Spanish Trip - Saturday

Saturday October 27th 2007

Cortijo el Castano, Nr Orgiva, Andalucia, Spain

We are slightly late arriving at Heathrow and can't get seats together on the plane. Then we have a wait of nearly two hours at Malaga airport to collect our hire car. Apparently there was a special offer on pricing by our car company and they have been swamped with customers - over 400 today compared to a normal 200. So we don't have time to call in at Nerja and have paella on the beach (as per Nigel and Zoe's suggestion), which was rather a shame. But this is a great idea for us to suggest to our guests to avoid them arriving too early at the start of a break.

We do manage to find the big supermarket in Motril and stock up with some stuff there. This might be the main big supermarket we use for the breaks next here next year so we have to have a very detailed look round, checking that we can find all the obscure bits and pieces we think we'll need for the food we want to cook. We are hoping to cook a meal for Nigel and Zoe in the next couple of days and have to work out what we'll do for this. We are hoping they will give us some good feedback on whether our cooking is suitable or not. So the pressure is on to do something really nice.

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A nice drive inland towards the mountains. One of the main attractions of this property's location is that it is near both the coast and the mountains. The region is unlike any other part of Spain we have been to before and we are sure it will prove very popular with our guests.

We met Zoe outside the property and then have a tour round by Nigel. He starts in the part they call the "apartment" and then we work round the various courtyards to the part they call the "villa". It is all really beautiful as we hoped (and expected) and we are really pleased with our choice. We have a lot of detail to work out, but broadly speaking, we can already tell that it will be fine. It is warm enough to sit outside for a couple of drinks and a chat. They seem really nice and have loads of suggestions to help us develop the breaks here.

We are staying in the double room in the villa for our trip. This is the room we will aim to have for the three weeks next year as it has greater privacy than the other rooms. Next door is a twin room and the apartment has three further bedrooms. So we can have a maximum of 8 guests staying here in addition to us. We already think this property will be a big success.

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Neither of us fancy a meal out tonight so we cook up a huge plate of prawns with green chilli and have that with loads of bread and wine - one of the nicest meals we've had for ages - and then we decide on an early night. There is so much we need to do this week and we already have extensive plans for tomorrow's trip out.

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View of the Cortijo El Castano from the pool - the villa part is to the left while the apartment is in the two-story building. The undercover terrace on the far left will be used for evening meals as it gets the last sun of the day.