Malaga

Monday, 12/31/2007

Two countries down, one to go!  So far we had had great experiences in England and France and were hoping to have equally fantastic adventures in Spain.

Bright and early, we took the RER train to the Paris airport to catch our flight to Madrid, then from there catch a flight to Malaga. The Paris to Madrid flight ended up being slightly delayed, which meant trouble for our luggage.  When we arrived in Malaga we discovered our bags had missed the second flight and all we could do was wait until the following day.  Not cool!

Trying to stay positive, we picked up our rental car and were pleased to find that it was a bright blue VW minivan (Caddy). Driving to our timeshare in Mijas Costas (30 minutes away) gave us a chance to take in the spectacular Mediterranean coast.  The weather in Spain was significantly warmer and sunnier than it had been in England and France, also helping to cheer us up.

That night we went out to dinner, first trying a pub-style restaurant close to our timeshare.  Disgusted by our encounter with a very rude waitress, we instead decided to walk to a Chinese restaurant a little further down the street.  We ended up having an awesome New Year's Eve dinner--lots of delicious Chinese food, pitchers of sangrias, and even a free round of drinks, courtesy of the staff.

On the way back to the timeshare, we stopped by a small grocery store to pick up some food/drinks for our stay.  While unpacking the groceries at the timeshare, we talked about our plans for that evening.  Unfortunately, Kita was sick to her stomach so she decided to stay in for the night.  The guys didn't want to miss an opportunity to celebrate New Year's Eve in Spain, so they headed out to find the gala at the Marbella city center.  They jumped in the car and started driving in the general direction of Marbella and managed to miraculously find the city center.  They parked the car and rushed to the Marbella square, arriving just before midnight for champagne and grapes.

The Spanish sure know how to party!  The guys danced and partied until 6 am.  Even at that hour the gala was still going strong, but they decided that 6 hours of dancing was enough.  Davin was the D.D. that night and tried to navigate home while the other two guys fell asleep. He accidentally ended up at the Malaga airport, and had to turn arond to get going in the right direction.  Completely exhausted from that evening's festivities, they finally arrived back to the timeshare around 7 am.  What a night!

Tuesday, 1/1/2008

Everyone slept in until 1:30 pm due to the crazy night before.  A yummy homemade breakfast helped to get us going for the day though.  We made "breakfast fried rice" with bacon, green peppers, black pepper, and onion.

To our pleasant surprise, the timeshare office called us to tell us that 4 out of 5 of our bags had arrived from the airport.  We drove to the office to pick up the luggage, trying to guess which one of the bags was missing.  Matt ended up having the missing bag, but he stayed positive and had faith that it would eventually show up.

Excited to have fresh clothes and toiletries, we got ready for the evening.  Feeling refreshed, we hopped in the car and drove over to Marbella city center to have dinner with Juliamaria (aka, Julia), a Spanish girl Trent had met the night before at the New Year's gala.

Julia was running a little late so we left the city center and walked to an Italian restaurant called, Medium Rare.  When Julia arrived, our dinner conversation became very interesting.  Our "conversation" with her was so riduculous because none of us could really speak Spanish and she couldn't speak any English.  Davin relied on his Spanish classes from high school and the rest of us didn't know any Spanish at all!

Through our limited knowledge of Spanish, we somehow managed to communicate with Julia the rest of the night.  After dinner, we walked over to a local billiards bar and played pool.  LIke most public places in Europe, the bar was very smoky so we left early and drove back to the timeshare.  We tried to play cards for a little bit, but everyone was tired so we decided to call it a night. Trent drove Julia home and the rest of us went to sleep.

Wednesday, 1/2/2008

Getting a good night's rest, we woke up around 9 am (not bad for us at all!). It was raining so we didn’t want to do any driving tours that day.  Instead, we wanted to do some shopping at the local mall, La Canada.

We ate lunch at a Spanish restaurant in the mall where the service was really bad. The server took forever to wait on us and bring us our food/drinks. We ordered chips and salsa, only to discover that chips and salsa in Spain meant fried potatoes and an assortment of several different sauces.

We spent most of the day walking around the mall and shopping. The guys bought some clothes at a cool European store called, Friday’s Project.  Wanting to take a break from shopping, we tried to catch an afternoon movie but they were all in Spanish. We asked the movie theatre staff where we might find movies in English and they recommended a theatre in a nearby town called Puerto Banus.

In hopes of finding a movie in English, we drove to Puerto Banus but discovered that all the movies at the this theatre were also in Spanish so we canned the movie idea. We spent a few minutes hanging out at an arcade where Matt and Trent played a game of hoops while Davin and Kita attempted a couple of rounds of Dance, Dance Revolution.

T.G.I. Friday’s was our choice for dinner that night. Fruity drinks were on special, so we stayed a while to drink and play cards (Spades).

Our after-dinner plan was to find a discotheque in the area where we could go dancing, but when we went to get the car out of the garage, we discovered it had already closed for the night. Thankfully, we found some police officers who talked the garage staff into letting us get our car. Only one person was allowed into the garage, so Matt went to get the car while the rest of us waited outside.  Looking back, we were so lucky that we weren’t stranded in Puerto Banus for the night without a car!

After the parking garage incident, we were no longer in the mood for dancing the night away, so we drove back to the timeshare.  We weren't quite ready for bed yet, so we decided to drive down to the beach where we sat on a small cliff overlooking the magnificent Mediterranean sea.

Thursday, 1/3/2008

We must've been worn out from our shopping excursion the day before, because we didn't wake up until noon.  We contemplated taking a day trip in the car, but decided to relax and stay near the timeshare for the day.  We had lunch at the timeshare restaurant and played cards (Golf) by the fireplace most of the day.

Soaking in a hot tub sounded like a perfect ending to a relaxing day, but because our resort didn't have one, we took a drive to the Oasis Resort a couple of miles away to use their facility.  Of course, the facilities had already been closed for the day by the time we got there.  So we drove back to the timeshare, played more cards, and watched the movies, “Troy” and “Superbad” for the remainder of the night.

Friday, 1/4/2008

On our last full day in Malaga, we decided to take our rental car for a big driving tour of Spain.  Before we left town, we stopped over at the timeshare restaurant for continental breakfast, which ended up being croissants, bread rolls, and orange juice (some breakfast, huh?!).

We tried to call a hostel to reserve rooms for our upcoming trip to Barcelona, but had trouble connecting from the phonebooth in the timeshare reception building.  Finally, we just gave up on finding a hostel and decided to “wing it” when we got to Barcelona.

Ready to officially start the day, we headed off to the city of Sevilla, approximately 208 km (130 miles) northwest of our timeshare.  We had planned to first drive through the historic town of Ronda, which we had heard so much about from our well-travelled friend, Sean.  However, we must've been in complete awe of the beautiful countryside because we missed our turn to Ronda.  Once we realized our mistake, we decided to just keep driving and take a different route to our destination.  Plus, our new route would take us past Gibraltor, the British territory bordering the southernmost tip of Spain.

From the car, we saw the Rock of Gibraltar and drove around the busy port area. We briefly thought about crossing the Mediterranean Sea via boat to Morocco, but decided it was probably too late in the day for such a trip. Instead we continued on to Sevilla.

Running a little low on gas, we stopped at a gas station on the way to Sevilla thinking we would be in and out in no time at all.  But once again, the language barrier reared its ugly head...we could barely communicate to the cashier.  Fortunately, another customer helped us translate to the cashier, but even then we still struggled a bit.   Eventually, we were able to put some gas in the car and continute on our journey.  Our only mistake was that we should've filled up the tank completely...

Arriving in Sevilla at rush hour on a Friday evening was probably not the most clever way to utilize our limited amount of time, but we went with it anyways (afterall, we didn't have much of a choice at this point!).  The place was absolutely bustling with activity, so we took advantage of the first parking spot we saw.  Luckily, we ended up next to a gorgeous park filled with orange trees, horse-drawn carriages, and endless walking trails.  Soaking up the lovely scenery, we walked around a bit and eventually found our way over to the Plaza de Espana.  What a beauty!  The Plaza de Espana is a huge half-circle government building considered to be the paragon of Moorish architecture.  Oddly enough, the Plaza de Espana is so unique that it was used as a setting in the movie, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

Aware that we only had a few hours of sunlight left, we made our way back to the car and drove around to find another spot closer to the city center.  We managed to find a decent parking spot, but struggled to find a restaurant open during siesta.  Finally we found one---an Italian deli where the waitress only spoke French and very little English (remember, we were in Spain!).  Interestingly enough, we dined next to a group of Americans from Georgia.  Talk about a variety of culture all in one place.

Satisfied with our dinner, we walked back to the car in hopes of finding a parking space closer to more sightseeing hotspots.  Traffic had still not died down much from earlier, and unfortunately, we spent a lot of unnecessary time bumper to bumper, going up and down the same streets.  It was almost an hour later that we finally found a parking spot, which ended up being not too far where we had originally parked!

We walked to the Catedral de Sevilla, the third largest church in Europe and the largest Gothic building in Europe.  We weren't able to take a tour of the inside because it was closed for the day, but we still had quite an eyeful from the outside.  It was absolutely stunning!

True to our American nature, we stopped by a Starbucks on the way to our car to get caffeinated for the long drive ahead of us.  And boy was it quite a ride home!  Our detour through Ronda turned out to be an adventure.  As we approached Ronda we realized that we had very little gas in our tank left.  Driving through the mountains without a gas station in sight wasn't exactly conducive to our cause either.   We managed to reach Ronda, barely rolling in on fumes.  To our surprise though, every gas station we found was closed.  Finally, after searching Ronda high and low, we found an open gas station!

Phew...we all felt so relieved after our close call!  We were so glad that we didn't run out of gas in the mountains in a foreign country in the middle of the night (not to mention the fact that none of our cell phones had service in Spain).

We were never so happy to arrive back to the timeshare safely.  Totally exhausted from the day's events, we packed up our luggage in anticipation for our trip to Barcelona the following day.