Oh what a long weekend. I’ll be honest – while we love to travel, there comes a time that when you’re away so often, a lot of trips seem to blur into one and you find yourself forgetting what country you are in, mumbling hello/ thank you in Polish, Turkish, Swedish, Italian before you remember you’re in fact in Belgium! Not this weekend. Driving along the Costa del Sol, in the Andalusia region of Spain was certainly a distinctive and memorable trip and one where, although we were only a two hour flight away, we felt like we were halfway around the world. This all comes down to one glorious reason – sun! The t-shirts came out, the sun block was slapped on and we greedily feasted on Vitamin D, amazed at how foreign it felt to feel warm. Oh what a feeling! It warmed our souls and certainly reminded us that while trips to Iceland and Latvia make for good party-conversation in 10 years time, a good old-fashioned sun worship fest certainly doesn’t go astray!
Brad has booked me this trip as a Christmas present and I was pleasantly surprised. Although we’ve been to Spain before and enjoyed it, truth be told we didn’t quite understand the fuss. Spain is full of expats and glorious sun, but it does lack a little in our opinion, when you compare it with glorious Portugal, or delicious Italy. That said, I was very much looking forward to being proved wrong.
We flew into sunny Malaga at 10am so we had the entire day to explore. After picking up our hire car, we navigated our way through Spanish streets, driving on the wrong side of the road and on the wrong side of the car, until we found our delicious hotel. Spain is nice and cheap and as its off-season, we had lovely accommodation at an even lovelier price.
Malaga was lovely – after sitting on the deck in a little patch of sun in my knickers, determined to make the most of the 11am heat, Brad eventually managed to convince me to stop scaring the locals and get exploring. Reluctantly I traipsed after him, where we headed straight to a café where we sat, people watched (hours of fun) while slurping on ice-cream, beer and patatas fritas (chips!).
We then spent a heavenly day walking and getting lost in cobbled streets, taking photos, napping in the sun (twice), climbing to the top of the Alkazaba (which is a big fortress on a hill) and of course, hitting the beach.
The glorious hours passed by in a dazed and dozy dreamlike state, before hunger called and we had our first disappointing encounter with Spanish food. Now, I run the risk of alienating many a million people with what I will say next, but I simply have to put a stop to this ridiculous myth – Spanish food is RUBBISH! All this talk of flavoursome tapas, shared with friends, laughing and smiling in the sun is nothing short of codswallop! The reality is oily, fatty food with no flavor – a fattier, lesser flavoured version of Mexican. Now, we’ve thought this for some time and I’m tried my hardest to push this notion aside, instead trying to get swept away in the enthusiasm for a tapas lunch with my colleagues on Friday, or even when I was in Barcelona for work and was shown the ‘best tapas restaurant in Spain’. Each time I left feeling sick, disappointed and very confused – what was wrong with me? Surely I wasn’t doing it right? No, all this proved was a lesson in trusting your instincts – Spanish food is creepy. Fish served whole (scales and all) covered in an orange oil, or worse deep fried completely – tail and eyeballs galore. Boiled potato covered in mayo, with a few sardines and an ounce of oil thrown on for good measure. Bright red sausage, dripping with oil. You get the point. So here we find ourselves raging with disappointment and anger at the creepiness served up in front of us, of which we had a few bites, before counting our losses, paying NZ$50 and storming off in a strop. Not to worry – there’s always tomorrow, surely we’re not doing it right – we’re missing a trick.
To pick ourselves up we set off to the Picasso museum to see some good old-fashioned art, as Malaga is the birthplace of Picasso don’t you know? We spent the latter half of the evening sitting on our deck, looking out at the bustling Spanish streets and sipping a beer, before falling fast asleep for a good, solid 10 hours.
Ravenous and well-rested the next day we jumped out of bed like a box of birds, eager to get stuck into breakfast. Thankfully we had a standard European breakfast of cheeses, meats, bread and the like, which we needed – if I had to eyeball one more dead fish I would have sobbed into my café con leche. In true Spanish form, all hotels have a check out time of 12pm so a lovely, lazy morning was on offer… but not for us. We hopped into Carmen (our wheels) and hit the coastal road, driving through delightfully glorious wee Spanish towns on route to Almeria. Our first stop was this cute wee Spanish town where we pulled up at a supermarket and stumbled across our favourite wine in London (a Spanish Rioja) on sale for less than 2 € - bargain. We brought a tidy four bottles, alongside some Spanish junk food snacks and hit the road again.
As we were driving I noticed the beginnings of a market appear on my side of the road, sure enough a couple of hundred metres down the road and the market was very much in action. Nervous to cause an accident, I mentioned this to Brad ever so gently, only to have him freak out that he ‘had to find somewhere to pull over now – oh my god, oh my god’. Eventually we found a park and we were out of the car like greyhounds at the Wimbledon race track, trampling Spanish families in a bid to get buying! The market was huge and was great fun – a lovely opportunity to try out my very basic, but convincing Spanish. I’d smile, say hello and ask how much something cost, only to have them ramble away – I must totally look and sound the part I thought with a smug sense of satisfaction. Rather than say I didn’t understand, I’d simply reply mucho gracias, continuing the illusion until I was in too deep and had to backtrack, losing face and looking like a twit. Not to worry – we picked up a few goodies and made our way back to the car after an hour or so, this time determined to actually make it to Almeria!
Well, of course, we did eventually make it – albeit a few hours later than expected, but not concerned with time, we opted for the scenic route every time, rather than miss out on the view with the motorways. We were staying at this very 90s, albeit luxurious, golf resort place in a tiny town called El Ejido, so after unpacking and a quick lie down, we set off to see the sights. It’s a tiny town, more for the retired Golfers amongst us, but we did find a hypermarket where we spent a glorious hour marveling at the food, as well as purchasing some fresh bread, cheese and salami for dinner. Foolishly, rather than head home, we decided to try the cuisine at a little local restaurant. Picking what we could off the menu, we were once again greeted with creepy, fatty, flavourless dish after dish, until, dejected, we quit and headed back to the hotel to feast on bread, cheese and delightful wine instead. We sat on the deck watching the sunset and munching away, before hitting the spa for a soak – divine.
The next morning we hit the breakfast bar, hungry and desperate for a decent meal. Thankfully we were met with one of the most extravagant buffets ever experienced, which included the nicest donuts we had ever had, so naturally we stuffed ourselves silly. We then hit the road on route to Almeria, where we scored an awesome park and spent a lovely few hours exploring the Alkazaba in the sun, which had awesome views of the entire city. We were disappointed we didn’t have more time, as Africa is only a short ferry ride away, but unfortunately time did not allow this continental detour so we continued on our way to Alicante.
This drive was definitely the most beautiful – we took over twice as long as we opted for the coastal route, which took us through gorgeous national parks and amazing beaches, where you felt as if you could run your car off the road and stay here for the rest of your life – amazing. We stopped for lunch at one wee gem, where we found ourselves a lovely beachside restaurant and thought we had better stick to tried and trusted fries for lunch. We ordered, breathed a sigh of relief and just as I turned to Brad to say ‘at least we know what we’re going to get’, out comes two bowls of really oily, plain crisps with a clump of whole squid. Oh dear god. It wasn’t that bad surprisingly, but not at all what we felt like and it really did serve as the final nail in the Spanish food coffin. Never mind – onwards and upwards…
We arrived at our hotel on San Juan beach in Alicante at around 5pm. The sun was high in the sky so we set up shop on our deck with a bottle of wine, some bread, cheese and salami and gorged ourselves. We had some hyper children next door who kept on causing a ruckus on their deck, peeking over at us and running away each time after they saw us watching them with raised eyebrows. Brad turned the other cheek, while I instead screamed ‘Pollo Pollo’ (chicken, chicken) and threw chocolate coated nuts at them, much to Brad’s embarrassment.
Not willing to tempt fate with dinner, we instead curled up with a Harry Potter movie, some wine and the chocolate nuts (what was left of them) and had a lovely night in.
Say what you want about the food, but the Spanish are lovely and chilled out. The next morning I rung up to see what time check out was (we were leaving at 10pm that night, so were keen to stick around as long as possible) and they cheerily informed us that we could stay as long as we wanted. Thinking that something was lost in translation, I went downstairs to clarify and was assured that there was no need to check out early – stay as long as you like. Lovely thank you very much – don’t mind if we do! We set off for the beach, which at 10am was already filling up with families, topless bathers, and eager footballers (no wonder the Spanish are the world’s best footballers – everywhere you look you see nimble men, nipping around and kicking the ball at the speed of light). Brad snoozed in the sun, while I put my sunnies on to mask a good perving session at the good looking Spaniards running sans t-shirts down the beach. At least I think Brad was sleeping – he had his sunnies on too so he could very well have been getting a good eyeful as well! After a few hours we could feel the sun burn setting in and decided to head back for some lunch. We weren’t really worried about sun burn to be honest – the simple fact that we were actually warm was enough to overcome any fears of over-exposure, but our bellies were growling and we had noticed a pizza restaurant at the bottom of our hotel. We had altogether given up on Spanish food, and instead opted for some good old fashioned Italian – surely you can’t screw up a pizza? While it was sub-standard, we couldn’t have cared less, eating every single crumb, before buying some ice-cream and heading up to our deck where I got another few hours in the sun and truly cemented the sun burn.
We checked out at 5pm and set off to explore Alicante city, which we found to be prettiness in itself. Lo and behold another market was found, which we explored, before getting amongst the water-front action. Keen for one last feast, we found an American style pub, which usually we wouldn’t go near, but after experiencing cuisine like we had we didn’t object to a menu with pictures! We hadn’t truly given up obviously as we shared dishes – one of which was a paella, which wasn’t too bad – while watching the sunset. Glorious.
Our flight back was fine and passed quickly as I managed to get a nap in. Unbeknownst to myself at the time, this little cat nap would come very much in handy as it was a very late one for us. After catching the shuttle to the car park and wandering around for a good 45 minutes in search of the car, we finally found it, but unfortunately the battery in the fob was flat thanks to us clicking it continuously in the hope of spotting the flashing lights. Feeling as if we could cry, we eventually managed to get hold of the equivalent of the AA, who said they’d call us back in two hours with an ETA! Thinking we wouldn’t be home until 5am earliest, we mooched over to the car park reception where we chatted to a few others who were in a similar predicament (ironically, we had chatted to a group of them on the bus ride to the car park). Brad was playing around with the keys when he managed to release an ‘emergency key’. We ran back to the car excitedly, unsure of what to do with this key given there was no key hole. A quick Youtube search soon found us a video with step by step instructions around how to break in!
Alas, we were on our way, albeit a few hours later than expected! How's that for resourceful?
xx
