Friday 11.12.2010


The Home Stretch

Everything we do now leads us back to Madrid and our flight home in 11 days. John goes up to the terrace to check on our laundry and finds it neatly stacked and folded in a little room off to the side. It makes for easy packing this morning as we just put piles directly into the suitcases. We ordered breakfast last night for 9:30 this morning and Ian is busy with sausages and coffee when we return to the rooftop terrace. It is cool but the sun feels good and we have mountain views in one direction and the Mediterranean in the other. All of the roofs here as well as other places we have stayed have hot water tanks and solar panels installed to take advantage of all the sunny days. Probably not a reasonable option for northern Minnesota.


After breakfast we take another walk around town as Mary continues the great postcard shopping tour of Europe, followed by the continuation of the post office stand-in-line-for-one stamp tour. Ian is making beds when we get back to settle up our bill. Jane is off running around today so he says he is adding brownie points to his account. We were a bit worried about this place as it is a fraction of the price of other places we have stayed (35-euros/night) but the room was fine, the location ideal and our hosts couldn’t have been more accommodating so Cheers! to Hostal Miguel.


This is the last of our short-drive days leaving the coast right around noon and due to arrive at our next stop, Granada, in less than two hours. We are taken aback as we start to climb north to see snow on the mountaintops ahead of us and wonder what we’re getting into. There is snow predicted for home tomorrow so we thought we were finally going to be on the plus side of that ledger. We fire Monique when we get to the city as directed by our host for tonight, and follow his directions around the ring road to the Alhambra exit. We then squeeze down a dead end street, park illegally in front of a restaurant hanging over a hillside and walk down the last 100 yards to our lodging.

When we ring the bell, Manuel hustles down to meet us, gets our car keys, turns us over to Catarina for check in and disappears. A little bit later we see our car inching through a turn into a little garage three stories below us. When we climb down to get our luggage the driver is still only halfway in and takes another five minutes to make it all the way. We suspect that is why Manuel didn’t want us to park ourselves. A different person was parking the car (designated parker?) so he, we and soon Catarina and another helper all get our luggage up to the room and we’re settled in for three days.

We are staying in Granada in a Carmen. A Carmen is a traditional house from the Moorish period that encompasses terraces, gardens and orchards within a walled sort-of small area in the midst of a tight urban setting. Ours happens to be on the hill rising above the old Jewish quarter and on up to the Alhambra right above us, and it is unbelievable. If we look left and up we can see the walls of the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada Mountains beyond, and if we look straight or right and down we see the city of Granada spread out before us with more mountains beyond. The room is perfect; clean, spacious, with all the amenities, the gardens and terraces are classics, the public rooms are bright and tasteful, and the staff is very accommodating. Our streak continues.

The only bad news is, like Lisbon, we are built into the side of a hill so everything is either up or down. We opt for down and head for the Plaza Nueva for our now traditional mid-afternoon lunch. It is only about a fifteen-minute walk down the hill but suspect that it may take longer coming back up. Mary is making noise about eating in our big-time room tonight watching sunsets and twinkling lights and that sort of thing, so John thinks he should order a big lunch. He has an egg, ham and asparagus dish with salad and a beer on the side that is just right, and Mary has a tuna and roasted red pepper baguette with beer, all served at a nice sidewalk table under a tree.


After lunch we do a couple hour walking tour of this part of the city that loops around the Cathedral (2nd largest in Spain don't ya know) and into the crazy medina with shops spilling onto sidewalks with all sorts of Arabic finds. The large plazas all have a history going back over a thousand years when silk traders would park their camels near the fountains to tell the usual stories of traveling salesmen. If you let your imagination take over the whole thing comes to life and there are a few things that probably look the same today. Our walk continues through a part of the commercial area of downtown before we make a u-turn and start the return trip.

At a Pastelleria we pick up a box of empanadillas which will be dinner later and trudge back up the hill to our Carmen (Love it!). The sun sets at 6:00 sharp and we watch it disappear behind the mountains from the small terrace off our room. The lights start coming on while the 6:00 pm church bells are still chiming and soon the whole city is twinkling below us. The night is turning cool so we take advantage of the situation by warming our empanadillas on the room heater and pop the top on a bottle of wine. At about 9:30 we hear drums down the hill and soon a marching band comes marching through our lower neighborhood visible for a few seconds at a time from the terrace. The band, and the moon, and the city lights, and our terrace, and the wine are all working their magic. Hasta Manana!


Today's Picture: The view of the Sierra Nevadas from our room.

Thursday 11.11.2010


Spain Light

Our good weather is back. It is cold again this morning but the skies are bright blue with the winds of the last few days gone. We are determined to use this time productively in Ronda before we leave this especially scenic area. Today is the fifth of six short drives between stays so we have plenty of time.

We opt for the walking tour of our previously Moorish neighborhood that gets us into every corner. We start with a relatively easy walk through some alley-like streets with frequent historic buildings on our way to the gorge. Right next to the hotel is the former home of the last of the Aztec Kings who decided to live out his days here and the street is still named Avenida Moctezuma.

When we get to the gorge there are nice views of the new bridge and a stairway that goes down a couple hundred feet to one of the old town gates. We get about halfway down for some dramatic photo ops and decide that will be enough of a climb going back uphill. The tour takes us through back streets and squares that were one thing in the 700 years ending in 1485 and something else since. An interesting and yet obvious fact that we acquire along the way is that the Muslim inhabitants of this area were not interlopers, but had been here for seven centuries before being thrown out by the Christians from the north. That seems profound considering the diapers that our country is still wearing.

There are churches that used to be mosques and you can still see the bases of minarets with replacement tops that are now bell towers. There is also a former Moor palace that is perched atop the gorge with steps all the way down to the river so the Christian slaves could haul the water back up to the top. The square that used to be the Muslim marketplace is now where our car is parked.


Speaking of which, Mary goes back to finish packing up (all the dirty laundry in one suitcase), and John gets the car squeezing into the little spot in front of our hotel. We leave our very lovely staff and promise to come back another time, a promise we might very well keep. Monique gets us on the road to Malaga down on the coast and then we will turn east to our stop for tonight, Nerja. About halfway to Malaga she tells us to turn left (east) through a little town even though the highway signs suggest otherwise. We blindly follow her directions and find ourselves driving though multiple mountain ranges on minimum maintenance roads. We have ignored her advice in the past in order to follow rural country roads and she has apparently picked up on the theme. It is slow but exciting with breathtaking views and breathtaking gasps.

Once we get to Malaga it is smooth sailing along the Med coast to Nerja (Nair-Ha). There is free parking at a big lot a block from our little Hostal in the middle of town and smooth sailing through check-in. We have been emailing our host Jane about the possibility of getting our laundry done somewhere nearby and she takes control immediately. It is a little after 2:00 so she thinks there is plenty of time to wash and hang a couple loads out to dry and tells us to go have fun while she gets washing. OK.

It is a fifteen-minute downhill walk to the biggest of the Nerja beaches where we find “Ayo” the “famous” seaside restaurant where they cook Paella over open fires. We have beers and plates of Paella served from a 3-foot-across skillet, toast Jane the Laundress and watch the few brave sun worshippers on the beach. It is now in the mid-seventies but the water is cold and the sun is low in the sky. We consider a second beer before deciding that we should get back up the hill before we have more. One quick walk on the beach gets us back to the walkway up and more heavy exercise.

Nerja is called the “Balcony of Europe” because of the high promontory that extends into the sea where you can see for many miles in either direction. The “Balcony” is a couple blocks from our Hostal so when we get back to the top huffing and puffing we go that way for a sunset and that second beer. Mission accomplished as we get both things done. Jane should be hanging out our laundry about now.

After a short break, we (accomplished tapas travelers) do a half hour tour of the small downtown area and then head for a targeted tapas spot, “The Round Bar.” The place is packed, and with the tapas displayed around the bar, they are hard to pick out. There is also a guitar-playing singer shouting out the moving songs of Spain. We get a couple red wines and two tapas (free here with a drink) and watch the show.

Here’s the big deal about Nerha. Jane and Ian, our hosts, are Brit transplants. Everyone seated near us at Ayo was a Brit. Everyone we heard talking at the Balcony was a Brit or a German. Everybody we see in this bar is a Brit or German except the bartenders and the guitar player. Around the bar are 70-year-old guys playing bongos on the bar, 60-year-old bottle-blondes shimmying to the tunes and everyone watching everyone else and shouting “ole” at the end of every song. This is Crosslake, Minnesota in the summer, Puerta Vallarta in the winter, but it is certainly not Spain. There is plenty of sun here which makes it a lovely holiday or retirement spot, and we are in no position to be critical. These folks are all having fun, and obviously in their comfort zone, but nothing we see has any resemblance to anything we have seen over the last two months in Europe. It’s interesting for a night but we’re glad we’re moving on tomorrow.

At a break in the music we move down to the square near the Balcony and Bar Lizzaron. Here you pick out your own Tapas, keep the toothpicks and pay for the number of toothpicks on your plate at the end of the night. Very civilized. We can’t resist stopping at an English Pub for a final beer on our way back to the hotel. We chat with a couple of Brits from near Bath (we’ve been to the baths in Bath—they haven’t) before calling it a night. We check the clothesline on the terrace and some things are still damp. It’s not our problem.

Today's Picture: Paella and cold beer on the beach in Nerja.