Another quiet week with no travel, just work, cycling and a couple of social events. In fact, the biggest event this week was an injury in my leg that kept me off the bicycle from Friday onwards, and will likely do so for several more days. So no mountain landscapes during the coming week.
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We had a rare rainy day in the early part of the week. I have two very different ways of depicting the rain. Monday evening, the view over the A70 motorway:
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Tuesday morning, my street while walking the dog:
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One day, I stopped by the Alcampo supermarket to buy some food on my way home from work. As usual, I stopped by the fish counter just to look–I was buying mainly veggies and beer that day, but the fish counter always impresses me:
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On Wednesday we had a festive lunch in a restaurant in the harbour to say goodbye to our colleague Chris. Chris has been with us since early 2015, on loan as a Seconded National Expert from the UK Intellectual Property Office. He was scheduled to stay with us until March 2018, but for a variety of reasons he had to end his secondment early to go back to Wales. So we got together to share a nice Alicante lunch with him:
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My Polish colleague Michał ensures that the other end of the table is suitably wined as well. We were drinking a very nice Albariño, a white wine from Galicia, just the perfect wine on a hot summer day:
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As is customary, we had collected money to buy Chris some parting gifts. Since he enjoys food and wine, all the presents were in that category. Food was covered by this excellent book, a culinary voyage through Spain (the intraoffice envelope contains the book, a testament to my wrapping skills). And then he got a nice bottle of Duero wine, two nice Alicante wines, and the coup de grace, a bottle of Luis Felipe, the most magnificent brandy Spain has to offer:
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The restaurant is in the working part of the harbour, surrounded by warehouses, cranes etc. Not many visitors see this part of Alicante. I photographed one of the few fishing boats left here. In the background is the ferry to Algeria:
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Life at the office was markedly slower; many people were on holiday, and there were no meetings to speak of. Lots of quiet time to catch up on stuff like reading. It was also my last week before a 3-week summer break. One day I made a couple of studies of the newish building. I continue to look for angles and light:
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On Thursday evening, we were invited to an impromptu party at Cani and Nereida’s:
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Male conversation:
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Female conversation:
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On Friday I had my annual medical checkup at the office. Everything was fine, except that when the nurse was putting the electrodes on me for the EKG, she noticed that my left leg was severely swollen. I had had some nagging knee problem for a couple of weeks, and apparently it had developed into an inflammation of the whole lower part of my leg. In fact on Saturday it started hurting so badly that I had to drive to the hospital–and even pressing the clutch to change gear was extremely painful. In the hospital they did tests to rule out trombosis, gave me some anti-inflammatory drugs, wrapped my leg and told me to stay off the bicycle for the time being. Bummer! So on Saturday I was reduced to just taking pictures in the house, trying to combat my cabin fever. The first of three images shows my bicycle gloves, obviously ready for retirement after several thousand km over the past 3-4 years:
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My late mother’s cactus, apparently planning another flower:
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Sunset in the kitchen:
