Spain 2007 Log

Photos of this leg of our trip are on-line at www.shutterfly.com.  Sign in using hocuspocus for a password, select the Spain 07 album, and click on View as a slideshow.

8/8  Arrived in Spain.  My nose has been running like a faucet the entire day.  Despite having read all sorts of bad things about Ryanair, our flight went exactly as advertised (which IS somewhat different from more conventional airlines) and we arrived at Malaga a bit early at 9:00 p.m.  The desk of the recommended car rental agency was swamped and was the only one to be so popular – the remainder seemed to be starved for business.  With a little adroit footwork I was able to get our keys in less than ten minutes.  We arrived at Denis’ and Miriam’s flat in Nerja at 11:15 p.m. and after familiarizing ourselves very briefly with the place called it a day. 

8/9  Dead loss.  I spent the entire day attempting to remain as motionless as possible, the only device I could contrive to stanch the continuous flow of my nose.  I did take a break to visit a pharmacy where I asked for an antihistamine.  The pharmacist asked about my symptoms and then refused to sell me what I asked for, instead giving me some other stuff that did nothing.  In the evening, with my pockets filled with handkerchiefs, Mayumi and I went to the “downtown” section of Nerja to visit the Balcony of Europe and the shops in that area.  We found an open pharmacy where I was able to by antihistamine. 

8/10  Granada.  Something of a disappointment.  We didn’t leave Nerja until about 1:00 p.m. so the fault is our own, but by the time we reached the Alhambra all tickets were sold out for the day.  I’ve been there many times and Mayumi had been there once with me so it wasn’t a catastrophe, but it was something of a let down.  We spent a couple of hours exploring the town and had lunch in a very attractive outdoor restaurant that put me in mind of some of the boulevard places in Paris.  It’s located adjacent to a large traffic roundabout in an area of grand old homes. 

The route to the Alhambra http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/The_Alhambra.html  has changed since my previous trips there.  In the past it went up a very steep hill in the city on a very narrow street lined with shops and I recall a couple of guitar makers along there, too.  Now traffic is routed out of the city up the back way into a large parking lot. 

8/11  We began a ride to check out some of the famous white villages of Andalusia that seem to hang from hillsides.  At some point we came across a major highway and a sign that said Cordoba 137 km (84 miles) and we were off and running.  We were fortunate to find a parking space just a block from the mosque/cathedral, again, places we’d visited before.  For years Mayumi had been waxing rhapsodic about the Jewish quarter right next to the mosque.  It’s a section of streets so narrow I can almost touch the buildings on both sides and the walls are lined with pots of geraniums and other flowers.  Additionally, the doorways open into beautiful courtyards.  I thought visiting this area would be Mayumi’s priority.  Nope!  We had to do the mosque thing again.  http://www.andalucia.com/cities/cordoba/mosque.htm  (Also see http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen/fullscreen44.html would you believe there’s a Catholic cathedral in the middle of all this?)  Unfortunately the main part of the cathedral which is in the center of this overwhelmingly huge mosque is closed off for restoration work.  Then she had to visit each of the shops surrounding the mosque and was later surprised later to find that she’s been overcharged for her purchases. 

Eventually we did spend time walking through the Jewish quarter.  http://infocordoba.com/spain/andalusia/cordoba/jewish_quarter.htm There haven’t been any Jews living there to speak of since about 1492, but the area retains that name.  We found that the doors to almost all of the courtyards were closed.  When we engaged a resident in conversation we learned that it’s no longer the custom to keep the doors open because of theft.  What a shame.  In the past you could walk into the entranceways as far as the grillwork and frequently the woman of the house would invite you into the courtyard and show it to you with great pride. 

8/12  We spent this day more like Spaniards.  We had breakfast at a sidewalk café fronting the beach where I spent about an hour on the Internet.  Then we went a couple of kilometers to the east to the village of Maro which, although very much renovated, is more typically a Spanish village than the heavily touristic Nerja.  There we walked around for about an hour and drove to the local beach.  No crowd and few tourists in the town.  There is a beautiful walk along a cliff with an excellent view of the ocean and the coast.  Later we honored the local tradition of the siesta.  With a vengeance!  I slept for two and a half hours.  Stores in Andalusia still close from something like 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.  In the evening we went to the area near the Balcony of Europe for a walk and then to the Parador, a government operated hotel, for dinner.  This parador, like all of them in Spain is an exceptionally nice hotel.  This one is of modern style while many are in old, refurbished castles.  I was surprised to find that almost all of the guests were Spaniards rather than other Europeans as in the past. 

8/13  Monday morning I went to the Internet café when it opened at 10:00 and Mayumi joined me there an hour later.  After a leisurely and overly large English breakfast we went to the Nerja cave. http://www.mynerja.co.uk/info_htm/my_nerja_caves.htm This is a fairly recently discovered system traversing about three miles and containing fantastic formations of stalactites in chambers as large as a football field.  I estimated the height of one stalactite formation at sixty feet.  Although I’ve never been to the Mammoth Caverns in the U.S., this place looks like the photos I’ve seen of them.  The cave contains prehistoric art work but I guess it’s in that part of the cave, the far largest part, that’s inaccessible to the public.  In the evening we returned to the central touristic area of Nerja to walk around and gawk at the other tourists before having dinner at the Balcony of Europe Hotel. 

8/14  Another session at the Internet café followed by a late breakfast and then a siesta.  Later we drove the coast road to Velez Malaga.  That was kind of disappointing as it was wall-to-wall development for tourism.  Once there we stopped at the Ingenio shopping center and found it to be the most modern shopping center we’ve seen on this three country trip and the same can be said of the Eroski supermarket located there.  Next we went to Frigilana, http://www.idealspain.com/Pages/Places/Frigiliana.htm the town just inland of Nerja which is quite picturesque and then followed the mountain road from there to Torrox Pueblo http://www.andalucia.com/province/malaga/torrox/home.htm.  We spent a couple of hours in Torrox walking the streets and engaging people in conversation.  Mayumi bought a pair of earrings and attended mass.  We returned to Nerja and our borrowed flat by 9:30 p.m. and began preparations to leave in the morning. 

Mayumi told me that the Eroski chain grew from the idea of a priest in a village in the Basque country of northern Spain who sought a way to create jobs for his parishioners.  He collected small investments from them until having enough to open the first store and from that simple beginning grew today’s very impressive enterprise.