Day 25 - Dipping into the Mediterranean

Almería to San Jose de Los Terreros - Calypso Hotel

We walked to the Alcazaba this morning, having breakfast on the way. Unlike the others we had visited entry was free, the man at the ticket counter asked us where were from and when we said Australia he waved us through. It was also different because it was quiet and less touristy, but like all of them it had amazing views of the city, which makes sense as they were the city's fortresses.

We then jumped in the car and headed to Carboneras, then continued following the coastal road through Mojácar before stopping at the tiny village of El Calon for lunch. El Calon was interesting, just a tiny settlement of mainly holiday homes, and an abandoned half built holiday complex at the back. 

Love that view!

Our destination for the day was San Jose de Los Terreros. Our hotel was right on the beach, and this time the beach was a bit different to the others we've seen in that the sand was quite fine, more like the beaches at home. However it was also dirty, with cigarette butts in the sand, plastic washed up on the shore line etc. It's surprising Spain is so litter filled as we don't believe we have visited any other country with so many rubbish bins, every time you want one there is one within 20 metres. 

We took a walk along the beach and then came back for a swim in the Mediterranean right on our hotel's doorstep.

We drove to the town of Aguilas to see what it was like, but ended up just doing some grocery shopping before heading back to enjoy our veranda overlooking the beach, before having a lovely dinner of sea bream cooked on hot coals inside a boat right before our eyes.

Day 24 - It seems we don't eat enough

Almería

We decided to collect our hire car a day early so that we could drive around the surrounding hills and towns as it seemed we would be struggling to spend the whole day in Almería. We picked the car up from the airport and headed for the ceramic town of Nijar. You couldn't quibble with the quantity of pottery, but the style wasn't to K's taste, so all we bought was two little trinkets.

We then drove to Sorbas, this is in the area where a great many Hollywood westerns were made - there is even a Mini Hollywood theme park where they reenact the saloon shoot downs that were filmed there, but in the town itself there wasn't much to see.


From there we headed to the coast, lunching on the beach at a place called Cabo de Gata. We decided to share a dish of snapper, though the waiter wasn't impressed and said it was too small to share. We looked around and everyone else had huge meals to themselves - of course the Spanish eat their main meal in the middle of the day, for us it it was just a snack to tide us over until our next ice cream!

Nice place for a seafood lunch

From there we drove to San Jose where we found that ice cream, then to Las Negras, then bypassed Almería and checked out Roquetas de Mar, finally returning to Almeria and stopping at the far end of the beach we walked along yesterday for drink.

By then it was 9pm, too early to be thinking of dinner so we parked the car, then wandered the streets until we found another place that served free tapas with a drink - dinner was sorted!

Day 23 - Don't go exploring in the early afternoon

Granada to Almería - Apartamentos de Torreluz

Today we caught the bus to the seaside city of Almería. The landscape on the bus journey was interesting, it was like passing through a dry and dusty desert, and we later found out that the area was used to film Westerns.

On arrival we checked in to our inner city hotel.  As spacious as our room was, it wasn't easy to move to a hotel room when we'd been staying at airbnb's. Even when the bed isn't hotel standard and there isn't any service a hotel just can't match the space and convenience. 

We decided to take a walk down to the beach and check out the town. It was a bit dismal, the promenade and beach was long but there was little shade and it was pretty quiet, nearly everything was closed and the buildings lining the seafront were tall and ugly. Of course, they do say that only mad dogs and and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

This beach is overcrowded

Have we mentioned how many people smoke - lots of young girls too, it's when you're overseas that you realise that the sun smart and smoking lobbies have really worked in Australia but not in other places.

That evening we enjoyed the free tapas that comes with each drink and didn't need dinner at all - it seems that different towns have different ways of doing tapas. For example, in Sevilla the tapas was selected for us, whereas in Almeria we were asked to choose from a list (we definitely prefer the latter way of doing it).

Day 22 - I didn't know they did that!

Granada

Our apartment is a bit noisy, and last night was Saturday night so it was worse than usual. It sounded like we had an army of drunks right outside our window, the narrow streets seem to amplify the noise, K was woken by the sound of someone weeing on the cobblestones!. 

We found ourselves with an unexpected extra day and on a Sunday as well - so the only stuff that was open was the tourist places, everything else was totally shut down.

After a sleep in (yeah, being on holidays is tough) we decided to head for a picturesque square by the river on the way to the Alhambra. We should have learnt our lesson by now, and that we'd be smart enough to spot a tourist trap by now, but no  - we fell into the poor quality food trap again!

I'd get out of there too

After an easy afternoon we headed off to the bullring. K wanted to see the bullfighting with the horses and we had front row seats. Unfortunately the seats were narrow concrete steps, with someone's legs behind you and elbow to elbow with your neighbour. We had mixed feelings about attending this especially as K has an aversion to gore and any form of violence but as she is also a country girl she is quite pragmatic about such things. 

So, starting with the good stuff, the horses were amazing! Their movements were top dressage standard, amazing passage and two other movements K had never seen before, brilliant! The not so good side ... is that it's all about killing the bulls  - all 6 of them, right in front of you. 

The bulls seemed to spend a good part of the time looking up at the crowd totally bewildered at what was going on. After teasing them mercilessly, they crowd rejoices when they eventually collapse from blood loss and exhaustion. To finish things, a matador dressed in black drives a knife into their poll and cuts their spinal cord, they then cut off an ear and parade around with it as heroes - the bulls never have a chance. To finish it all off, they chain the dead bull to some big strong horses and drag it out. It was all quite hideous - don't need to see that again!.

Day 21 - Spending time with the locals

Granada

This morning we had arranged to meet Manny's aunt Isabel in front of the cathedral at 10.30 as she had purchased (don't judge, yet) bullfighting tickets for us for that evening. We met Isabel and had breakfast with her. At one point we explained that we needed to buy bus tickets for Saturday as we were travelling to Almería, and Isabel couldn't understand why. We eventually dicovered our error, the bullfighting tickets were for tomorrow evening - just a little spanner in the works there! Isabel phoned our hotel in Almería and changed our booking, and we managed to extend our Airbnb apartment for another night so it all worked out, we just had to spend an extra day in Granada. 

No idea who's getting married here

After wandering through the city with Isobel we went back to her apartment to collect her car, where we met her middle daughter also called Isabel. This was really interesting to us as up until now we had just been doing tourist things, so it was good to see the other side, the normal suburban apartment living.

Isabel drove us to a beautiful mosque that was now converted to a  church, where one of her daughter's was married. At the time there was a wedding in progress so the church was closed, but this didn't faze Isobel, she just went in, came out a minute or so later and beckoned us in, so we managed to witness a few minutes of someone's wedding ceremony! 

After that Isobel drove us to the bus station to buy our tickets, and then past the bullring and back to our apartment - she was so lovely and delightful!

Day 20 - All toured out

Granada

For people who "don't do tours", we certainly made an exception today! We started off with our standard free walking tour of the city. This one had amazing reviews so we expected great things, unfortunately the guide wasn't that great. He was certainly qualified, with a PhD in history, in fact it's quite sad that there seems to be an entire generation of very qualified people who by necessity end up in basic jobs. Unfortunately our guide was a bit on the dry side, such a shame, however he dangled the carrot of a flamenco evening that was promised to be pure and original so we signed up for that for about 7:30pm. 

Before that though we had the Alhambra to tackle. All you hear about the south of Spain is "you have to go to the Alhambra" - so of course we went to the Alhambra. We had left it quite late to buy tickets, so they were all supposedly sold out. However we were able to book a guided tour at €55 each (normal entrance fee is €15), we decided we had no option but to pay the money as we may never be in Granada again. We have since realized that the reason the tickets are sold out so far in advance is probably that the tour companies buy them up leaving very few normal tickets left for sale.  

We decided to walk to the entrance of the Alhambra as it wasn't meant to be very far..... unfortunately google maps took us on a 30 minute climb up a hill via some steps and then down the other side, great short cut! At least we're able to justify our daily ice cream!

We arrived just in time for the call for English speakers, we joined the masses with their microphones and finally entered the Alhambra. The microphones are actually a good idea, the guide can talk while we are walking and everyone can hear him. This guide had exceptional English, all the others apart from our guide in Málaga haven't been that great, and sometimes  difficult to understand. We spent the next 2 1/2 hours touring the massive, Alhambra complex and learning interesting facts like, how to tell the difference between a Muslim fountain and a Christian one. A Muslim fountain has a low soft bubble up of water, a Christian one springs in arches.  

The trip back to the city after the Alhambra was a speedy 10 minute downhill trek, so we made it in time to join our flamenco evening tour. We started off with a drink at a roof top bar while being given a history lesson of the dance before arriving at the tiny venue. There were two dancers, unfortunately it looked like a tired middle aged mother paired with her 30-something son. He was very passionate and she did her best, a little disappointing, but still worthwhile.

By then it was around 11pm - perfect time to do what the Spanish do and go have dinner - more Moroccan this time.

Day 19 - "Free" tour?

Málaga to Granada - Airbnb apartment

We caught a morning bus to Granada, we are putting off hiring a car for as long as we can as some of the roads are very narrow and cars aren't permitted too close to the old parts of the cities, so you have to park well out of town. 

After arriving in Granada we caught a taxi to our next airbnb apartment. After doing some washing we went for a walk and tried to join up with a free walking tour, to be told when we arrived that it was only in Spanish. We though this would be fine, seeing as it's free, but we were then told it wasn't free, it was €12, so we grabbed one of their maps and tried to follow the path on our own. 

We were pretty successful we walked up lots of steps going through Albaicín and Sacromonte, and from there we had amazing views of the city and the Alhambra. At the Mirador de San Nicolás we sat down for a drink whilst enjoying the beautiful vista. We walked back to the centro through the Arab sector, eventually having dinner just around the corner from where we were staying at a paella restaurant. This is our first paella in Spain, we are very aware that they are tourist dishes as they are really only eaten in Valencia, but this place had very good reviews. We weren't disappointed, it was lovely, cooked to perfection and very tasty.

The Alhambra

Day 18 - Number 1? Seriously?!!

Málaga 

This is our final full day in Malaga so we decided to go to the number one tourist attraction in Málaga (according to Tripadvisor) - The Museum of Glass and Crystal. It was a privately owned house with a furniture and glass exhibition, run by some older English gentlemen who had decided to make their inherited and privately purchased collection into a museum. K quite enjoyed it but M thought the overly positive and sickly Tripadvisor reviews were only there because no one wanted to offend the nice old gentlemen. Also at the museum were some Australian and English people who were teaching in the local schools, apparently to get a teaching position all you need is a University degree in anything and to be a native English speaker. 

After leaving there we toured the small and uninspiring Contemporary Art Centre, then headed to the roof top bar at the Marriot. It was a lovely view of the harbour but it was a bit hot and there was no shade, so we only stayed for one drink, then it was off to the marina for our daily dose of icecream.

Overall we have enjoyed Málaga, it has a good mixture of old and new Spain plus it's close to the beach! 

Look familiar?

Day 17 - To Ronda and beyonda

Malaga

Today we hired a car and headed for the fabled Ronda, and it didn't disappoint. Amazing bridge, architecture and views only spoiled slightly by the thousands of tourists that have headed up from the Costa del Sol for the day - read that as the English people that fly into Gibraltar on cheap fares and stay at Queensland type resorts (the best people stay in Malaga of course!). 

Wouldn't want to fall off that

We decided to take the scenic route back through the lovely town of Grazalema. Not so many tourists here, and along with the whitewashed buildings, there was a guy in the the main square who had a number of birds of prey, including a massive owl. We could have our photo taken with a bird on our arm (for a price) but decided to give that a miss. 

There were many small artisans shops but being between 2pm and 6pm they were disappointingly all closed. This area of Spain has huge unemployment problems .... we had been told that the only thing keeping the economy going was tourism, so you'd think they could stay at least stay open when there were tourists in town!

From there we drove through Ubrique and the Serrania de Ronda Mountains joining the coast at Estepona. The road was very winding and narrow until we reached the coast, we then decided to take the Costa del Sol beach route back to Malaga to see exactly what this area that attracts so many Brits was like ... all we found was lots of high rise and apartment blocks and beaches of gritty grey sand. 

What really annoyed us as we drove into Malaga was all the double parking - people just leaving their car on the road with hazard lights on while they went shopping! They were everywhere, in the street some or on street corners, the whole thing was bizarre.

Day 16 - Best walking tour ever?

Málaga

We have decided we quite like Málaga, it seems to have a bit of everything, modern shops, history, old buildings and the beach.

We join our fourth walking tour of the trip and find its the best we have done - they really come down to the quality of the guide. Firstly the guide's English was so much better than the others, some have been a little difficult to understand. He was also pleasantly funny but best of all he was really interesting. Rather that rattling off names and dates, he told some really interesting stories about the city and its history. We have done these tours in a lot of European countries and many could learn how to do it from Luís! We now look at the cathedral totally differently, even though we have a fantastic view from our apartment we hadn't noticed that it wasn't finished. According to Luís originally it wasn't finished because of a lack of funding, but when funding became available the people of Málaga decided they would rather be different and have an unfinished cathedral, than be like every other city!

Spot the bullring

We headed to the railway station where the car hire companies had offices to book a car for the next day, only to be told that the rate for booking in person was nearly double what we would get online - so of course we headed back to the "penthouse" and booked it online.

After that we did a self guided tour of yet another Alcázar, this one had nice, though small gardens, great views of the harbour, and an interesting ceramic exhibition depicting the wares of the era.