Domingo a la playa

Where better to spend a sunny Sunday then dipping your toes into the cool waters of the Mediterranean sea. Collect a few shells, throw some smooth pebbles into the water. I'll let the photos I took early this afternoon tell you more.

Washed up sailing boats become the ideal venue for a BBQ on the beach.

The paseo goes from the heart of Marbella down to Puerto Banus. There are plenty of benches to sit and pass the time away on route and ice cream booths too!

Tumbling cerise bourgainvillea spill over white washed walls.

Tropical plants and flowers border the paseo with the beach.

The best combination of all

I've picked up three second hand books today from Terra Sana on the Golden Mile. Next to their restaurant they have a deli selling delicious scented handmade soaps for under 4 euros, organic foods, hair and skin products made with olive oil and second hand English books. I love reading and miss an English library so much. I order in bulk from Amazon and occasionally spend 10 euros on an imported book from Bookworld Espana but mostly I rely on a mum at school to give me her cast offs and for holiday makers that leave me their finished books in the apartment I look after.
With three children there isn't often the time for the luxury of reading and being taken gently to another time and place, but I snatch 10 minutes here and there whilst waiting for the school bell. Rather than talk to other mums in the playground, I find a stone wall, perch and read.
So if you live in Marbella head to Terra Sana, the books are 2 euros each and the proceeds go to buying sapling trees to plant in a nature reserve. So I don't have to feel so guilty reading a book after all.....

I love Fridays

And today was a little special as it was just me and the three little darlings at tea time, not the host of friends. I'm trying not to be so obsessive over the pc and so sat down on the sofa and chatted to the girls about their day. I should do it more, much more.....
Husband came home early, so we all ate together. We should do it more, much more....
Tomorrow kiddies parties, a cookery class for my eldest ( not me, I can't cook...) and then by 4.30pm we will all be back together again. I have to work in the afternoon, but should only be gone for a couple of hours and then I will be ready for my Mercadona white wine!
Sunday is a day of rest, walk to the beach to collect some interesting pebbles for my daughter's art project,...homework, but mostly rest. I may even do some gardening. I should do it more, much more.....

Try new wines and have some fun

Here in Spain wine is so cheap that you can afford to be brave and try a new one now and then. If you don't like it you will have wasted a couple of euros, not the end of the world. You can always put a candle in the bottle even if you can't use the contents......

I have just spend 2.50 euros on a white wine in the supermarket Mercadona, my favourite supermarket in the Marbella area for its happy staff, great and I mean really great prices and its brown bread, delicious for toasting. This white wine blew me away, fruity, tangy but not tart and tastes like a very expensive white wine. It has that tell tale big bubble up its glass bottom, more expensive to produce than a regular flat bottomed wine bottle and that usually is an indicator that the wine will be better than average.

So if you are shopping in Mercadona pick up a bottle of Palacio de Vivero, Verdejo 2009. Absolutely DELICIOUS.