything growing near the coast.

Apart from a nice big Manor House for himself and his wife, he also built rows and rows of tithe cottages to house his farm workers and a few bars or bodegas, as they were then called, to keep the workers happy after a 12 hour shift in the fields. He had no need to be near the sea, so the local community which built up around him and his house was also inland from the sea and the land between this settlement and the sea was worthless, as it was no use for farming or for any other gainful use.

The Marquis’s Mother had a favourite saint called Petra de Alcántara Irigoyen y de la Quintana, and that was the name she chose for the church they built and so the settlement became known also as San Pedro (de Alcantara).

It wasn’t until the early sixties that foreigners started to settle in the area and they chose to build isolated villas on the southern side of the N-340 road a few modestly constructed beach bars (chiringitos) popped-up to serve this new genre of foreign resident. Shortly afterwards a few urbanizations were built near the sea. At this time land near to the coast was very cheap and tended to be left to the women in the families, whilst the men inherited the more valuable productive farmland with the advent of organized tourism in the latter part of the sixties, land value started to rise.

About 10 years ago massive development of the coastal area was undertaken and now the coastal band is highly populated and densely developed. There are some bars and restaurants on the beach side of the N-340, but town of San Pedro with it’s churches, shops, cafes, bars and restaurants has not been modernised in line with the new development along the coast and continues to remain a quaint old agricultural town to this day.

Don’t be fooled by the odd boat or anchor which has been used to decorate some of the roundabouts or by the beach bars and restaurants draped with fishing nets, , they only fools the tourists into believing that San Pedro is a fishing town.

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Tapas Bar in Malaga. Cycling up to the Mountain Village of Benahavis. Ildefonso for Architectural Work.

Thursday 11th October

Graham

Hi,

There’s very little to do in the bar restaurant this week, as it is closed, but I did pop into the bar this morning to put the main bottle fridge onto defrost and it will take about 2 days for all the ice to melt, clean inside and switch it on again, ready for Olivia to open the restaurant again on Monday.

But right now Olivia is on holiday, so this morning we went into Marbella for a quiet breakfast together. The bar cafeteria we chose was the famous “Cafeteria Marbella” located in the high street, right in front of the park. Service there is very professional and we both enjoyed our quiet breakfast together. I chose café con leche with croissant and jam, whilst Olivia took tortilla with her coffee. The bar has a lovely terrace shaded by trees. We chatted about Victor's progress with his A 2’s, about the likelihood of him starting dating soon and about us taking him kiteboarding in Tarifa this weekend. We’d spend our time in the bar or restaurant and on the beach whilst he had his lessons.

Despite my back problems, which prevent me from sitting, I am able to cycle from the Diana Comercial Centre to the “Romaria” Shrine, which is located in a eucalyptus spinney about 5 km up the Benahavis road. The trip is hilly and where the Benahavis road passes under the E-15 motorway, the road leading to the tunnel and passing through the tunnel itself is steep, so it’s important to stay in a very low gear and pedal at a relaxed rate, if I can do that I reach the Romaria Shrine comfortably and still have the energy to cycle back home. Trying to cycle to fast up a hill is a really bad mistake to make, as you use up too much of your energy, making the journey home an unpleasant struggle.

Cycling is a marvelous sport; it allows you to journey through the countryside reasonably slowly and to enjoy all the natural sights and sounds along the way. You see farm animals, beautiful wild birds and witness the changing of the seasons, perhaps enjoying a fig or an orange from a tree as you pass by. Sometimes I ride the whole way up to the village (Which is officially located in Estepona) and sit outside a bar, cooling off with a cold drink, but if I only go as far as the Romaria Shrine, then unfortunately I am nowhere near a bar or restaurant and have to be glad that I’ve brought cold drink with me from my own bar.

Ildefonso, the Engineer who oversaw our Pizzeria Bar project, emailed me this morning saying that he was disappointed that whilst we were in Malaga yesterday, we didn’t call him to meet up in a bar for a drink and a few tapas. For some time now he has been wanting to take us to a bar in Malaga that does marvelous tapas. Ildefonso Perez is a very good Commercial Engineer and he really enjoys working with British clients. Basically he designs, builds and modifies apts. bars and restaurants villas and as he knows everybody in that line on the Costa del Sol, he can get the paperwork done without all the long delays that most of us have to put up with. For any readers needing help, here’s his mobile No: 661 849 489.

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Visit Neurosurgeon in Malaga, Look-Up Lara on Return Journey in Guadalmar then Rush Back to Meet Klause with the Jeep.

Wednesday 10th October

Graham

Hi,

We got up at 7am this morning, that’s early for Andalusia. I went to the bar restaurant to check that all the freezers had power and then Olivia met me there with her sister’s (Inelda’s ) Kia Picanto and off we set towards Civic Hospital Malaga. I was supposed tom have no breakfast, but I have to admit we made a quick stop at a bar on route, where I had a Café Largo. I cannot function without a coffee first thing in the morning.

The main reason that we have had our bar restaurant closed this week, is because of today’s appointment with the neurosurgeon. We got there in time for our 9am appointment and the Kia being really small, we found a spot to park without much fuss. When we got to the neurosurgeons surgery, we immediately new instinctively that today was not a good day. There were about 25 people waiting outside his door. Eventually someone came out and explained that the Dr was dealing with an emergency and that none of us would be seen today. Having re-scheduled the appointment, off we sped to find a bar.

We drove out of the Malaga hospital and at the first big round about were several nice looking bars, sharing a very wide footpath as their terrace. We chose the bar that had the most sun and tucked into some lovely crispy toasted rolls, with olive oil and slices of fresh tomato, all washed down with some welcomed café con Leche.

On the way home we looked for Yara’s house . She moved there about 3 weeks ago with her husband Tony and 10 year old daughter Luna. All we knew for certain was that se lived in an urbanization by the sea, East of Malaga called Guadalmar and that her house was located not far from a beach bar, which we were told had a big sign on it saying “bar for lease” or “bar for rent” or “was it bar for sale” or something along those lines. Oh yes! And we also knew that Yara drove a silver Peugeot. We parked up near the beach bar, which was dead easy to find (By the way the sign said “bar for lease”) and then walked all the way round a big urbanization, until we eventually spotted her car. We rang a few doorbells and lo and behold Yara appeared. She was so pleased to see us. She invited us in. I needed to lie on a sofa and rest my now painful back, whilst the two ladies had a good old gossip about life in Malaga and our bar restaurant for sale on the Costa del Sol.

Yara served up some splendid home made fruit cake and all in all we had a lovely couple of hours with her before hitting the E-15 again for West Marbella to meet Klause who had called to say that he had finished work on our jeep and would be waiting with it outside our bar.

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Olivia, Inelda, Gema and Yolanda, Back from Great trip to Dominican Repiublic.

Tuesday 9th October

Graham

Hi,

Olivia and me went to San Pedro this morning. We are driving Inelda’s car till we get our jeep back from Klause (Alternator gone west.). I picked the car up from outside our bar restaurant this morning and noticed that all the dust caps were missing from the wheels. This is bad for the valves, as they need to be kept dry and dust free and also it allows kids to let the tyres down by just pushing say a door key into the valve. We decide before having our breakfast in bar Ricardo in San Pedro, to stop in at the Michelin tyre place and get 8 dust caps. The mechanic gave us the dust caps and refused to take any money. Would that happen in England?

We like bar Ricardo, as they have a great range of tapas and a large terrace surrounded by beautiful trees. It’s one of the few bars with easy parking and they are happy for me to use my sun-lounger on their terrace.

Sandra who is one of the waitresses at Bar Ricardo has started learning English, so As she is such a nice person, I have offered to help her with her English. The plan is that she will come to our apt some evenings after she finishes work in the bar, that would mean her arriving at about 9pm. We would do an hour’s conversation and then I would drop her in Estepona, where she is currently living. Sandra is a really hard working young woman from Ecuador and I am sure she will do well for herself once she can speak English. Let’s wish her good luck!

Olivia had a great time with all her friends and family in DR, but the weather there was very humid and it rained quite frequently, which meant that they were driven of the beach and forced to find a bar near the sea. The weather here on the Costa del Sol is much nicer. We have about 300 days of sunshine per year and the air is much drier with a cooling breeze faintly in evidence most of the time. The Costa del Sol is the ideal location for sitting in a sleeveless or short sleeved top and eating and drinking “en plein aire” on a pretty bar or restaurant terrace. A good friend of mine, Robert who has travelled all around the world, is always telling me that the Costa del Sol has the best all round climate of any country in the world.

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