Yes, yes, YES! Just when we were about to give up on eating out in La Alpujarra, we finally managed to score a table at vegetarian restaurant L´Atelier in the Alpujarran village of Mecina Fondales. We´d passed the restaurant a number of times and it was always closed. When I emailed last week for a reservation, again, it was closed. But there was light at the end of the tunnel: last Sunday they were open for business.
Once again, allowing a dog and being petfriendly are two very different things. I do get it, pretty castle, don´t want to see it wrecked, but hey, you can just say No to dogs, right? Once you say Pets are allowed, you can´t get all hot and bothered when people actually do bring a pet.
You can´t sit on a mountain contemplating goats all of the time, so I met up with my best friend in the El Born district of Barcelona for an old fashioned girly weekend of cocktails, shopping, tapas and possibly some more cocktails.
Ferreirola in La Alpujarra is such a tiny, sleepy village it´s easy to walk through it without noticing all the stuff that´s, quietly, going on. I say walk, because there´s no way you can accidentally drive through Ferreirola. It´s quite a long, difficult way to get there and the road ends here. Rather romantic, I think!
It´s mostly a village for the walking people, as the GR 7 goes right through it. The walk through the valley to Busquistar is lovely and takes about 45 minutes. You can also walk to Fondales. Much shorter!
There´s a cute little coffee and tea place in Ferreirola, called Cafe Fa Re. Just follow the signs that say cafe and you´ll find it. They have cakes, all sorts of tea and also just beer (well, Mahou anyway ) and tapas. The tables are made of medieval looking doors, which I thought was a nice touch.
Also in Ferreirola: a workshop where they make beautiful Flamenco dresses, a famous guitar maker and the home for part of the year of Japanese painter Takashi Ishii. I LOVE his paintings, and if you ask nicely, he´might just let you have a look around his workshop.
Chateau Du Clos De La Ribaudiere: petfriendly & great food
Chateau Du Clos De La Ribaudiere is in a good location, for us anyway, right near the highway on the route from Spain to Paris in Poitou. And they served some of the best food I´ve had in a long time!
The village of Chasseneuil is nothing special, though we did have rather a nice lunch at the station restaurant. When we arrived at the hotel lunch was over so we had to improvise.
We were in the annexe and this is definitely not one of those honeymoon chateaux. It was clean, spacious and nice & quiet but the decor could do with an update, or a lick of paint, or anything really. The beds are fine though, and, yay, they allow dogs!
Not in the restaurant though, which should be the main reason behind your stay. We had joked about the empty, posh dining hall when we registered, but at night we were glad we had booked a table in advance, because the place was packed. And rightly so, because they do serve some wonderful, out of the ordinary, and reasonably affordable food. (well, if you´ve had a couple of drinks anyway)
What did I have? Good question. Apart from a house champagne apperitive and a very good Crémant d´Alsace, I´m not sure. I remember fighting the urge to lick my plate, which is always a good sign! Snails, done very experimentally, maybe in a wok? Loved it.
Desserts were a dream. Something with mango. Mango creme brulee?With chocolate? I went to bed fully satisfied and determinde that I´ll be back to Chateau Du Clos De La Ribaudiere!
When travelling with a puppy your hotel options are limited, especially in Spain. Still, Hotel El Hidalgo is not an option I´d recommend. It´s situated right smack on the high way, which is convenient when you´re trying to get to France, but rather depressing as well. Ok, let´s be honest: this place is a dump.
“petfriendly”
We soon learned that “pets allowed” is something very different from “petfriendly” as pets were not allowed anywhere and the place was plastered with “No dogs allowed” signs. Add to that that the usual “wifi is free and available in all public areas” was, once again, a bit of a fib: the only place you could get any internet at all was in the restaurant. A dismal place with chairs wrapped in red fabric just that many shades off from the red table cloth to give me a head ache and dull, overcooked, overpriced food.
The upside? The beds were great and breakfast was a lavish affair. Served in yet another depressing place where dogs were frowned upon, but we chose to ignore the icy stares from the staff. If I ever want to shoot a zombie movie, I´ll definitely consider El Hidalgo as an ideal location. Other than that, I say keep driving.
Travelling around in Spain a lot, you start noticing stuff. The way they write “lively” when they mean “right above a rock club”, the way “charming” usually means “dump”, that kind of thing. And then there are the blatant lies!”Wifi is free and available in the entire hotel” is one my favorites.
Yeah, right! Free it may be, but the odds of actually getting a signal in your room are slim to none.
“Wifi is free and available in public areas” is often a lie as well, or at the very least uncomfortable: a few days ago we stayed in a hotel where the only place to get a signal was in the very unwelcoming, pretentious restaurant. Not a great place to roll out all your plugs and go sit and work for hours while around you people in their Sunday best are eating pheasant and oggling you like you´re a freak.
I´ve tried calling ahead and trying to find out what kind of internet connection they had. One receptionist, bless her, said it was “Google Internet”. So it´s usually the luck of the draw whether you´ll be able to log on at all.
However, there´s one thing that seems to work and that´s paying for it. If it says: “wifi is available in the entire hotel at 4 euros an hour”, usually, it´ll be available. Now I loathe paying for internet, because I just don´t see why they would make you pay for something that´s just sitting there anyway. You don´t have to pay for the pool or the elevator, right? I´d call it part of the service, but hey, that´s just me!
If, like us, you´re totally dependant on internet wherever you go, try paying for it. It usually helps.
The past few months we´ve basically been living in one hotel or another, either on business or on the run from the freezing cold of La Alpujarra. You gotta love hotels: they generally have central heating, hassle free internet and yay, they clean your room every day!
We were planning to buy a house around here, but maybe we´ll just rent a room in a hotel, indefinitely. It´s just so nice & simple!
There are, however, always some things that hotel rooms lack.
Luckily, the Lord invented coffee!
Madoff’s first night in a hotel was rather hellish.
We’d been staying in a lovely, pet friendly, b&b for three days and all was fine. It was just us staying there so we weren’t bothering anyone, and on the whole Madoff behaved very well.
Then we went to Malaga to Las Acacias. Also a very (pet) friendly, welcoming place. Or it was before Madoff started his rampage. First he peed on the bedspread, then screamed his head off for a good 15 minutes when I tried to get him to go to sleep, probably waking up the entire neighborhood. I spent the night worrying he’d wake up and start screaming again, waking up all the other guests. This morning he topped it off by peeing in the lounge. Somehow, so far, everybody seems to think this is very cute, but I’m not quite sure how long we’ll be able to play the cute puppy card….
Speaking of which, I saw a hilarious book yesterday, called ‘Breaking bad news with baby animals’. In it you’ll find postcards you can send for a wide range of occasions: for instance ‘You’re fired’ or ‘Daddy’s never coming home’ with a picture of a tiny Golden retriever with a cute hat on. Or ‘You’re bad in bed’ with two adorable poodles. As long as Madoff stays small and cuddly, I think we’ll be fine.
As the owner of a young puppy, I have to look for pet friendly places to stay. Most hotels are not to keen on pets, but you may have more luck with hostals and b&b’s.
La Escuela Crujia not only allows you to bring a pet, they actually welcome it! It’s probably a great place to go with kids as well, with a trampoline, a pool, table tennis and a gate around it all, so (apart from the pool) it’s pretty safe to let your kids wander around on their own.
La Escuela Crujia is a reformed old school house in the tiny hamlet El Trapiche. This place is a few miles from Velez-Malaga and Torre del Mar. They have a lovely micro climate here which allows you to sit outside at night, even in January! The setting is rural, and the last bit is a dirt road, so you might want to bring a car. Rumor has it there’s a bar/restaurant with good food at walking distance, but some of the rooms have their own kitchen, so last night we just made our own food and sat outside with some drinks on one of the little terraces. The nights can get nippy, so ask for extra blankets!
) and tapas. The tables are made of medieval looking doors, which I thought was a nice touch.
