Thursday 25th October 2018

Up at a sensible hour after a beautiful sunrise and a very nice breakfast. Bill ran into town and picked up some bread, croissants and sausages from the English butcher.

After breakfast we took off for Estepona. Stopping briefly for gas (petrol) on the way we took the coast road and arrived in Estepona after about 20 minutes it being only about 18 kms from Manilva. We soon found the underground car park on the sea- front and parked the car.

We walked around this really charming town along narrow streets lined with colorful flower pots. Each street seemed to have a different color of flower pots filled with bright flowers. The small houses are whitewashed and clean and many have decorative doors, window grates and balconies.

The colorful, narrow, whitewashed streets in Estepona

After a while we arrived at a very nice coffee house called Cocora in the Plaza Manilva. Here we enjoyed iced lattes under the shade of orange trees. 

The Plaza Manilva and the coffee shop Cocora with orange trees

Moving on we arrived in a wide and grassy square where the Orchidarium is located. 

The Estepona Orchidarium

Date palms in Estepona

The buildings around the square have very beautiful wall paintings on them, some of them in trompe d'oeuil. This gives the square a  very nice ambiance and character. Who commissioned these paintings would be interesting to know but they certainly enhance the area greatly.

This painting is in the trompe d'oeuil style

Some of the striking wall paintings in Estepona

Also adjacent to the square was a British school called The Queens Grammar School

The Preparatory School for the Queens Grammar School in Estepona

Then we returned to the restaurant and awaited the arrival of Karen and Gary Warrington and Barbra O'Connell, MAC's childhood friends from Boston who are also vacationing in Spain and were staying at a hotel a few miles from Estepona. Due to the vagaries of Uber, the three of them arrived half an hour late but we were soon ordering food and wine at our outdoor table situated on the street at this really nice restaurant. I had morcilla and suckling pig and there was tuna, sole, salads and crepes, washed down with a bottle of the house red and house white. We enjoyed a very convivial lunch and this took a few hours in traditional Spanish manner. I think we were the last to leave the restaurant. Curiously, during the meal, someone, presumably a resident of this narrow street drove his car past us and had to get out and rather grumpily, move the restaurant's outdoor table's chairs in order to get past and one assumes home, further up the street.

From left to right: Gary, Karen, MAC, Barbara, me, Paivi & Bill at lunch at Taberna de Miguel, Estepona, Spain..

We walked back through the town stopped at the cathedral and wandered through more pretty streets ending up back at the square. Then, on the sea front we bade farewell to the three Bostonians and returned to our car and drove home stopping briefly on the way to take sunset photos and stock up with a few necessities at Lidl. We arrived home to find two cats waiting on the terrace, probably hoping to get fed but we did not succumb.

We had a great, super weather day and relaxed at home not needing dinner as the residual lunch was adequate to keep us going.