The morning dawned in an unpromising fashion but we thought we’d pop into Denia anyway to see if we could discover any details about their Three Kings celebrations on Monday. After a little difficulty parking, we fortuitously stumbled across the tourist information booth where a helpful lady told us the timing and route for the Three Kings procession.
The street market was in full swing so we amused ourselves looking at the usual array of vegetables before popping in to look at the indoor market hall. The most interesting thing about Denia’s indoor market is that many of the stalls are actually German run. This gives a clue as to the make up of the local expat community. It gets quite confusing on the ear trying to switch between overheard conversations in German, English and Spanish.
While we were inside, the weather sneakily brightened up by more than the forecast would have had us believe and we managed to find a quiet bar for a couple of cafés con leche, before heading home. Looking forward to lunch on the naya again, our journey required a swift diversion into Benissa to the Consum supermarket for some of our favourite bread, bara campesina. What should we spot whilst in there but a lonely looking packet of our new discovery, garlicky baby eels with prawns? That would do nicely for lunch and it would be bad form to leave one poor, lonely packet to languish on the shelf by itself. Lunch sorted!
Having enjoyed our lunch, a swift Skype call to our neighbours Paul and Liz back in the sunnier-than-Spain UK caused us to examine our baby eels’ packaging more closely and dice with translating some of the Spanish. It seems that we had been deceived. These tasty little morsels are fake: processed, reconstituted and reformed into something designed to resemble baby eels. Clearly, it does so quite effectively. Mortified, I hang my head in shame.
Thinking about it, this fishy deception explains a couple of things. Firstly, the price, which seems too low for the genuine article, even at Spanish seafood prices. Secondly, Carol doesn’t normally appreciate eels but she lapped these up. Now we know why. 🙂
Double drat!
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