Edd's Travels: Alicante, Spain

And so we bid a not-especially-fond farewell to The Donald. I was in the USA when he got elected, back in 2016. Specifically I was in Cincinnati, although my thoughts from that time - which I stand by - are better summarised in a previous blog from Pittsburgh.

Now that the Trumpozoic Era is over, we can at least take comfort in the thought that he leaves office a much poorer man than when he entered it, which is the exact opposite of what most other recent Western leaders have done. Though of course Trump was probably never quite as rich, behind all the smoke-and-mirrors of financial engineering and inflated valuations, as he wanted us all to believe. Walking around the marina in Alicante and renewing my little game of Spot The Yacht, I've been musing on the foibles of billionaires and their favoured status symbols. Mega-yachts are impressive, but it's not until you see one looming like Godzilla behind a bobbling gaggle of smaller yachts that you understand why size really matters. Mine's Bigger Than Yours. I Am Considerably Richer Than Yow. The mega-yacht currently harboured in Alicante is called Lady Moura and it used to be the 9th biggest in the world but now it barely scrapes into the top 30. Oh, the ignominy.

The third Covid wave is well under way in Alicante and so all the bars and cafes and restaurants are closed. As such, I'm afraid there is no Edd vs Food this week. Fortunately I got my fair portion of Alicante nightlife during my last visit in 2019. And even when everything's closed, it's still a perfectly pleasant place to go for a stroll along the seafront or a hike in the hills. My legs have had plenty of exercise this time round, in a marked contrast to that previous visit, when it was mainly my elbow taking the strain.

Vaccinations are starting to happen in Spain, albeit not at anything like the pace back in Blighty. There's been a bit of a scandal involving several senior politicians and military officers getting themselves to the front of the queue for a jab despite none of them being remotely old enough or ill enough. Pretty shameful really. Of course, our own beloved Sovereign and her consort got the vaccine promptly, but the two of them have an average age of 96.5 so they're jolly well entitled to it. As for me, well, I'm still crossing my fingers that the UK government doesn't move to hotel-room quarantine. If they do, I'll just have to fly to Dublin, do my quarantine on Craggy Island (mind how you go!) and then sneak over the border to get a ferry home from Belfast. Simples.