We made our way trough the giant yard sale, locating the center of town where they had an actual city market, while not the most impressive we’ve expressed, it was nice to be amongst the locals doing their Sunday shopping. 

A short walk away was the library, a Herzog + de Meuron project, we roamed around for a bit taking it all in before heading to find a place to eat, a restaurant suggested by a friend of Nicks co worker, Alex. We weaved through the streets of Santa Cruz to find La Oliva, a non-descript eatery with nothing else near by other than places of residence. We entered the small restaurant to every table having reserved signs, and to a man telling me that everything was taken – but then quickly clearing two placemats on a four top and telling us to sit – it was all very confusing. We each ordered a glass of wine and their specialty croquettes to share, which were amazing! I can’t remember all the ingredients but the first, which I liked the best had tikka masala, the second appeared to have spinach in them and the third, cod with what tasted like cream cheese. They were all delicious, and I can understand why the house specialty. 

I ordered a veggie dish with goat cheese and Nick had the Iberian pork shoulder with crispy potatoes and stewed pumpkin. We finished our meal sharing a dessert, avocado pie. La Oliva was a wonderful suggestion and thank goodness they made room for us!

We made our way back to the car, walking through Plaza de Espana.  Once we returned to our car we headed to Playa de las Teresitas, a man made beach not too far away. We grabbed the one and only towel we remembered to grab from the apt, and lounged a bit by the water. Nick read his book and I of course, took a snooze. We then grabbed a cerveza at the beach hut behind ya before heading to Cofradia de Pescadores Restaraunte, another local hole in the wall that Alex’s friend recommended. It had the feeling of a convenient store with a bar and food.  Nick ordered us a couple dishes which I quickly found out once there were delivered were the fried peppers, fish churros and octopus. Needless to say I stuck to the fish and peppers. While we were to be having a snack, it quickly turned into more of a dinner. Luckily I had a beverage to wash it down with.

I had read about good hiking in the Anaja Mountains, which were not far so we headed that way, only to find out the hiking was on the middle but we were driving along the coast. When we got to the end of the road we were traveling we turned around headed back towards our place, stopping at the last project that nick wanted to see, a church, the Holy Redeemer. Nick was quite disappointed, even though construction started in 2013, it appeared to be abandoned and not finished. Needless to say it was a quick visit.

We arrived back to the AirBnB, enjoyed a lovely sun set and the made our way to a bar nearby, to find out it was apparently a German bar. Thankfully they still understood what vino tinto was. We drank a bottle of red, I composed this blog post, petted the “security” dog and and enjoyed not being able to understand a single thing that was being said around us!