Ahhhhh, Elx/Elche

We sure liked Elx. I'm sure it was the surprise of low expectations in addition to a great hotel, the palm gardens, and the charming city with its care for public spaces (cool tile bench on a hot, hot day), its cathedral with the royal blue ceramic-tiled cupolas and crazy cool lion door knockers (a whole post on Spain's doors tk) and the city's ancient history. Check out the Princess Leia buns invented 2500 years ago in this replica of the Dama of Elx, an Iberian (pre-Roman) statue now sitting in Madrid. Elx was also where we picked up the expression "almost-almost" from a pair of haute young saleswomen we met. I should note that other than date palms, Elx is known for shoes. And they have a lot of shoe stores. But our search for a pair of sandals for Ben without the toe thong wasn't going very well. We walked into a very fancy shoe store that had a straight toe sandal for men and asked if they had boys' sizes. Ed said in Spanish, "he's nearly got the feet of a man" hoping they might have a small man's size. "Almost?" Ed said hopefully. The friendly saleswoman looked at Ben kindly but slightly dismissively and said "almost-almost" in a lilting Spanish accent. "Almost-almost" which means "No."