Consolation in the rain

Yesterday, overcast and more rain threatening. We went beyond St Andrews along avenida Jesus Cautivo to discover a very local archaeological excavation site, turned into a neat little park tucked away between the highway and some apartment blocks. It's the site of a Roman fish processing factory and baths, going back two thousand years if not longer. You can see kilns where storage pots were fired, and a series of square salt pans where fresh fish were brought for filleting and curing. Close by are the remains of the baths and its tiled courtyard. All is very well explained in a series of interpretation panels, and there's a little cafe in one corner which was hardly open for business at this time of year in the drizzle with only us as visitors. 

From there, we walked to the tourist office near the centre of Fuengirola, to get a town street map for Clare then back along the sea front. On our way we bought some emperador (swordfish) for supper, this time to be eaten with mushrooms of variety and flavour hitherto unknown to either of us, from the main market. We often eat fish at home, but here we can eat fresh fish every day if we want to, as most medium sized supermarkets have a fish counter, and the town has a substantial fleet of small and medium sized boats working the coastal waters night and day. 

Today, it rained all day, right into the evening. We went out and walked the length of the promenade to the Castello Sohail, then back into the centre of town, where we lunched at the Bar/Cafe Central opposite the bus station. Clare had boquerones and the local version of Russian salad tapas, I settled for a racione of the house paella, real comfort food, as rain had penetrated my outer jacket, leaving me feeling cold and soggy. We bought a couple of dorada (sea bass) for supper. It was my turn to cook. The only frying pan we had wasn´t really big enough for ambitious cuisine, so the fish were slowly sautéed with olive oil and just a clove of garlic, nothing else. To my surprise this worked with plain steamed broccoli, carrot and new potatoes. We had lined up a mediaeval music concert to attend at the Rosario church in the town centre, but as we were about to leave it was still raining persistently, so we curled up on the sofa instead, lacking nothing.