Living La Vida Loca

I've been away on a girlie weekend. Usually I travel on my own so this was a bit of a novelty for me. An ex-work colleague of mine invited me and another work colleague to come and stay at her apartment outside Murcia in Spain. We met at the airport on Thursday afternoon and immediately started comparing the size of our luggage. It was hand luggage only since you had to pay some ridiculous sum to check in your suitcase [and we are very financially aware like that]. Thinking about it our hand luggage looked like something out of Goldilocks and The Three Bears with mine being the Baby Bear's luggage. I travel light - light as a feather. I carried a day pack on my back easily fitting in what I needed for the three nights we were away. Sally, had the Mother Bear luggage - a small carry-on on wheels (I might invest in one myself) and Diana had the Father Bear luggage - a somewhat bigger carry-on because she'd packed stuff "just in case". Well, she no longer goes under her legal birth name. She is now Mrs Justine Case.

We found our check in desk and the kind lady told Mrs Justine Case that her hand luggage was too heavy and she would have to take some stuff out and put it in her handbag. Time for a quick re-shuffle, stuff some clothes in the handbag and ask Helena to carry this weapon

around the corner from the check-in desk where she stuffed everything back into her suitcase and then we proceeded through security. Are you as confused by this as we are? So, they make you re-arrange your luggage in front of the check in staff but then you can walk away and put it all back the way it originally was. Hellooo??!!

Anyway, after all this hoo-haa we headed straight to the Baileys' tasting counter. Have you tried the new Baileys with coffee flavour? It's lovely. The mint flavour is very nice too. I recommend you try it next time you go the airport.

Next to the free Baileys counter was the free gin but someone pointed out that gin makes you depressed and we were going to have fun this weekend so we turned the gin down. Did you hear that folks, we turned the gin down!!!

We arrived in Spain safely and had big plans to go for walks and to go to the beach. Well, two days go quickly and we found ourselves lying by the pool. But first, of course, one must figure out how to unfold the sun loungers.

Put your heads together and stick your bums up in the air. Voila! [Please note that the sun-lounger to the right, the one that's already unfolded, is mine. And yes, after having taken this photo I did help them.]

This is the pool.

We're guessing that it was around 22-23 degrees Celsius so just perfect to lie in the sun without getting too hot. Let me tell you that the pool was freezing. All of us had a quick swim (me being the last one in, I admit) and nearly had heart attacks.

We certainly livened a couple of bars up with our great charm. Being Swedish I wanted some ABBA and Sally kindly went up to the DJ to request it. Before I knew it ABBA came on and the DJ announced that it was Helena's birthday! Everyone sang happy birthday and gave me their birthday wishes. I nearly fainted. Because it was NOT my birthday. Someone (I won't mention names here...) then tried to get free birthday drinks from the bar but the grumpy bar man wasn't giving any away. And maybe that was a good thing because the drinks measurements in Spain are very generous. It doesn't take much before you start chatting to everybody around you and dance energetically to Madness. On our last night we even entertained a young crowd by singing karaoke. We were fan-bloody-tastic!

We didn't make it to the beach and we didn't go for any walks but we were so busy sunbathing by the pool and going out eating and drinking that there really was no time **smiles**.