Carry On Relaxing

Saturday 17 March

This morning the sky was overcast – not with deep threatening clouds, just a pearly dove grey blanket becoming misty over the islands, but it was still very warm. Colin breakfasted well, before we found ourselves sitting once more on our balcony, watching skuas nose-dive into the sea – a deep metallic grey ocean – and emerging with silver morsels flapping in their long pointed beaks. I blogged and Colin actually ‘read’ a book in between.

This lifestyle is lazy, relaxing and so easy to get used to – no pressure of ‘must do’ or ‘must be’ – I don’t know how we are going to cope when we get back to “Blighty” – we’re trying hard not to think too much about that yet.

We stayed in the hotel all day – venturing only to the restaurant for a late lunch and cocktails, just as a bleary sun emerged from the clouds. It became even hotter towards the end of the afternoon, so I later cooled down in the plunge pool, but there was a bit of a brisk breeze blowing onshore, which deterred Colin from submerging himself in the depths of the cooling water – whimpy or what!

After sunset I watched a film on the television before it was time to make our way to the restaurant to eat our fill once more. We have looked up this hotel on the internet, and most of the comments include something to the effect that the restaurant here is one of the best in town – so why go further? Tonight, one of the special starters was a cold “tomato” consommé with seafood mousse and prawns. When it arrived in a large white soup bowl, it was the palest of pinks – a bit like a soft blush champagne – which tasted lightly of both fish and tomato with four prawns coiled together in the centre, topped with a fine crisp julienne of a fruit – or vegetable – apple green in colour, which I couldn’t recognize, but was intriguing. Floating like islands around the centerpiece, were three halves of mini cherry tomatoes, all filled with a smooth pink seafood mousse. We both found it very delicate and refreshing. For entrées I chose “fish en papiotte, which arrived as a large square foil parcel, containing a mighty chunk of white fish with huge flakes (bigger than cod flakes and meatier) surrounded by small amounts of a wide variety of spring vegetables – very scrumptious. While Colin chose confit of duck – a much more traditional dish than in Salvador - with mashed potatoes. We decided to continue with cocktails tonight instead of wine.

By the time we had finished our meal, it was quite late, but we checked the emails and the sports news before finally sinking into bed. It just started to rain as we made our way through the maze of small corridors and courtyards – large splatters of raindrops bouncing off the stepping stones amidst the gravel – they haven’t had any rain here for forty days, and locals will all say that it was much needed – but we just hope they have had enough by morning.