Nadia’s Birthday

Last Monday it was Nadia’s birthday and I decided to do something different instead of just going out for dinner, so I made up my mind to do a dinner under the stars on our roof terrace. Now the only problem was how to get the terrace ready without Nadia noticing what was going to happen. 

Anyways, I thought of the plan and how I was going to set it up and buy the supplies which consisted of getting as many candles as I could get my hands on and then hide them in the house without her finding them. Once all the candles were bought, I ran into a problem of how I was going to cook the dinner as the terrace had no power so I had to run a cable from the house which was easier said than done. But I did manage it all at the end!

After a few days of preparations, the big day came and I had told Nadia’s friends to keep her out of the house until I called her so I could get everything ready upstairs which in all fairness did not take as long as I thought I would but lighting all the candles turned into more of a challenge than I thought due to the slight breeze which did not help at all.

She came home expecting to see the house fully decorated but instead just saw some flowers on the table and a card with some instructions on what to do next. She walked upstairs to find the whole terrace lit up and the table laid out for us to enjoy dinner.

After some crying and lots of hugs and kisses came dinner with some nice white wine - nothing fancy, just some good home cooking. She had already gotten a present a few days earlier when we celebrated her birthday with friends – it was a nice new watch, but on Monday (her actual birthday) she got her other present which is a weekend away with me at a spa hotel up the coast - more on that later on.

I think she had a very nice surprise on the day and she enjoyed the dinner under the stars even if there was no birthday cake. 

Jellyfish a la carte

This summer being the one with the most jellyfish we have ever had, I have thought of some novel ideas in order to tackle the problem.

One of the more fun ones (at least for me as a diver) would be to bring turtles which eat them up and maybe this could boost out diving experience with the extra few turtles swimming around in the bay and our beaches – in my opinion, this would be a nice touch.

The other novel idea I came up with is to eat them. Last week, for example, an article on Europa Press said that a Spanish fishing boat went out after the jellyfish to try and help beach users in Algeciras, and in a space of 2-3 hours they caught about 2 tons of jellyfish, so why not eat them if there are so many out there.

Now the world of Google has opened a new look on this subject: 1^st whether you can actually eat them and of course the next question is can you cook them. As it turns out, you can indeed eat them and there is a whole range of different ways to cook these things, and I seem to have spent many years thinking that the only goal in a jellyfish’ life is to annoy the rest of the fish and the beach goers.

So for anyone out there who is getting annoyed at the jellyfish, here are some ways to cook them:

Sesame Jellyfish. 

Jellyfish Tempura 

And a twist to a British classic: Jellyfish and chips.  

Jellyfish Burger

I am not sure how this would taste but one can only wonder.

This is my spot

Like every summer there is the ongoing saga in our beaches of reserving your spot on the beach  - this sometimes brings up some unwanted tension between beach goers. On the beaches where there is sand this does not seem to happen that often as there is no markings on the sand or anything you can use to say this is my spot - all you need to do is get down there early so you have the 1^st pick of the best spot.

But in Camp Bay and Little Bay this is another story altogether, as the beaches are concrete platforms with tables and umbrella stands where you can set up camp. Growing up on these beaches I got used to respecting each other’s spot so the beach was evenly shared with the regular beach goers. But the wind and the sea changes are often and quite diverse so this sometimes complicates matters at the beach.

Some people just want to avoid conflict and go early in the morning to put up the beach umbrella and reserve their spot, which sometimes brings other tension but I will go into that later. The other kind of people in these beaches are the ones who expect their spot to be free but sometimes it is taken by someone else who is from another beach or maybe a tourist. Of course, they are not happy when they arrive and someone is in their spot, which really is a public beach but they claim they have been in the same spot for the last 20-30 years so there is some tension between them and the people sitting around the said disputed spot.

Now the other problem are the people who go in the morning to put up the beach umbrella on their spot and then don’t turn up at the beach until really late so you have all the prime spots taken but no one using them – this in my view is unfair for the rest of the users. This has been brought up in the media before and many people have complained in the past.

Best way to go about this is if you use any of these beaches make sure you don’t take a prime spot or find out from the local which spots are going to be trouble-free so at least you can enjoy the beach without any hassle.

I am still here

It has been a while that I have not written anything as I have been suffering from a bit of writers block, and I thought this would come much later than it has.

I have come back to carry on writing and today as it is still the summer I thought we could talk about the beach. Now this is kind of the worst part of my job at the minute because I park my car at the beach when I go to work.

I am not the kind of person who goes to the beach very often because I normally just fall asleep about after an hour of just lying in the sand, but this does not mean I don’t like it. In Gibraltar we are very lucky that we do not need to go far as all the beaches are all about 10 mins drive or less from anywhere in Gibraltar and we can even boast about having 6 beaches, which is quite nice.

My favourite beach is Camp Bay which has already been mentioned on some of my previous posts and by now some of you would have already thought why. The reason is that since it is a rocky beach with concrete platforms it is also home to the best snorkelling in Gibraltar - there is always plenty to see. The other good things is it that it has no sand which means there is no need to clean the sand off after going to the beach which for me is a plus but some people view this as a big down side.

Anyway I thought I will keep this short to just keep things going but there will be more posts coming up soon as the biggest day of the Llanito year is just around the corner.