We love mail! Sometimes we get very exciting ones like:
“Remember writing this review http://www.qype.co.uk/place/1489131-Portoghetto-Beach-Cervo of a peach of a beach?
Congratulations, because you are one of three finalists for the On the Beach & Qype Word on the Beach competition!”
“Whooooooooooooo” echoes around the neighbourhood as we are both jumping on the bed with feathers flying everywhere like in a John Vigo movie. Dogs barking and mattress creaking, the neighbours are tapping at the wall with a broom stick but we don’t care – we’re still shouting and laughing and doing star jumps!
There are competitions left, right and centre but like the lottery, you sometimes enter never expecting in a million years that you would win. We found out about the Qype Word On The Beach competition about 2 hours before the deadline. We had just got back from having dinner with Gennaro Contaldo and I was feeling pretty lazy so when I had read about it – I said to Simon that I could do it, write something, but we probably wouldn’t win anything… He said, “Do it! Do it!” and encouraged me to sit down at my table and write whilst he was going to give me tea, wine, hot chocolate, toast or whatever I wanted. So I did. Wrote. Read. Re-write, spell check. Send. And we won! We won a holiday!
Whooooooot!! We’re still bouncing! And Simon is still churning the invisible bowl of angel delight!
We are off to the beach – thanks to http://www.onthebeach.com/ who have paid for our flights to Croatia and accommodation in Hvar and Korcula. We’ve been working so hard and we are in serious need of some sun and eat food that is not cooked by ourselves!
This time last year, Simon and I went on holiday together for the first time. We went to Italy: Sicily and then to Northen Italy to a wonderful place called Cervo – as written in the winning review. We had food at the most amazing mountain restaurant – there are plenty of them dotted around in the middle of nowhere. The families who run them live there too. For 20 – 30 Euros (you can decided how much food you want to eat) you get about 8 - 10 courses – of which you do not order from the menu - the kitchen just brings out plates after plates of antipasti, pastas, secondi, carne, fish, dessert and wine by the gallon. It was wonderful and this is what inspired us to do supper clubs.
We spent 5 hours eating with our friends next to a beautiful view of mountains and valleys of olive groves. The skies were filled with those puffy pot bellied clouds waiting to burst and indeed they did. We ate and drank and couldn’t differentiate between Simon’s laughter and the thunderous heavens. The evening will be one of those wonderful nights that will live in our memories forever! I love Italy – please let me live there for at least a year sometime soon.
But Simon and I wanted to go somewhere neither of us have been before. We love to discover new things – such as the beaches, the people and the cuisine! We have no idea about Croatia - we hope to learn something and hopefully bring it back to share at the supper club to share.
In preparation for the trip – Simon has been looking at everything including the kitchen sink – he was even sent out on a bikini mission but instead, found the ultimate ‘AbbMax Swinger Plus’ – heh!
...and found much more interest in people and his journey rather than things in the shops! Looks like we will be playing it by ear...
We haven't got time to go shopping - we will be doing it all in Split and Hvar instead of feeding the fat cats of Oxford Circus. Can't wait!