Tag Archives: malaga

Costa Del Sol

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We’ve been in the Costa Del Sol for five whole days now and I’ve spent most those days melting in the heat. I’m not moaning – Just melting! It has been between 34-38 degrees every day and as lovely as a bit of heat is, it has taken some time to adjust. We now understand the Spanish routine of late, long and large lunches and small, very late dinners, but it’s really tricky getting into the habit when you’ve had the opposite drummed into you for over 30 years.

I wasn’t quite sure that Spain and I would get on at first, but it’s definitely growing on me. Not speaking the language we’ve found some things a bit tricky and I have been doing a lot pointing at menus, or simply pretending to know what people are saying. I don’t feel I’m going to get the most out of eating over here as I can’t read everything on the menu. I’d rather eat in one of the restaurants for the locals rather than the ones that feel obliged to put chicken and chips on the menu… I know, I know, I should have learned the language!

We spent the first three days driving around and checking out places such as Cadiz  (which apparently could be the oldest city in Europe) and Jerez De La Frontera. We stayed in a fab hotel right in the center of town in Jerez called the Hotel Palacio Garvey. I’d love to have spent more time in the town and would definitely head back there. We hit a fabulous food market in Cadiz but unfortunately couldn’t take any of it with us for fear of it actually cooking in the boot of the car. It was nice enough there but Jerez won me over out of the two.

For the rest of our trip we will be based in Mijas which is about half an hour from Malaga. It’s full to the brim with English people. I knew this would be the case but wasn’t expecting quite so many. For that reason we have decided to take quite a few day trips to try to see a bit more of the real Spain… If that’s possible in the high summer season with our rubbish knowledge of the language. It’s so English that one of the restaurant owners (who was a full on Spaniard)  asked us how we were in the cockney-ist of accents to try to entice us to eat at his place.

Alex sussing out the olives.

Look at the garlic on those… I did whiff for a while!

Wouldn’t need five of these in my stir fry.

Me. Still need to work on the tan.

Not so Easy (Jet)

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Well, we finally made it to Spain a few days ago after spending what seemed like forever packing up our house ready for the one way ‘swap’ with the Australian couple. As usual we were cutting it pretty fine to make our flight and I’d only had a few hours sleep before we left. Never again will I book a flight that leaves before 6am. NEVER!

My hatred for easy jet has increased tenfold. First off, we got to the bag drop to find the one shared bag we had weighed 22kg instead of the required 20kg per bag each. So, instead of two bags with a total of 40 kg, Easyjet decided to fine us £20 for sharing and reducing… Lovely. Thanks for that.

We decided to treat ourselves to speedy boarding for this flight, only to find that everyone was going to be crammed onto a bus that would take us to the plane anyway! All six of us foolish enough to think we deserved a slightly more luxurious type of travel were shipped onto the bus at the same time as the rest of the scrum. This was definitely one of those occasions where we should have just pushed and shoved like the best of them in the mad dash to get a seat near our hand luggage. Money wastage… I think so.

It was pouring down with rain in London when we boarded. I was soaked and my copy of Grazia took a battering, shielding me from the downpour. It was either loose the mag or frizz up the hair and the hair won. In the end it didn’t really matter, as the minute I stepped off the plane into the Malaga heat, my hair doubled in size anyway!

Not ones for an easy life, we then had a mini crisis as we went to pick up the hire car. Alex didn’t have a pin number for his visa card as he presumed we could sign for everything. Alas, the rather brash and very rude woman  at the Record Go car hire  reception  told us that the (made up) ‘law of Spain’ was chip and pin only and we could not use a visa debit or pay buy cash. We were stranded for about an hour and a half until I took out my Visa card and took a stab at remembering the pin number I hadn’t used for about 2 years! Luckily on the third attempt it went through and we were out of there and met by our little run around smart car. We had originally booked our car on the comparison site car hire 3000 who were very helpful but I’d suggest avoiding Record Go at all costs.

Since then, everything has got much better and I’m now totally relaxed, but struggling in the sweltering heat. I shall blog more about the good times soon. Until then… Meet our holiday hire car that nearly never was and me in the car (bored and tired).

 

Half the size of a normal car. Good job we only had one suitcase.

 

Forgot the sat nav sucker…  Always forget something!

Me. Bored in the car.