No matter how good a holiday and this one was particularly good, it is always so nice to come home. A bit like the saying for visitors nice when they come, nice when they go. It just means to be happy in the moment, would it not be sad if we were only happy when on holidays or when with people. Anyway I am doing what I knew I would, avoiding talking about our holiday. I seem to find it easy to write of nothing but very difficult to write when there is so much….and there is just so very much to say about Spain. So I will commit to writing about each city we visited over the next few days, tomorrow Barcelona, then Zaragoza, after that Bilbo and then San Sebastian.

In the meantime I have a favour to ask, can someone in Melbourne please go here for me. I first heard of Movida when it was to be found attached to a pub in Nth Melbourne, I tried to make a booking but I had missed the boat and it had closed and was making a move to a more salubrious location in the inner city. And then I never got there with all the back and forth between Europe and Rosebud and getting married and all. And now just having spent the past week in foodie heaven, Spanish tapas bars, I know if we had returned to our other home, Melbourne, after our Spanish holiday this would be our first port of call, a means to lessen the pain of tapas withdrawal.

Here in Lille just a mere minute walk form our apartment there is a tapas bar, we have always been curious but not hopeful. So last night we decided the time had come and so we ventured in and it was as we expected, three times the price of what we would pay in Spain and truly awful. On our budget we have never had an adequate meal in France from a cuisine other than French, with one exception, I had some very good Cantonese duck in Paris. I am not saying Movida could match Spain on price but I’m sure the food would be on par and on a good night the atmosphere may edge somewhat in the right direction. Though as anyone who has been to Spain says there is really nowhere in the world like it. I suspect if a group of thirtysomething mothers in Melbourne were casually drinking outside a bar at midnight with a glass of vino in one hand and rocking a pram with the other child protection would be called. I’ve always warned Jim that I would be staunchly anglo when it came to child rearing and would not adopt mediterranean methods such as carting children from pillar to post at any given hour. But I have to say the vision of those women relaxed, themselves and their sleeping babies surrounded by partners, peers and family participating in the life of their city and not ensconced and isolated at home I did start to wonder.

So I’ll be back tomorrow to write about Barcelona and will get Jim to participate also and if anyone has been to Movida let me know all about it.

p.s I just noted the opening hours of Movida, it closes at 10pm!! Things are only just getting sarted at this hour in Spain!