That's us been here 24 hours in the Vilagarcia marina after arriving yesterday afternoon and it certainly looks a nice place. The marina is again one of those friendly, welcoming places that I never thought existed.
We got in yesterday, the marina guy came out in his boat and directed us to the visitors berth, helped with the ropes, spoke reasonable English so we knew what we needed to do etc. After the usual tidy up, cold beer etc we went up to the office to register. Silvia behind the desk was very welcoming, speaking good enough English to have a conversation and find out what the Craic was. Seems like it is the equivalent of West Highland Week with 200 boats descending here on Friday - good to know in advance. Our plan was to try and get the dinghy fixed as it has developed a leak again. I tentatively asked Sylvia if she knew who could help. "Let me sort it for you!". Two phone calls later "someone will be over in an hour to look at it, why don't you go upstairs to the bar and have a relax, I'll call you and here - have a coupon for two free drinks!" An hour later, Sylvia appears and introduces me to Jeronimo (for the dinghy repair and Tito - a good English speaker who appears to run the chandlery). Talk about service. Must happen at Port Edgar every day.
Anyway Jeronimo's now off with the dinghy to put a permanent patch on where the temporary patch was (it's going to be expensive!). The adhesive just was not holding in the daytime heat. Hopefully we will get it back Friday although it will be another 2 days then before we can use it. We may head back over to the marina in Camarinal to avoid Friday's mayhem.
Many marinas here seem to have a bar and restaurant on the top floor of the office building. This one was no exception. Great place to sit outside in the evening sun and sip a cold beer. This one seemed to have a more expensive restaurant than Portosin so we elected instead to try the sailing club building on the breakwater. This was a bit more downmarket (the equivalent to Jeanette's in PEYC - well not quite but the nearest analogy I could find). Sitting outside, looking over the sea out to the west, watching the sun go down, drinking cold Estrella and Rioja, eating fried Calamari - heaven.
Overall then a great Marina and probably could match Kilmore Quay if only we could understand the language. Difficult to have find great Craic when you can't understand a word of what people are saying to you.
Today, Wednesday, we got up to wall to wall .....cloud! Yes, cloud. A cold front came over and it all went grey. That then was a good opportunity to do the tourist bit around town and a walk up the seafront to Carrill - a mile or so up the beach. Vilagarcia is quite a big place, lots of shops and seems to be geared to local tourists. By mid afternoon the sun was again out and the temperature is at least 15�C warmer than Edinburgh. Pam's now gone a deeper shade of brown. Whilst I did mention a beach, it doesn't look the nicest so a swim is out of the question.
Tomorrow will be a bit more of tourist bit and then off on Friday to seek out new ...... places to have a cold Estrella.
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