el costa del sol.

"No man needs a vacation so much as the man who just had one."
-Elbert Hubbard

Adios España, hello London! I am finally unpacked in my new home in Kingston, though I am quite sorry to say goodbye to vacation. The flight over from Madrid went well, and I suspect I'll have a quiet evening in my room tonight. Hopefully I'll catch up on some sleep that I didn't get during the past two weeks...staying in a hotel room with my parents is not a recipe for much rest. Still, I had an awesome time in Spain and Portugal. I suppose I should continue the vacation story where I left off, but I'm too lazy to write everything at once, so it may take a few posts. Oh, and try not to laugh too hard at my family's stupidity.

After London, my parents and I flew to Málaga, arriving mid-afternoon to a sunny day with temperatures in the sixties. We drove into the city, parked in an underground garage, and set out to explore Málaga, which is overrun with palm trees and orange trees. Yum. Being starving Americans, we headed into the first restaurant we saw, which of course was a McDonalds. I'm not a huge fan of traveling across the world to eat fast food, but it was still fun to order a happy meal in Spanish. Then we walked around for a bit. I liked the city; there were the typical narrow streets, plazas, a huge cathedral, and lots of shops, but I'm assuming that in the spring and summer, the area is completely overrun with tourists looking for beaches. I much preferred going in the winter, when it wasn't too crowded. My father and I decided to walk through the Alcazaba, which is a Moorish fort from the 8th century. It's built on a hill, so we had a small climb as we wandered through it, but we got some cool views of the city and the fortress. Then, we noticed that right next to the Alcazaba was the Gibralfaro castle. Not only did the castle look worthy of a closer look, but it was much higher, so we would get an even better view of the city. So, my father and I began the trek upwards. Now, it wouldn't have been that long of a walk if you could have gone straight up, but the path wound back and forth forever. We had to rest at least three times before dragging our sweaty selves to the top, but we kept telling ourselves that the view would be worth it from the top of the castle. Eventually, we made it to the top! Hurray! Then we looked at the sign that said it closed at 6:00 PM, and realized it was 6:03 PM. So, we missed out on the castle, but nevertheless, we got wonderful views. It was also at this point, when we wondered how there were so many people at the top that didn't look exhausted from the hike, that we noticed the parking lot. We could have driven up, saved ourselves the sweat, and made it on time to get into the castle. Ah well, lesson learned for next time. Then it came time for our first "stupid American" moment in Spain. We went back to the garage, and my dad handed my mom some money to go pay for the parking in the machine before we left. My mom heads off with the money and tries for at least five minutes to get the machine to work. Finally, I get out of the car, thinking that she might be having trouble reading the spanish. Before I even have a chance to help, a lady from the booth inside comes out to help us, and takes us over to pay by credit card. Not sure why the machine didn't work, we get back in the car and my mom hands the money back to my father, who then realizes that it's British pounds, not Euros. Good going, family. If that weren't bad enough, it took us three tries to find the exit from the garage, so we were driving around while the guards laughed their butts off at us. We eventually made it out alive, though. Then, getting to our hotel in Benalmádena was the next major problem. Wanda, our GPS, didn't have the hotel or the street programmed into it. Great. We tried finding a street nearby and heading towards that, but we ended up completely off track. It didn't help that there were eight million roundabouts, and drivers that cut you off every five feet, but after over an hour, we finally decided that we were utterly lost. We headed to a grocery store, where I asked if anyone spoke english, and luckily a girl there not only spoke english, but knew of our hotel. It turned out that we were only a few turns away from it, and we got there okay with her directions. After all of this, you would think that our screwups would be done for the night. Wrong. We check into the hotel, and they tell us there is a parking garage for our use. My father pulls away from the curb, and we see behind us a large parking garage, so we assume it's for our hotel. After pulling up to the door and our room key failing to open it, we decide that maybe this garage is for another hotel. Our first choice was to back out and go ask at the desk, but now there are two more cars behind us waiting to get in. The driver from the car behind us gets out and uses his key to open the door, and my father tries to ask which hotel this garage is for, but he speaks no english and leaves before I can have a go at my spanish. Now, there are drivers waiting for my father to pull in, and trying to get both cars to back out for my father to leave is an impossibility, so we drive in, assuming that we can just turn around and come back out. After all, most garage doors are automatic exit. Fail. Epic fail, actually. We drive in and turn around, and the door refuses to open the other way. There is also a pedestrian door to the garage, and a British couple walks in. We ask if they would be able to use their key to open the door, but apparently it's a separate key, and they can't help us. Finally, a security guard walks by and asks if we need any help, and we embarrassingly explain that we got stuck in this garage, and we don't belong to this hotel. He managed to keep a straight face while he opened the door for us, though I'm not sure how. It takes talent to get stuck in a parking garage once in one day, but twice? That's special, folks.

The next day, we headed to Granda to see the Alhambra, a Moorish palace and fortress. There is apparently an old saying about the Alhambra: "Si has muerto sin ver la Alhamba, no has vivido!", translated as "If you die without seeing the Alhambra, you have not lived!". Who were we to test fate? We walked around the grounds a bit, but mainly spent our time in the palace, because it was a rainy morning. It was pretty interesting, and some of the tiling was gorgeous. It also had some nice views overlooking Granada, which I'm sure would have been more spectacular if the fog wasn't cutting off the mountains in the background. There were some cute gardens too, and we looked around those for a bit. We never did have time to see anything else in the city, because we wanted to make it back to the hotel before dark. We weren't going to trust ourselves to find it again without a problem, though knowing it was on the road closest to the water did help a bit. On the way home, we stopped at a shopping plaza to grab a snack (ice cream!) and pick up some food at a supermarket. There were some pretty strange window displays there, with everything from what looked like silver wrapping paper clothing to millions of purple boots. Trendy? We found some fun things in the supermarket too, including ham and cheese potato chips, which I discovered are actually quite good. Maybe they'll hit the states soon? We made it back to the hotel without a hitch, and looked for a place to eat. There were plenty of British restaurants there, but nothing Spanish whatsoever. We had to settle for a British dinner, which was good, but not very reminiscent of the country we were in. In fact, the entire place seemed to be more English than Spanish, probably because they get plenty of English tourists.

The next morning, we walked down to the beach front to take a few pictures of the water. My mom insisted she saw a whale in the water, and for the rest of the trip, proceeded to say "I saw a whale, a Spanish whale!" The whole place reminded me of a Wildwood, NJ or a Myrtle Beach sort of place, where the entire area is so built up that, besides the beach, all you can see are hotels on top of each other. It's not really my type of place, because it's dead in the winter, and way too overcrowded in the summer. Still, the beach view was nice. After that, it was time for a road trip to Sevilla! I could go on about Spain forever, but this post is probably quite long enough, so I'll save our next city for next time. Adios, amigos!