Sweet sweet Melilla

We chose not to eat on the boat, in favour of tapeando (having tapas) in Melilla and so we looked around at the top of Melilla for somewhere to stop for a little bite. There were some dark-haired, olive/dark-skinned men hanging about in a battered brick doorway that led to a dark corridor. I guess they could have been perceived as shady looking to the outsider. It’s difficult to hide in a big red van with a UK flag on the side and so I jumped out and asked them in my best Spanish if there was anything open up around the old town. The castellano rolled-r’s and the Spanish lispy c’s came back to me like a jagged second nature and the loitering chaps explained we’d have to go back into town. I explained I lived here years ago and they went on to speak to Tony in broken English, explaining that Melilla is precious. Oh. Melillans. <3

 

The timings of life in Spain are quite different from the UK. People tend to eat later in the evening and the early afternoon is time for lunch at home/post-work siestas. Us arriving at 2pm meant that there were few people about and I think Tony’s first impressions of Melilla were that nobody lived there! I explained a little about the Spanish culture (the late eating, the fact that he’ll see kids up and about playing in bars when he probably is used to them being in bed), the different school times in Melilla from the mainland (with pupils not having a lunch hour and finishing for the day at around 2:30pm because of the hot weather in summer, with the schedule not changing temporally) and we headed to one of my more favorable spots for tapas at the Casino Militar. This spot used to be quite popular and is located next to the ayuntamiento (town hall), that gives on to the Plaza de España. Each town has a Plaza de España – the equivalent of a main square – and they vary in grandness, with Seville being the most incredible one I’ve seen.

I remembered the Casino Militar having some good tapas and, after we’d had our fill of croquetas de jamon (ham croquettes), patatas bravas, chicken bits and tinto de verano (summery red wine), I suggested to Tony we check out the border.