The best weekends are the ones where you don't plan ahead and have a good time with friends and family.

For many years now, I've had the feeling that the weekends when you don't plan your activities and you organize your planning on the fly, for some reason are the weekends where you get to have the best time. Throughout the post you will see that the weekend of July 30 and 31 everything was lining up for a perfect weekend.

Like every Saturday, my weekend starts with doing routine chores like cleaning the house, doing the weekly grocery shopping, preparing Saturday's meal, etc. At about 12 noon I received a WhatsApp from my friend Miguel commenting the following:

Miguel: Hi José, I have talked to my brother and he comments me if we are going to have dinner with him, his wife and the girl. Me: OK. I'll let Eduardo know and let's see if Yose also joins us, we haven't been together for several weekends. Miguel: Make a note that we will meet for dinner at 21:00 at the Fornello Restaurant.

After this conversation, I ate with my mother around 1:30 pm and as I had bought some bait, I decided to go fishing at a cliff near my house to spend the afternoon. This activity of going fishing on weekends is one of the activities that relaxes me the most. Being close to the sea, breathing fresh air with that unmistakable fragrance of salt from the ocean is something that those of us who have grown up near the sea value when we are far away from it.

As you can see, the situation was not at all bad for me and I was able to catch a good catch of about 1 kg in weight. In this case it is a Sargo, which is a very tasty fish, both fried and baked.

Around 5:30 pm, I picked up the fishing rod and went home to clean the fish, take a relaxing shower and went upstairs with my mother to see my uncle Salvador, who lives about 3 kilometers from my mother's house. During this visit, my uncle asked me if we wanted to have a barbecue the next day, which I gladly accepted. At about 8:30 pm I returned to my mother's house, changed my clothes and went to the restaurant El Fornello in El Franco.

Finally, Eduardo, Yose, Miguel, Javier, Noemí and little Daniela came to the dinner with friends. The truth is that taking Daniela to the dinner gave us a lot of joy. It had been a long time since I had seen her, I bought her a surprise ball with a little toy in it from a vending machine. Daniela, very giggly, started to play and with the good vibes generated we started to hit it off by high-fiving and saying "Tope Guay" with a thumbs up. It's an expression similar to saying "Very good" which made Daniela laugh with each high-five.

Once we were seated around the table we were assigned to eat, we all took a photo together to immortalize the moment and then agreed on the dishes we were going to order to share. Finally, we chose two portions of calamari a la romana that let us down a little in taste, two portions of mussels a la marinera that were delicious and two veal cachopos stuffed with cheese and ham that were spectacular.

The bad thing is that in the middle of the dinner we had a small mishap with one of the water bottles and they had to change the whole tablecloth because the table was soaked. After the main courses, since the amount of food had already been abundant, we decided not to eat dessert and went directly to the coffee and shots. In my case a coffee with ice and a shot of coffee liqueur. Then, it was when Eduardo, my most partying friend, commented that about 5 kilometers away in the town of Villar de Miudes was celebrating the festivities in honor of the Apostle Santiago. And this is where, once again, a previously unplanned event appeared and made my weekend happy.

Only Eduardo and I went to the party due to the following reasons. Javier and Noemí had a sleepy little girl. In Miguel's case, he had gotten up very early and had some commitments the next day. And in the case of Yose, he had to work the next day.

First of all, I would like to point out that this festival is celebrated in a small village of about 50 inhabitants. Despite this, many people from neighboring towns and villages come to this town to enjoy the live music. I estimate that there would be about four or five hundred people in the festival field. The orchestras hired by the festival committee were the Grupo Jaque. And the Tokio orchestra.

When we arrived at the party the band Jaque was playing music. It is a small group of 1 male vocalist and 2 female vocalists. The style of music they were singing was Spanish pop music, cumbias and regueton. The truth is that it is not the music I like the most, but as it is a small party, the singers even got off the stage to interact with the audience and encourage the attendees to dance. The truth is that this part of the performance was fun.

Once the first performance of Grupo Jaque was over, the festival committee had a surprise for the audience. Because for two years had not been able to celebrate the party and that every year had raised money by selling lottery, the budget had allowed them to delight the audience with a small fireworks display.

After the fireworks, the Tokio orchestra came on stage. This orchestra had a better sound than the first one and above all a greater variety of cumbia, bachata, pasodobles, pop, reggaeton and in the final part of their first pass also a little rock and heavy metal.

After a couple of glasses of gin and tonic my body was already asking me to go to rest and it was then when my friend Eduardo, who had driven the car, took me home.

At 10 o'clock in the morning I got up and took a shower to recover. The two drinks and wine from dinner on Sunday morning took their toll on me during the first hours. At about 11:30 am I went back up to my uncle's house and set about heating the charcoal coals on the portable grill we have. We put the meat that my uncle had bought on Saturday (chicken, pork ribs, sausages and black pudding). The intention we always have is to cook enough barbecue to have enough food left over for dinner.

This time the barbecue came out great and I received the usual congratulations from my uncle and my mother.

Congratulations from my uncle: "Jose, this time it turned out better than ever".

My mother's congratulations: "May all the other barbecues you make during the summer be as good as this one".

I suspect that the trick is to cook the barbecue on low heat, so that the food comes out a little later than they usually eat lunch and they are hungrier than usual.

With all this, I hope you liked to know my experience of the weekend of July 30 and 31, 2022.

All photos are my own and were taken with my iPhone SE.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).