Ohhhhhh, the Costa del Sol....
Málaga, Torremolinos, Benalmádena, sun, sun and more sun. We decided to go to the Costa del Sol, primarily to do a recce for retirement purposes. We love Spanish and we love the sun and the beach. Also, when Tim was a teenager, he read the book 'The Drifters' by James Mitchener and it really inspired him to go out and see the world and one of the main locations in the book was Torremolinos. Great, we will kill two birds with one stone.
Okay, I really think that this trip was not suppose to happen or maybe I should say it maybe shouldn't have happened. It was changed twice, postponed twice... blah, blah, blah.
Here is the short story. Tim and I originally booked this, mid April (2013), 17 day trip, in April 2013. As it was such a good price, we booked it rather quickly without really looking at our calendars. Just as it was all finalized (flights and accommodation), Tim realized that all the adidas store development people from around the globe are coming to the office for a week of seminars, etc. Change number one - Tim changed his flight so that he would only be there for 9 days out of the 17. No problem.
Then, my Mum's health had worsened, so I quickly flew home, at the end of March, and stayed with her until she passed away in May. Tim also came back to Victoria to spend some time with her. Thus.....we had to postpone our trip until the end of September / beginning of August - perfect!!
Mid August, I fractured my foot while we are in the Czech Republic, cast on, etc. etc. - you know the story. So, we had to postpone the trip, again, to the beginning of February 2014. Two weeks prior, Vueling Airlines emailed us to let us know that their schedule had changed and we now had to come home 3 days earlier than planned - Nice!
February 2014 - upon arriving at the airport (at 2200 hrs) in Málaga we discovered that there was a taxi strike, which was okay as we had arranged with the owner of our vacation apartment to pick us up. We were met in the arrivals area and we proceeded to go to the car. Once we got to the car we realized that four guys were following us. They were accusing the owner of the apartment of being a taxi service and would not let us leave. The owner called he police so that there wouldn't be any trouble in the future. Police arrived quickly - NOT - about 35 minutes later, when there were now at least 50 angry taxi drivers surrounding the car - not comfortable. Both Tim and I were thinking that maybe we would have stayed at home and just cancelled the whole holiday (which, of course, was not cheap anymore). We finally settled in the apartment at midnight. Not the best way to start a holiday.
Three weeks prior, we had made an appointment to look at real estate on our first day. That morning, the real estate agent told us he was fully booked and could we come back the next day (another sign)!!!! Yeah, yeah..... We saw 5 properties and the first we saw was perfect.
€225,000, 2 bdrm, 2 bath villa - large terraces and garden leading to the wonderful community garden ,
pool and tennis courts. A small pathway leads to the beach.
So we spent the next 2 weeks looking around and trying to figure out if Benalmádena (and the whole area) was the place that we wanted to spend our retirement.
The answer........NO! At least not along this coast.
For one, the economy is very depressed. Nearly every other condo, villa, store and restaurant is for sale and the prices are not in line with the state of the economy. Secondly, there are too many British there.
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| Look as this menu. Not much Spanish food to choose from! |
But it is an inexpensive place to vacation - €1 for a pint of beer and €2.50 for a cup of coffee and a brandy. It is interesting, as we chose this area because we knew that there would be a number of English speaking people living there and therefore more English spoken, more English newspapers, TV, radio and magazines, which appealed to us as this is one thing that we miss a bit in Germany.
After all of this, we did have a nice time. Here are some pictures of some of the things we saw......
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The beaches are beautiful.
But there are high rises all along them. |
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| Sandcastle |
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| Benalmádena Pueblo |
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| Enjoying a glass of wine and tapas in Benalmádena Pueblo. |
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The tapas was complimentary when you ordered a glass of wine.
Delicious! |
We took the train into Málaga - 1/2 hr ride.
The streets and buildings of Málaga......
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El Teatro Romano
Built in the first century, it was rediscovered in 1951 and after many
years of excavation, it re-opened to the public in 2011. |
El Teatro Romano is the oldest monument in Málaga City. It is situated
in the cultural heart of Málaga city. It is one of the only Ancient ruins left in Málaga after the
outwardly Republican city was bombed by Nationalist sympathizers - the
Italian army during the Civil war, and one of the only remaining Roman
ruins in Andalucía after centuries of warfare.
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| A beautiful courtyard. |
One day we took a local bus up to Mijas Pueblo - a typical Andalusian white town.
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| The famous "burro-taxis" |
These donkey's and their carts are rented by tourists for transportation around the town of Mijas. This peculiar means of transportation started to be used in the 1960s, when holidaymakers in Mijas
asked workers who were coming home from the countryside alongside their
donkeys and mules to let them take pictures to
capture a special moment in their Andalusian holidays. Some tourists
even asked rural workers to let them take a ride in exchange for a
generous tip, which more often than not was higher than their wages. The
workers started thus to spend more time taking visitors on their
donkeys. The "burro-taxi
" has become an icon of Mijas
. There are about fifty of them and they even have special parking areas.
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| Gorgeous tile work at someones home. |
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| Now there is a cool looking person!!! |
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| Looking down, from Mijas Pueblo to the coast! Yikes! |
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| Now that is better! |
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| Some nice Spanish haciendas in Mijas Pueblo. |
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| Along the Promenade in Torremolinos. |
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| The rocky cliffs along the Promenade in Torremolinos. |
That is it for now. We aren't going to rush back to this part of the Costa del Sol. But I understand that the area to the east of Málaga is much less touristy. Maybe we will head there next time.
