Sorry for the long post...our latest travelog:
Ok, after daydreaming about it for the better part of a year, we've completed our first Andalucia trip! We flew Leeds/Bradford to Malaga & immediately got the coach to Granada, where we spent the first night. That day/night was spent just having a quick look around Granada & securing accommodation for when we returned to Granada. Picked up our rental car in Granada the next morning & headed for Las Alpujarras (lower foothills/mountains & valleys of the Sierra Nevada). (DH booked the car through a Spanish language website & it was
considerably cheaper than going through its English counterpart -- like paying the same number of euros for the rental car as the English site was quoting in pounds.)
We stayed four nights in the mountain village of Capileira. Just gorgeous! Our hostal was amazingly clean, friendly & with a view. The people in town (restaurants, shops, etc) wonderfully warm & friendly. Of course, we went on some long & (for me) hurty walks -- not as long as what we might sometimes do in England but certainly more challenging in terms of ascending/descending altitudes. The first day's walk we got lost toward sundown & were fortunately 'rescued' by a local & his little dog who got us back on the right path. The second day, one of the townpeoples' sheepdogs just took up with us & walked with us all day -- we decided to call him Fidel. We didn't attempt to scale Veleta or Mulhacen, although I would have liked to see some ibex. Neither of us felt my fitness level was up to those climbing challenges as well as not fancying a camp-out in one of the refugios.
Then we drove on to San Jose in Cabo de Gata. Same experience there - sparkling clean, amazing accommodation (hostal). The Cabo de Gata area is a natural park area & is not dire like many of the Spanish costa areas. From what I understand, it's a common area for Spanish & Italians to holiday there in the summer -- but being there in October, for us it was not at all crowded. The beaches are quite European in nature...
I felt the San Jose beach was a little scruffy -- too many cigarette butts in the sand, etc, but since we had a car we were able to go to some of the more out-of-the-way beaches in the area. Favorites were Agua Amarga (though it was a bit too rocky in the water, so wished I had some of the aqua shoes or whatever they're called), and then the Isleta del Moro area. But there were loads more out-of-the-way beaches to explore (some which you can only walk to or get to via dirt tracks) than we had time for -- plus it was a bit cooler the last day.
Almeria province has a kind of weirdness about it -- sort of desert-like terrain, until you're right at the beach area itself. And it's strange seeing the 'plasticultura' (sp?) thing there, with the enormous greenhouses that I guess are not a great thing in many ways.
We drove back to Granada then & stayed four more nights. Like my other (limited) experiences in Spanish cities, it grew on me the longer I was there. My first reaction seems to be, oh I'm not too sure about this...but then I like it more the longer I stay. The Alhambra is simply amazing beyond comprehension - definitely it alone is worth the trip to Granada. Too bad it was cloudy & a bit rainy the day we were there so Steve couldn't get the photos he was hoping for (guess we'll have to back again someday!). I was hoping to see some of the Lorca sites -- but the ones in which I was most interested - his birth place & the place where they killed & buried him, are both a bit out of town from Granada itself & kind of awkward to get to (we had already turned the hire car in by then). So maybe another trip for that too.
The last night, we attended a small flamenco performance (we had seen a little flyer/poster in a tapas bar) -- which I'm sure wasn't the 'real deal' kind of thing you might stumble upon deep in the Sacramonte but it wasn't a totally cheesey tourist show either. In a small, dark bar, it featured a young trio - one guitarist, one cantaora, & one bailaora. I don't understand much Spanish at all, but it really was a riveting performance & left us wanting more.
We then took the coach back to Malaga where we spent the last night & day (before our flight home which didn't leave until after 6 pm) exploring there. Malaga is a bit more resort-y, gateway to the (maybe not so nice?) Spanish Costa del Sol -- where it's not uncommon to see more British stuff (full English breakfast, British people, British pubs etc etc) than Spanish things. 'S alright for some, but DH & I are of the mind that if we want to only have the comforts of home when we go abroad, then why not just stay home?
That said, I didn't fancy the food we had while there as much as the fare I've had on our visits previously to Barcelona & Madrid. I didn't like the tapas as much. Also, and I know this is something I need to work on & just 'get over' -- well I'm not that keen on a lot of seafood, particularly the fish with the heads & eyes still on 'em - nor do I enjoy faffing about with taking shells & heads off prawns & stuff like that. Nonetheless, you can't go wrong with a glass of fino, and chorizo & queso. Also, I had a habas con jamon tapa that I really enjoyed. I wanted to try the white gazpacho but we were told it really wasn't in season during our time there.
Another highlight...well, my Brazilian friend & her husband & family are now living in Madrid (until next June). I told her we were going to be in Spain, and she drove down to Granada for a night to meet up with us. I hadn't seen her for 21 years - so that was a real treat! We are already planning a long weekend sometime next spring to go to Madrid & stay at hers, meet the family (she's had three children since we last met - two of whom are teenagers!), etc. After that, I guess we'll be forced to visit them in Rio <sigh> in one of these years to come...
Well I've rambled on long enough. There are other weird & wonderful things that happened, but that's the basic outline of the holiday.
