bday-brekkie

Birthdays at casa az traditionally start off with breakfast in bed consisting of lovely hot coffee and these fabulous arabic pastries. And so when I finally re-awoke around 9.30 yesterday morning, Nog brought in the birthday brekkie.  It turned out to be a good thing that I hadn’t gone to yoga because I found out today that the first yoga class after the holidays will be tomorrow … imagine how awful it would have been if I had dragged myself out of my warm bed and walked over to the gym in the dark only to find nobody there!  So that was a lucky start to what turned out to be rather a serendipitous birthday …

When I finally did get out of bed I just had time to ride the dreaded exercise bike for 45 minutes before taking a shower and getting ready to go out for lunch with Pipocas.  We ended up going to one of my favourite tapa bars Enrique Becerra, because Pip had never been there before. So I introduced her to everyone and we had a wonderful lunch, including a bottle of birthday cava that ended up being “on the house”.

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smoked salmon & cream cheese
organic beef burger (with José & Rafa)
cod in filo pastry
grilled beef tenderloin with garlic

Pip and I had a wonderful time “catching up” over lunch and when we finally rolled out of the bar around 4pm the idea was that I would head home and Pip would go back to work.  But then we saw Pablo standing with some friends on the corner. They had just had  lunch next door at La Taberna and were deciding what to do next. I mean, seriously, what are the odds? And so we all ended up going for after lunch birthday cocktails at a nearby Irish pub …

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Pablo & Pipocas
Karen & Matías
Pablo & harem (me, Pip, Luisa, Karen)

Pip bailed on us after about an hour because she really did have to get back to work. As did Luisa, who it turns out teaches Pilates at my gym. Then Matías had to leave for a doctor’s appointment and his wife Karen needed to get home to pack for her trip back to the States the next day. Which seemingly left Pablo & I with no option but to walk into the next Irish pub we came across (my favourite one in Sevilla – Flaherty). Gerry the owner was there and bought us a round of birthday drinks and it seemed prudent at this time to also order a snack of Irish nachos …

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I had texted Nog to invite him to meet us at Flaherty but he had an impromptu English class and so met us after that was over. And then suddenly it was 10 o’clock! So we said goodnight to Pablo and then wandered home, passing through the prettiest square in all of Sevilla …
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It really was a wonderful birthday, even though I woke up around 4am trying to remember how I’d got into bed. There was a cat curled up and sleeping on either side of my head and the (still unnamed) iPhone was lying on my chest.  🙂

I think I’ll be spending the rest of today rehydrating and trying to figure out why I can’t plug the iPhone into my laptop without getting the blue screen of death before it crashes … it works okay when it’s plugged into Nog’s laptop.  Any ideas?

And now I really must get up and get on that damn bike…