Hector's Vacation

To quote from anotherfoodblog.com :""This has to be the prettiest. It has a working harbour and fishing fleet, and a marina across a swing bridge. At one end is the old stone customs house, and around three sides of it, like a horseshoe are packed the tall narrow houses. Residential up top, with artists studios lower down, and finally restaurants and shops at street level. The restaurants overflow onto tables by the marina, nestling under colourful parasols."" I once wrote, its a mismatch of a fishing village built into the side of a steep hill.


At ground level are numerous 'a la carte' restaurants and bistros then above them are artists galeries and right up the top of these eight story houses are the private accomodation. The incredibly tall, narrow houses remind me so much of the streets that line the canals of Amsterdam. Each designed so differently with a varied decor to create, surprisingly, a very amenable picture in front of your eyes.
You might even see that in one of the photos as we are heading along one of the roads above the harbour there is a man holding up a painting in the street from his studio so that he can show some buyers what it looks like under natural light. To walk these streets is really quite a surreal experience. We went there on a day when the weather was poor yet even so parking was a lottery and the far too narrow pavements were spilling onto the main roads with tourists and locals alike. The beautiful churches and fascinating studios attract people from afar, many tour-buses deposit their groups in the centre and leave them to wander around for a whole day. In such hectic surroundings, as we ate our meal by the harbour it was remarkably peaceful even though there was a constant stream of people between our tables out under canvas and the restaurant built into the hillside at the very bottom of these towering houses.

We had a very quick lunch- crepes and then got an ice cream for the journey back.