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Some mates of ours have a couple of places out in Spain, so we popped out to visit them for a few days. We were in a little place called Playa de Flamenco, which is just outside of both Alicante and Murcia. I can’t say we saw that many Spanish people in the area. It seems to be a place that the Brits have a lot of holiday homes or have relocated to to live in another Britain with sun.  All the pubs seem to have English beers, and you can always seem to get steak and chips.  We prefer the local tapas though, which seem to take a bit more finding…

The first day the rain bucketed down (not that it bothered us at all while we sat inside eating tapa’s and drinking beer), and caused lots of local floods.

But on the second day we woke up to clear blue sky – fantastic.

What did we do – nothing really. Caught up on some sleep, had a few pints, watched some sport, had a walk on the beach, wandered through the extremely busy market, and, oh we ate some tapa’s. And the food highlight for Bec was having lobster one night for dinner.

Yes, I think we can almost talk about it. Though it still brings back some bad feelings!

At the same time we got the tickets to the first All Blacks game of the world cup, we took a punt (if you’ll pardon the pun) and got ourselves tickets to the quarter final game for the AB pool. We figured that it was highly likely that we’d win the pool and if not we could always sell them on anyway. Not that we had any doubts at all though. Honest!

The tickets were the easy bit though. Right up until the week before we went we had no idea whether we had anywhere to stay as there seemed to be no accommodation left in town. All sorts of schemes were being discussed, from driving up and back in a day, or sleeping in a car, etc. But in the end we managed to score a flat for the night within reasonable walking distance from the stadium. Whew! That meant we could take the easy option of a train there and back.

So we got there, got settled, went to the pub to watch the Aussie v England game… With all the other Kiwi’s in town. Who were all cheering on England, rather than our cousins across the pond. Go figure! Presumably because at the time we thought that would be best for us in the long run. The token 2 Aussies at the pub were getting a bit of a hard time, as you can imagine.

Then off down the road for a pie and another pint before the game.

I don’t really want to talk about the the game. So I won’t.

But I will talk about after the game. Back at the pub. With everyone else looking glum and commiserating with each other. Along with some France supporters. All getting along fine.

The reason I mention that is that some people asked me at work what it was like after the game and were really surprised to hear that there was no trouble or bad feeling or anything. They’re so used to football crowds that get ugly that it’s hard for them to comprehend a rugby crowd. No need to separate supporters in the stadium, no need for police on horseback, no bottles being thrown, nothing. Just a good natured crowd where supporters of both teams can talk to each other about the game afterwards over a beer.

It’s all good, regardless of the result.