A VERY English Day in Los Nuñez

Leaving the Road Scholar tour group and all the new friends behind, I was now ready for my week in Los Nuñez near Malaga.  Since my friend, Lyn M., gave me explicit directions where to meet her once I arrived back at the airport, I was soon standing in front of the tobacconist shop.  The cars were lined up like dominos and seeing her bright smile and 2143 license amid the Spanish people surrounding me was like a drink of cold water on a hot day.

When she drove up to the round house that my father started building so many years ago, I took a moment to inhale and touch the moment.  Beautiful, grilled gates opened and vibrantly-colored flowers spilled off low, cement walls and along the edges of her swimming pool.  Lyn is a gardener with a very green thumb; she has mimosa, citrus, fig, olive, avocado and mango trees.  She and her husband renovated and finished the beautiful house in 2004 and the round house has railings that have the most spectacular view in every direction.  The window at the front of the house lures me toward the view every time I walk into the room.

Lyn is from Hampton Court Palace in Middlesex County.  It is now part of London, so Middlesex County does not exist anymore.  It is now called West London in England.  In Estepona, I struggled with the Spanish-speaking people and here, I must listen very closely to Lyn's English accent.  Some of her words are so typical of the English and we laugh as we try to decipher the nuances of the English English and American English.

She is in a choir and last night, the choir was invited to sing at a birthday party for one of their friends who was Scottish.  We put on our fancy clothes and off we went toward Cártema and beyond, through the country following an English couple named Allen and Carol.  And it's a good thing because we changed roads several time, winding our way deeper and deeper into the countryside until we came to Alhaurín el Grande's restaurant, El Porton de Piedra.  The room was filled with expats from England, Wales and Scotland...The birthday boy had on a kilt with his sporran and so did several other men.  I immediately thought of Jamie in The Outlander... (this is not the birthday boy).

My newest friends, Allen and Carol (who led us there) were very welcoming and had Lyn and I in stitches (laughing, Lyn's word).  Music, laughter, food and balloons pulled us into the festive atmosphere as I listened to so many different English accents that I thought I was in the middle of My Fair Lady and the professor was trying to guess which part of England they came from...

It was a typical Spanish dinner time served on the buffet about 10:00 p.m.  Pork, chicken, salads, cakes, chips, meats and lots of wine and beer.  AND, in the middle of all that VERY English evening, I still eked out the Spanish feeling by eating the beautiful, yellow paella and tasting my first Spanish cognac, called Soberano. (Thanks to Allen's introduction to this smooth and warming drink).

All in all, lovely conversations, happy people, music and laughter.
And Lyn's chorus sang beautiful songs to entertain us all.