The weather finally brightened a little and we raced out to the neighbouring city of Murcia to admire its historic sights and gothic architecture.
Apologies for the photo quality of that one ^, again was busy taking photos on my iPhone before realising this place really deserved some proper beauty snaps.
So, first day out in Spain… We had no idea where to go, what to do, what to eat (we were seriously disorganised. My parents decided to go on the holiday then demanded I do all the research, despite me having a full time job and erm, no time to research). We decided to wing it.
We drove to Cartegena, found somewhere to eat (ish) that was open, had relatively decent ratings on Google and was close (ish) to where we were trying to head (ish). They didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Spanish. This was obviously going to turn out well.
After battling with the menu we managed to order…
Clockwise from top left: tiny, slimy eel – whole, eyes and all with pickled onions and prawns | green goop (supposedly avocado mush), crumbled hard-boiled egg droppings with prawns | potato salad, anchovies and olives. Read More
Murcia: the region in South-East Spain bordered by Andalusia and the Valencian Community on the Mediterranean coast.
A major producer of fruits & veg and flowers, it boasts ridiculously warm weather and something like 360 days of sunshine a year (okay I may be exaggerating there, but you get the idea).
In fact, the climate is so perfect the region has 120 ~ 150 days/year where the sky is totally clear, says Wikipedia.
And because it’s on the coast, that basically spells sun, sea and miles and miles of beautiful sandy beaches.
The best part is everything there is has been made crazy cheap as the EUR is so weak. Perfect place for a holiday, my family and I thought. Temperatures were reaching early-mid 20ºC the week before we arrived. I was so excited. So, bikinis packed and sun lotion prepped, we donned our summer gear and headed over for a week during the Easter hols.
We must have chosen the one week the weather decided to suck.
We arrived in San Javier to gale force winds & drizzly rain and frankly didn’t want to leave the warmth and comfort of our air-conditioned holiday abode. No joke, for a day we just went nowhere.
To be fair, we had a pretty nice holiday home. After the initial confusion and frustration due to lack of communication from the letting agents (although they were great in the end), the home itself was wonderful. It’s spread across 3 floors with a living room, separate kitchen, ground floor bedroom & en-suite, two double bedrooms and a fancy bathroom, terraces on all levels and the second/final floor is a rooftop terrace!
My sister and I played cards whilst our parents watched their Chinese drama.
Slightly a waste of a holi-day in Spain, but the change in environment was very welcome.
After all, the most important part of a holiday is sleeping in family time, no?
Finally after a day the weather cleared a little and we jetted outside to make the most of it.
Whoops! Slightly belated, but I guess not bad for an update. I completed the military diet aaaand… after weighing myself the next morning, I had lost around 2.5kg in total.
Which is pretty good, right? :)
Shortly after, I did put back 1kg, but a final total 1.5kg weight loss that’s kept off is definitely not bad. It’s been almost 2 weeks since and I may have even lost a little more as my appetite’s decreased and I’ve been making sure I don’t overeat. My scales are currently broken though so who knows.
I actually enjoyed some of the meals so much I ate them again outside of the diet plan. I’m trying it again this weekend so we’ll see how it goes!
No ‘after’ photo yet, but here’s a pic from when I was back in Spain, which would be a fairly accurate ‘before’ I guess…
I’ll post the rest of my Spain trip pics soon, promise.
Want to give it a go? To make our lives easier, I’ve compiled a list of everything I ate, how I cooked it and a shopping list. I’ve used carefully calculated substitutions based on calorific values of the approved substitute foods.
If you’d like to go for the original diet plan, it’s here. Calorie values here, approved substitutions here.
Let’s begin. Read More
