This review was submitted before 2018 and has not been verified.
10/10 Excellent
Chris F., Bury St Edmunds
9 December 2014
The Enchanted Valley
I'm just eating a big bowl of Ferreirola soup made with English ingredients-- pepper, sweet potato, tomato and garlic simmered gently until the peppers turn soft and the added hot paprika permeates the whole -- and it's good, but it doesn't taste the same as the soup I make when we stay at Casa Barbara. The little four ring gas cooker always takes a hammering when we're there, but for those who don't want to cook on holiday there's a multitude of places nearby to eat out. Our favourite is the little bar in Mecinilla when a few glasses of red wine with accompanying tapas makes cooking at home redundant.
How to describe Casa Barbara? Let me put it this way: staying in the magical valley of La Taha is going to be a great experience wherever you book, but to wake under a ceiling of cleft chestnut and olive, to sit on the balcony and watch the sun rise over La Corona with the valley beneath still shrouded in shadow, to feel five hundred years of history all around you, adds a depth to the holiday that nowhere fancier or less authentic could possibly match. If I had to sum it up in a phrase I'd call it 'not too fancy, just right', like the valley and the people and the bars themselves. Is it six or seven times we've been back? Eight? Each time we lug our bags up the stairs it's as if we've never been away and the outside world fades into insignificance. Then when you get back home you can close your eyes and remember the light from the setting sun laying along the hillside over the valley, remember frantically cooking tapas for our perfect landlady, remember the smiles and the welcoming 'Hola' from each person you pass in the village, remember the white villages shining among the olives and holm oaks, and the clonk of goat bells sounding through the intense silence.
Eight, it's eight times we've been back. Next year, God willing, we'll make it nine.