Cava For Breakfast - a photo on Flickriver

Cava For Breakfast

            Usually we’re not that bothered about our accommodation.  As long as our temporary home is habitable and equipped for self catering, we're perfectly happy.  We don't really do classy and we're much more interested in the places we're going to explore when we get there.  How much time do you spend in your hotel room?  Does it need to be palatial?  But we'd found a deal and decided to give it a go.  And with a half board package designed to have us groaning at the seams and rubbing our tummies in discomfort each day, we could simply enjoy our surroundings without doing that much.  Ok, so going back and forth to the buffet soon added up to a daily step count of more than ten thousand.  The trouble being that this was matched by the calorie count.  

So we were happy with the hotel, despite an avaricious concierge trying to grab another three hundred and fifteen euros by tempting us with another “special deal” for an eleventh floor sea view - which we turned down in favour of our existing third floor apartment.  Which also had a sea view and was blissfully removed from the thick of the action.  Let’s knock off a mark or two for the attempted money grab and give the hotel eight out of ten.  For the food I’m going to be bold and go for a nine.  I’m very rarely allowed red meat at home, and having a steak cooked right in front of me is a bit of a treat.  Medium rare please if you don’t mind!  But then again there were exceptions.  The blue cheese, smoked salmon, dragonfruit and fig jams were fully deserving of a bullseye ten out of ten at breakfast each morning.  The beautifully balanced green smoothies, ground with my chosen ingredients - eleven out of ten.  

And then - get this - cava with breakfast.  Who thought it would be a good idea to leave an ice bucket full of opened bottles of cava at the breakfast buffet?  There was even a choice of white cava or pink cava.  Genius.  There’s no other word for it.  It shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does. Imagine for a moment that there was unfettered access to the booze at breakfast in your average Premier Inn in the UK?  Imagine the ensuing carnage as polyester football shirted  shaven headed men bearing ground scraped knuckles posture over the pumpkin seed bin at the muesli counter, or as gangs of cackling tattooed girls make drunken eyes at the mustachioed omelette chef at 8:30 in the morning.  Scary.  It didn’t take me long to get into the swing of drinking two glasses of cava along with my coffees and fruit smoothies each morning.  Twelve out of ten.  No question about it.

But then there was us, sniffing, coughing, sneezing and croaking from day two onwards, thanks to the bug we picked up on the flight from Bristol.  Two out of ten for us.  And it really doesn’t help that either one of us can make the other one laugh to the point of near expiry with no more than the judicious raising of an eyebrow at the appropriate moment.  What you really don’t need is to be bursting into hysterics because of some private joke that’s passed between you a thousand times before when you’re in danger having a coughing fit that might just see you passing out into your bowl of yoghurt with dried fruits at the breakfast table.  What we needed was more rest, less laughter, and very probably less food.  But not less cava.  Definitely not a sacrifice I was prepared to make.

So what with all of this lurgy and breakfast booze strewn merriment, we didn’t get out that much.  There were lots of plans in the build up, but if nothing else this year and despite the obvious attractions, we’ve learned that all inclusives and half boards aren’t really our thing.  Where life is concerned, we need to work to our own esoteric schedule that’s usually about two hours behind the rest of civilisation.  

But just a couple of times after our evening gluttony sessions, I did manage to point the car in the direction of the extravagantly named Mirador Degollada de la Yegua, a twenty-five minute dash from the hotel.  Up to the edge of where the magic starts on this exceptional and surprising island.  Even here the views are entrancing, but this is really just the start of it all.  The closer you get to the middle, the more exhilarating the ride becomes.  You just need to hold back on the breakfast cava if you're going to make that journey.

Taken in: Spain / Canary Islands / San Bartolomé de Tirajana (show map)

Taken on: May 9, 2025

Tags:

Gran Canaria

Gran

Canary

Canary Islands

canarias

islas canarias

landscape

landscape photography

Mountain

mountains

evening

Sunset

glow

afterglow

golden hour

drama

canyon

epic

vista

Cloud

clouds

sky

Spain

Espana

España

Mirador

Degollada

Yeguas

Mirador Degollada de las Yeguas « less

Sets appears in: • Gran Canaria 2025

Groups appears in: • Beautiful Canary Islands • Landscape photography more » • Amateur Landscape • Landscape Beauty ! • Photography Week • Flickr Social « less

Camera: Canon EOS 200D, f/11.0, 0.4 sec, 20mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 200D
Lens:	EF-S18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM
Aperture:	f/11.0
Exposure Time:	0.4
Focal Length:	20mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	-7/3 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 14.3.1 (Windows)
Show full info

Stats: 899 views / 58 comments

Link to this photo view:
Link to this photo large view: