Up early for visit to volcanic caves. Amazing optical illusion trick at the end. Had intended to visit Jameos de Agua afterwards but by that time the coaches had arrived and I don't do queueing. Not without stabbing anyway. Then to blue lagoon beach on very north of island. Got cloudy so hot-footed it over to Caleta de Farmara or something like that anyway - long surfing beach under cliffs on north-west of island, full of crazy Norwegians. Burnt my boobies.
Cooked Spaghetti Neapolitan and drank wine and then had Big Family Holiday Row. Wooden floor boards made for particularly effective stomping upstairs and slamming doors. Richard just sat on the sofa throughout with a big question mark above his head. Someone on Twitter remarked that Big Family Holiday Row and Diarrhoea are the only two certainties of any holiday. No diarrhoea yet but hoping it won't be similarly explosive and loud.

Made up before we went to bed and this morning the air had cleared. Beautiful still day. Got to Jameos de Agua before the crowds. These are collapsed underground volcanic caves that César Manrique tarted up in the 1950s. They were very pretty but I'd hardly call them the 'eighth wonder of the world' as Rita Heyworth apparently did when she visited them in the 1960s. They weren't exactly up there with the pyramids and the hanging gardens of bloody Babylon.
Apparently there were little albino crabs in the bottom of one of the cave pools, which exist in no other place on earth. But I didn't take my glasses so I couldn't see them.
Went back to weird blue lagoon/white sand beach at Orzola, but the clouds came back so we went back south to Playas Papagayos where I finished my rubbish book by rubbish Tony Parsons.
Last night tonight, so cooking a chicken with 20 cloves of garlic. It's our last night and it's raining hahahahahahahaha.

Arrived before the crowds at the Tamafaya Volcanic National Park. You had to be there really. Is amazing. Except for the bit where you get driven along the very narrow rim of the volcano with precipitous drops on either side. That bit was horrible and reminded of the Magic Bus to Greece, 1978.
Drove down to Los Helvederos - where the lava spilled into the sea. Little walkways have been built into the cliff and the sea bashes ad splashes into and up through volcanic rock. Good fun.
Went to little village El Golfo for glorious lunch of fresh fish and sangria, practically on the beach, then spent afternoon on Povo Papagayos. Was very windy and waves were huge. A mini-tsunami hit a dangle of sleeping old Nuddies. Was the funniest thing I've seen in ages. Mad mass panic - willies and scrotums and boobies flipping and flapping and whirling about like Ker-nackers. One bloke was running about with his pants half way up his thighs. Brilliant entertainment.
Holly and I cooked a big tortilla and I beat everyone at Bullshit, which, apparently is not something I should be proud of. Lovely day.

Went to Sunday morning Market in Teguise. Holly's idea of heaven, Richard's idea of hell. Was bright, busy, lively, crowded and pretty, but essentially full of the same home made jewellery and hippy dresses as every other market in the world.
Went east to the Jardin de Cactus. Fabulous. Every type of bizarre and phallic cactus you can imagine. Loved it. Not very 'health and safety' though. But I like that about the Spanish; they believe that the responsibility for where you put your feet and who supervises your children is your own. Sweet.
Made massive mistake with Tappas - ordered 'tollos'. Some sort of cold, chewy, smelly, vile preserved fish. Ugh. Even worse than the accidental sheep's brain in Paris.
Drove to east coast looking for a beach. Failed. Ended up in Costa Teguise.
Forget everything I said the other day. This place is a shithole. Vast man-made resort, full of hotels that look like Alcatraz and amusement arcades, beaches crammed full of fat white Brits and a factory billowing out yellow fumes on the peninsula. Awful.
Came back home and chilled by the pool, playing cards and roasting a nice leg of lamb that turned out to be goat. Ugh. Goat. Not a good day for food.

Different beach at Playas de Papagayos. Transpired that, although not a nudist beach, it was littered with Nuddies. Fat, wrinkly, old Nuddies.
Generally speaking I don't find nudity unpleasant but glancing up from your ham roll to find yourself face to arse with a wrinkly anus and a humongous pair of dangling bollocks is frankly offensive. PUT SOME PANTS ON OR DON'T BEND OVER, ARSEHOLE. And I'm not keen on being tricked into participating in other people's dodgy fantasies either. I didn't consent to that. Bloody exhibitionists.

(Reminds me of the time a bloke supposedly attempted to cut his penis off. A small and carefully executed nick at the base of the shaft of his penis was bleeding profusely, which required pressure to stop it. As I stood there in the resuscitation room gripping the base of his ever more erect (and hence ever more profusely bleeding) penis and he groaned in what I now realised was ecstasy rather than agony, it dawned on me that I'd been had. Cheeky fucker.)

Snorkelled with a shoal of large stripy fish. One of them had picked up half a drinking straw and was holding it in his mouth like a cigarette, as he, everso cool, swam along beside me.

Cooked a chicken and ate on the terrace. Was idyllic.

(This blog is a day out; what I post today actually happened yesterday.)

After a lazy breakfast we drove over to a little fishing village called El Golfo on the south west coast. This area didn't exist before the volcanic eruptions in the 1730s which increased the size of the island by a third, and the black volcanic rock is barren and lunar-like (I should imagine). Lanzarote is like a massive carbuncle on the crust of the earth, from which lava has burst out at various weak spots, like pus. (In a nice way.) From the hills you can see how it filled the valleys and oozed its way down to the sea. A walk along the cliff brought us to a volcanic crater, one side of which had collapsed under the force of the waves creating a massive amphitheater, in the base of which was a neon green algae-filled lagoon. Weird. Continuing with the carbuncle analogy it looked like a pseudomonas infection had set in. Ciprofloxacin stat.

Further down the coast we drove around the saltpans and then thought we'd have a look at Playa Blanca, one of the tourist resorts.
Cèsar Manrique did brilliantly to protect the aesthetics of the island, and there are no buildings higher than two storeys here. So, for a resort, Playa Blanca is quite attractive, if a little soulless. Difficult to escape from though - we drove round and round the labyrinthine streets looking for the way out. Eventually broke free and found ourselves on a bumpy dirt track heading for Playa Papagayos. Was worth the discomfort. Lovely little cove. Ate picnic and snoozed in the sunshine.

Later we went to Yaiza to a restaurant we had been recommended. The problem with asking directions in Spanish is that the reply also comes in Spanish. Found it eventually. Was lovely despite crazy maître d' who was clearly the love child of Manuel and Basil Fawlty.
Lanzarote wine is verr verr nice y'know. Hic.

The whole point of flying from Bristol is that it's 45 mins from our house and you can park practically right outside the terminal, which makes the whole air travel experience merely hideous as opposed to totally fucking hideous. So Richard's decision to save us 40 bloody quid by pre-booking 'Silver' parking (a carpark on the opposite side of the airport, involving a mile trek with suitcases from car to depot, a 15 minute queue to deposit car keys in depot, a 10 minute wait for a 5 minute bus ride to Departures so that we JUST made it before check-in closed and I had no time to buy sunglasses, a book or a coffee) DID NOT GO DOWN AT ALL WELL.
After my first coffee of the morning, served at 30,000 feet over the north coast of Spain, my jaw started to unclench. I stopped growling and the rest of the flight was pleasant enough, if you like sitting with your knees rammed into your chin that is.
Arrived in hot and sunny Lanzarote and joined a massive queue to pick up hire car. (Am very bad at queuing. Very bad indeed.)
So this was the deal: you can choose 'standard' insurance cover, which covers for things that could go wrong, or 'gold' insurance cover, which covers for things that could go wrong if the car was tacked together out of string and tinfoil and you were a complete bloody idiot. But if you chose 'standard' you had to leave a €500 deposit.
Cue me going off on one.
Fuck you Goldcar Lanzarote. Fuck you in the mouth. (Anyone know the CEO's email address?)

Fortunately, after an uncomplicated half hour drive, our hotel, a restored country house on the outskirts of a little village called Uga, was easy to find. Casa El Morro is a wonderful place and consists of about five self-contained apartments off a central courtyard. Our keys were in the door, with a little note welcoming us. Ours is a two-storey wing of the house, eclectically decorated with great hunks of furniture that the artist owner has collected on her travels. We have a double verandah with day beds and scatter cushions and at the bottom of the garden is a secluded communal pool, and also a yurt, where you can have a massage. There is no 'reception', no bar, no restaurant and seemingly no staff. Very peaceful and really really lovely.
We stocked up on provisions from the village shop, then lolled about on the daybeds around the pool, then sauntered back through the cacti and olive trees to prepare supper on the terrace.
Problem was we couldn't get in. We'd locked ourselves out.
The keys were on the table in the sitting room and the doors are the type that can only be opened with a key from the outside. No-one was around and we were in the middle of nowhere. In the courtyard we found a number to ring in case of emergencies - thank God I had my phone with me. The lady said we could find spare keys in 'the office'. We found the office, we found a box with about 10 bunches of keys, NONE of which opened any of the three entrances to our apartment (turned out the cleaner had accidentally taken them home.) Plan B: The balcony doors to our room on the first floor were open so we scoured the grounds for a ladder. No ladder. Holly found a way onto the roof but couldn't shimmy down. Eventually, after much swearing, and a lot owork get-pointing, we got a table from another apartment and balanced it on our table and balanced a chair on top of that and Richard risked life and limb to climb in. Hooray. And all because the lady loves Milktray.
Got pissed after that.

In Bruges, Feb 2011

Friday 11th Feb, In Bruges

Richard's birthday and Valentine's Day called for a few days away somewhere romantic. Having recently watched the brilliant film In Bruges I decided you couldn't get more romantic than Colin Farrell (aka Feral Colin). So I booked a surprise trip, which turned out not to be a surprise as I forgot that my iPhone calendar automatically synchs with all the Macs in the house. Including Richard's.
Grace dropped us off at Newport (a place further removed from Bruges in every way you could not wish to find) and we caught the 8:40am Newport to Paddington. Two and a half hours and a couple of tube stops later we arrived in St Pancras. It's quite posh there, for a train station. We checked in at Eurostar and set about doing what we provincials do when we visit The Big Smoke - drinking and complaining about the inflated prices.
First class on Eurostar included a complementary three course meal including wine PLUS a bloody noisy Dutch family next to us with horrid shouty children, thrown in for free. Bargain.
I was a bit perturbed at the idea of going UNDER THE BLUMMIN' SEA and Rich kept glancing out and making a terrified face. Turned out he was catching his reflection in the window.
Two hours later we were in Brussels and an hour after that we arrived In Bruges.
If you do a Google Images search of Bruges you'll see a double-gabled medieval building right on one of the canals. That was our hotel (Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce) and also where Feral Colin's character was supposedly staying when In Bruges. No sign of him now though, sadly.
Bruges is lovely. Really pretty. Much prettier than Amsterdam and I think as pretty as Venice, although not quite so much water. There is an abundance of restaurants, particularly fish restaurants (it is much closer to the sea and Zeebrugge than I realised) and mussels with chips is a local specialty. At around €25 it's not cheap, although the mussels do come in a bucket. Beer is the only thing that's relatively cheap. Unfortunately I don't like beer.
For dinner we chose a likely looking bistro on the canal opposite our hotel. It was very pleasant. Zeebrugge Viss-soepen was accompanied by toast, grated cheese and mayonnaise, which was a bit peculiar, but very good. Rich had meatballs.

Saturday12th Feb, In Bruges

Visited Choco-Story. Was a bit boring to be honest. Was expecting a multiple-sensory chocolate experience, including TASTE, but it was no more than a museum about chocolate. Chocolate was discovered by either the Aztecs or the Mayans and comes from cocoa beans, was about the gist of it. They spread that information over four floors and charged €11 for it.
Bruges is full of chocolatiers and chocolate is moulded into all sorts of shapes and sizes, including phallic and titillating. I gave up chocolate at New Year and was overcome with choice about how and when to break my 2011 chocolate virginity. Eventually bought a box of mixed truffles and decided to save them for Rich's birthday.
Richard doesn't like shops so I dumped him in a very conveniently placed bar on the canal next to our hotel (The Beer Wall) whilst I explored the shops. Joined him later and tried to show willing with the beer thing by drinking a cherry beer called Kriek Boon. Not all that keen to be honest.
Walked to an area called The Winngaard that I'd discovered earlier during my wanderings and shared a Chateaubriand which was good, but the best bit was when Rich fell down the step in the middle of the restaurant. Hilarious.

Richard's Birthday, In Bruges

After Rich opened his presents (all of which were golf-related) I went for a run. What a fabulous way to see a city. Accidentally discovered a path that follows the bank of the canal that forms the circumference of the old city of Bruges (about five miles long). Discovered windmills and gatehouses and boathouses that I never would have discovered otherwise. When I got back and told Rich, he insisted I show him, so ended up running five miles, then walking five miles straight after.
Back at The Beer Wall I acquired a taste for Kriek Boon. Broke my 2011 chocolate virginity by eating three champagne truffles. Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm-mmmm-mmm.
Ate dinner in a grand-looking Chinese restaurant - one of those fabulous, endless, multi-dish meals. Happy Birthday Rich.

Valentine's Day

Will spare you the details but I estimate I went to the bathroom approximately 15 times between midnight and 4 am. This was accompanied by the sound of someone else in the hotel having very noisy sex. (Just as well they weren't having quiet sex - the sounds from our bathroom may have been off-putting). Being a medic sometimes doesn't help in these situations. According to my mental fluid input/output chart I reckoned I was about 4 litres in deficit. Convinced I was rapidly going into renal failure, and circulatory collapse would follow shortly afterwards, I lay on the bed sweating and shivering and listening to Rich snoring. At about 6am I was woken by the sound of Richard's stomach gurgling in his sleep. Really loudly. I kicked him in the back.
'WAKE UP!' I shouted. 'YOU'RE GOING TO SHIT THE BED! And Happy Valentine's Day.'

A couple of hours and several glasses of water later we both reckoned that we'd beaten The Shits and headed out for breakfast. Bacon, eggs and toast didn't result in a relapse so we figured we were cured. Decided to climb the famous clock tower in the square - the one the tubby Irish guy throws himself off. We climbed to the first level via stone steps and stopped for a rest. A fat American couple lumbered past. No we didn't say anything but I wish Feral Colin had been there: 'Hey, you can't go up there' 'Why not?!' 'Because you're a bunch of feckin' elephants!'
Anyway the Fat Americans would have had the last laugh because the spiral stone stairs became open-tread wooden ones for the top half of the climb and we both bottled it. Another wasted €11.
Went on a boat trip instead. This was lovely. And was followed by a trip to The Beer Wall. Feeling completely better, and having decided it was the Champagne truffles which had poisoned us, I tried the Charel Chaud - a hot apple wine. Was delicious.
Chose a very expensive and exclusive looking fish restaurant for Valentine's Evening Dinner. Unfortunately, just as we had placed our orders, The Bloat started. Turns out this was phase 2 of the illness In Bruges.
Neither of us had eaten since breakfast and should have been starving, and the food set before us was absolutely fabulous. But scallops followed by a bucket of garlicky mussels doesn't sit well with The Bloat.
Back at the hotel we lay about like those sheep in Far From The Madding Crowd. The ones who ate too much clover. I looked about for a biro to use if we needed to urgently decompress each other. Later on we moved into The Flatus phase. Was really romantic. Happy Valentine's Day.

15th Feb

UNDER THE BLUMMIN' SEA again. Bruges is fabulous despite The Shits, The Bloat and The Flatus. And despite not running into Feral Colin. We didn't see any manky hookers either, although we did see a dwarf. Don't know if he was racist though.
Would definitely go back.