Lola (Málaga, Day 3)

In a case of déjà vu, we had breakfast at Krumble and then set sail for the Pompidou Centre. It was coffee and croissant again and a chat with one of the owners of Krumble. Originally they had their eyes on Australia and Covid happened. Instead they moved from Argentina to Spain. A pity. I would have loved their croissants and pastries being available in Sydney.

That big white shuttered door at the Pompidou Centre was open today and it made entrance to the centre so much more obvious and much easier. Jayne chatted with the attendant and mentioned the Frida Kahlo exhibition. Apparently the webpage that noted the Kahlo exhibition was only 10 years out of date. It closed in 2015. Just missed it.

There was a semi-permanent exhibition, To Open Eyes Artists Views, and a temporary one, The Animal Dream. The former examined, amongst other things, feminist art and the latter human relationships with animals. The artist view's collection featured a variety of works from sculpture and installations to paintings and covered Duchamp to Pollock to some interesting feminist works from Judy Chicago. That is, naked painted women playing with flares (the same colour they were painted) in the California desert. It was about reclaiming the feminine form from objectification. Deep.

The cube from the inside.

The animal exhibition was reasonably predictable in the beginning and then got weird and in the end, finished with some completely esoteric film clips. Let me explain. There were the usual portrait style photographs of a variety of animals from a rooster to a lizard to an orang-utan to an elephant. Some complete with a reflection in the pupil that showed the photographer. Each of these had a darkened background like an old masters portrait. Interesting, if not obvious.

Duchamp.

The next section was a documentary. It interviewed a series of American women and one man, each of whom entered some sort of competitive dancing thing with their dog or dogs. It was riveting stuff, like seeing a car accident. You couldn't look away. Weird is insufficient to describe these people. The final movie was about the eradication of fire ants and involved a lot of cacti, some bad acting and a soccer ball. Yeah, I have no idea. Anyway, it was interesting.

Unmistakably Jackson Pollock

We had decided to forgo dinner this evening and have a late, lingering lunch. There were plenty of options along Pier One and there was only one small cruise liner in today, with a capacity of about 700 people, so crowds were low. After so much tapas, we decided a steak would be the choice of the day. It came down to two restaurants, side-by-side. One, Lola's, was recommended by our guide from yesterday. The other was not. There we have the link to today's title, Lola by The Kinks, an absolute classic from 1970.

Lola's was the cheaper option and with the prophetic words of Jayne's father ringing in my ears, "It's not cheap if you can't eat it," we sat down. The rib eye steak was really sirloin. My 'rare' was tending the other side of medium and Jayne's 'medium' was nailed to a stump in a bushfire. Part of the problem, and I haven't seen this sort of stupidity since England in 2003, was serving the steaks on a hot metal plate, so they continue to cook until the plate cools. Idiots. I thought the Spanish would know better, but then this is a tourist area, heavily frequented by Brits.

There were two other issues with our lunch. The red wine was served and the bottle was unchilled. This is a first in Spain. All red is served slightly chilled to combat the heat and the white is over-chilled and iced to death in a bucket. Consequently the wine wasn't quite blood temperature but it didn't get to show its best. The view across the harbour was delightful and the people watching was interesting until a 'super yacht' arrived and obscured our view and that of about four other restaurants. It turned out the yacht was once owned by a Russian oligarch (now dead, a pity a few more don't follow his lead) and is for sale for a tidy €240 million. Now I've always been more of a socialist than a capitalist, dear reader, even when flying Business Class, but the concept that someone could spend that sort of money on a plaything is absolutely ludicrous. If you haven't read Juice by Tim Winton, you should.

On the walk back to the hotel, we saw a bobcat bogged on the beach. Vastly amusing. Spades at the ready, the workers, trying fruitlessly to dig it out, sent sand flying. More like dirt flying, it doesn't really resemble sand at all.

Funny to watch.

Back at the hotel, we changed and joined many other guests at the pool. There were more people cultivating sun cancers than in the water and it was a refreshing dip. The afternoon sun was moving quickly and we needed to move to capture some warmth and dry our gear, in preparation for packing for transit day tomorrow.

Before.

After.

The area below our room had been transformed into a Porsche car wash. There were six or seven of them lined up at the front of the hotel in the morning. None of them were ours. I didn't see the Peugeot 308 getting washed.

The hotel from the beach.

As the sun was close to setting, we walked back down to Pier One to photograph the sunset. Yeah, nah. Not much happening there. And have a gelato.

I've seen better.

That was the day.

Until tomorrow, another transit day.

Sunny afternoon (Hamilton Island)

More rain overnight but the morning arrived with decreasing cloud, warmer temperatures and light breeze. Today promised more than any of the preceding days. Island paradise at last. Which inspired today's title. Yes my encyclopaedic reader it is another Kinks song, but I'm trying to inspire the younger generation to expand their music repertoire. They were such a great band and a part of the British rock invasion of the 60s.

The day commenced as it should with breakfast delivered to our room, but I said I would commence this blog with a review of dinner. Happy Easter my dear reader I hope the Easter Bunny was kind to you ... if that's your thing of course.

The Yacht Club from across the marina

Bommie is the up-market restaurant in the Hamilton Island Yacht Club. As I made mention yesterday it has a strict dress code. Well, no thongs, singlets or board shorts. I've never been a fan of dress codes so I wore a singlet, albeit under my shirt. The rules seem specifically aimed at men. Certainly there were men in trousers - previously the only trousers I'd seen were on staff in various establishments. It is a resort in the tropics after all. What makes a daggy pair of canvas shoes more acceptable than a pair of thongs? Why is it that a pair of thongs not made of rubber, aka women's sandals, are acceptable? There were some interesting outfits on show that passed muster to get through the door. The shortest pair of faded, ragged denim shorts I've ever seen. Tennis shoes - they still exist apparently. Some outfits were not able to be critiqued because the ladies in question had obviously been caught short without a cardie (unlike Jayne) and were rugged up in bright red blankets supplied by the restaurant. Seemed a bit OTT as the dining room was not al fresco.

The restaurant itself is all dark timber and mood lighting with expansive views over the water. The tables are enormous triangular pieces that are way too big for two people. This arrangement, however, means you are well separated from other diners and do not have to yell to be heard. You may think that means you cannot hear the other diners' conversations, but the couple to our left were engaged in an animated discussion, regularly punctuated by expletives and absences from the table in between courses. And they were smokers. That's allowed, but no thongs. It is still legal, although snorting cocaine is not. This, I discovered in the toilets, didn't appear to worry the middle-aged (OK he was younger than me) guy from another nearby table. But again, no thongs, so it was OK.

Our waitress was lovely and decidedly nervous and moved through the learned-by-heart patter as if she was reciting her mother's death notice in public for the first time. The 8 course degustation was served with matching wines and there were some interesting choices. A pinot noir with the bitter chocolate dessert. I get the reasoning, but it just didn't work. You got the feeling they were trying just a little bit too hard when compared with the simplicity of the fare at Beach Club. The latter was the winner in my humble opinion.

Nice view from IGA

Back to today. What a stunner as far as the weather goes. Sunshine. A bit of fast moving cloud. No rain. I repeat, no rain. That was a first. Despite the unusual weather pattern, we followed our routine. Breakfast followed by activity, but today the activity included a swim. Well, a wade and a float. There are some serious obstacles beneath the surface of the water. Had we not wandered the shore at low tide we would have been unaware of the rocks that lurk beneath the blue-green water.




Interestingly, there is a shelf of conglomerate that sits just below the high tide line. There is also a significant amount of rock and pebble that gets moved around by the dominant current. Beyond this, there are rocks encrusted with razor sharp oyster shells. The water is too clouded for snorkelling and I certainly wouldn't wade in there without reef shoes. The colour of the water reminds me of a glacial lake. As you know my scientific reader, that colour is made up of rock particles that have been ground up by the passage of the glacier. Given the lack of visibility in this water, is it also dense with fine particles of ground rock?

Lunch time view

Enough thinking, it is holiday time. Wearing our reef shoes, we made access and egress from the water look easy by comparison to some other visitors to the island. They walked, they hesitated, they stepped forward, they danced back, they moved sideways, they slipped, they fell, but they made their way into the water. We walked in and walked out.

While we were waiting to dry off a little two tweenies and their gravelled-voiced mother arrived from further down the beach. Mother looked around, read the "Beach Club visitors only" sign and sat down on a day bed in the shade. The girls then made use of one of the hammocks. They did NOT belong here dear reader. They were children under the age of 18 and were therefore NOT staying at our adults ONLY resort. Sadly the lights and sirens I had hoped for did not eventuate, nor did armed guards rise up from the sand and gun them down. In fact, nothing happened at all and after a few minutes the tweenies became bored and departed with mum in tow.

After drying off  and seeing the interlopers off our property we strolled to the eastern end of the beach and back again and thence to the resort pool to wash off the salt.

After all that exercise it was time for lunch. Not such an easy choice. This is HI - the island of restaurants that DO NOT do lunch. We are SERIOUS restaurants, we ONLY do dinner. Well, we are on holidays and like to be lazy and enjoy a long lunch, so, you won't be enjoying our cash.

From the deck at Manta Ray

We walked into Restaurant Manta Ray. I know, more exercise. And scored a table on the water. Unlike our favourite restaurant at Amoudie Bay on What-is-this-WHS-you-speak-of?-Santorini where a painted white line was all that stopped us from tipping off our chairs into the water, a sturdy railed fence lined the restaurant deck to keep tipsy patrons from  coming to grief on the rocks below.

Not long after the place was packed and people were waiting for water-view tables. It is an Italian-style restaurant, not pretentious, with quick turn-over, if desired, or a long lunch if that is what you are after. We ordered sourdough and tiger prawns to begin and enjoyed them them with a bottle of Yarra Valley chardy. Could we have a break between courses? Of course, let me know when you want the mains started ... how cool is that?



The sourdough, oil and roasted garlic was lovely and the prawns and pesto were very tasty. We sat and chatted and watched the planes landing and the boats bobbing in their moorings. As the tide receded it revealed crabs on the rocks and some large fish swimming past as lazily as we were eating lunch. Then we asked for the mains, which were delivered promptly, linguine with prawns and chilli. Just yum. Paired nicely with a bottle of rosé from Adelaide Hills. The service, the view, the food; everything was first class and all within view of the ostentatious yacht club. We could have eaten here all week for what we spent on dinner last night. And I was wearing thongs!

Back to the Beach Club for a siesta, some reading, some blogging, some champagne and the slow holiday drift from late afternoon into evening.

Until tomorrow.

If I can muster the energy.