Costa de Sol - the Sun Coast (of Spain)

Schools here in Belfast give the students a mid-term break the week of Halloween. Some schools have 3 days off, some the whole week, and some (like Watson's) have 7 school days off. Wow. Anyway, since Watson would be home anyway, we decided that we should take advantage of the time and do a Europe-hop somewhere. Before coming to Belfast, Jubin and I said that at a minimum, we should experience Spain and France in addition to the UK/Ireland this year. So, to Spain we went. Being on a budget, we booked a resort through our time share. Being short on sun, we booked on the Sun Coast - near Malaga.

Here's a map: http://goo.gl/maps/nkgBz
I've marked the Malaga Airport (Eastern-most marker), Colahonda where our resort was (middle marker near coast), Cobopino beach (Western-most marker on coast), and the historic town of Ronda (Northern-most marker in the mountains).

This is what the sky looked like the whole week...the view of roses in our resort's garden from our patio.

The weather was amazing - 75 degrees and completely blue sky every day. Seriously gorgeous. The views were amazing - Sea in once direction, mountains in the other. Neither Jubin nor I had realized that this part of Spain was so mountainous. Our resort was...ok. We booked one place and were moved to another (long story) that didn't have as good amenities and was further from the beach. And, then we moved from 1 resort to another part-way through the week (annoying, but much better place). Importantly, we had mini-golf and a heated pool onsite, which are key for Watson. Even though the mini-golf was only 9 holes and was in not the best repair, Watson reports that to be the best part of the vacation. Guess we should just spend the next week off of school taking day trips to min-golf courses in the area, huh?

Watson sitting on the patio waiting (patiently?) for us to go to the pool.
Notice his look? "All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth"...

The area surrounding our resort was not our cup of tea. It was all developed specifically for tourists, mainly from Northern Europe. Lots of pubs with British food, for example. We could not even find a place that served real Spanish food (although we did get to sample some Spanish wine and sangria)! How is that possible? What a tragedy. But, we really liked our day in Ronda, a neat historic town in the mountains.

Looking into the historic part of Ronda

The Ronda bull-fighting arena

Beautiful views in Ronda. A walking path along at the top of a very steep ravine down to a river.
Above, a bridge over the river connecting the newer and older parts of the town.
Below, the path along the ravine.

The view of the countryside from the path along the top.
We WISHED that we had time to do a hike down into the
 ravine and all around the bottom along the river. 

Ummm...note to selves  -it is COLD in the mountains!

A street view in the historic district.

The other side of the bridge.

When we were to go back to Southern Spain someday, we will definitely explore other small towns (and stay in them) like Ronda and Seville and Gibraltar. The beach near us (Cabopino) was beautiful and we would visit there again, but we would stay just a couple of days there or make a day trip of it and stay elsewhere. The pix below are all taken at Cabopino Beach - we had a couple of really nice days there!

Here are some things that happened during the trip that we thought you might get a kick out of (and we want to record for posterity):
1) We rented a car near the Malaga Airport. On the web, the car was only 45 Euro for the week. How can that be? Well, it can be because they charge you for a full tank of gas no matter how much you use at a rate of 90 Euro! Ha! 135 Euro makes a lot more sense for a week of car rental...

2) We picked up our rental car at about 10pm Sat night, and we hadn't yet had dinner (time change, weird travel time), so we asked the man at the desk how to get somewhere with an ATM to get Euros where we could also get a quick bite. He directed us to an open air mall that was super-close to the airport. Like, 5 minute drive. However, it took us about 30 min to get there on account of having to get on and off the highway about 8 times and going around and around and around 2 traffic circles about 20 times trying to figure out which direction we were supposed to go in! OMG - no angst in the car during that 30 minutes, let me tell you! But, we finally got there, got Euros, and got fast food. It was actually a really cool mall - 11pm and tons of people out and about. This should have been an indicator of #3...

3) No one eats dinner in Spain until at least 8pm. The restaurants don't even open until 630 or 7pm. This timeline might work well for singles, couples without kids, and retired folks, but how do families deal with this timeline? Obviously, we cooked in most nights. But, really, not even open until 7pm? Yikes!

4) On our way to Ronda, we discovered that Watson gets car sick. All over himself and the back seat. Poor guy... We were on a very narrow road with lots of switchbacks heading up the mountain, so it was the perfect situation for car sickness. Jubin was able to get to a scenic pull off and luckily I had brought a 2L of fizzy water (used it to clean the seat) and extra clothes (used to clean out the back seat, clean off Watson, and re-clothe him). We also switched locations of car seats so that Jamie's was over the wet part of the seat. Ha! Poor little man got sick on the way down as well, but this time knew what was coming so was able to warn Jubin early enough that most of it landed outside the car. Then we moved him to the front seat for the rest of the drive. Yah, yah...safety...probably isn't that safe to be swerving off the road looking for places to get sick either! How gross, huh? Good thing it was a rental car!

The view from the scenic pull out where Watson was sick on the way up the mountains.

5) Jubin did an AWESOME job driving in Spain. They drive on the same side of the street as in the US, but the signage is really different, there are traffic circles everywhere, and of course it was a stick shift (most cars in Europe are). We are both comfortable with manual transmission, but it has been 5 years since we've driven one, and of course we haven't driven a car at all since July. Our only issues really were with signage and having to go around and around traffic circles trying to figure out where we were headed. We also got a little off-course on our way back to the airport because of bad signs, but luckily we made it in time - again, thanks to Jubin!

6) We loved Cabopino Beach - super-soft sand, nice calm areas and areas with waves, just beautiful. Watson and Jamie were so funny there, though! Watson kept wanting to clean himself off of the sand (oh man, he really really hates that texture!) while Jamie kept wanting to eat sand (what is this stuff, Mum?). Ha! But, with all of the time out at the heated pool and the beach, Watson got VERY tan and even Jamie got a little farmer-tan from his beach suit. So cute!

There is a resort/hotel right on Cabopino Beach where we would love to stay someday for a couple of nights. There is a marina, shops and restaurants, everything you would need for a couple days of relaxing bliss (well, at least fun!).

 

You could throw bread bits into the water at the marina and tons of fish would come.
Watson enjoyed this activity!

7) We were in Spain for Halloween. There is trick-or-treating in Belfast, so Watson was a little disappointed to miss that. But, our resort had some Halloween activities scheduled. On Wed, we carved pumpkins. Then, on Thurs, they had costumes for kids and a whole series of events for the kids, culminating in trick-or-treating. Watson decided that he didn't want to do these activities since he didn't know any of the other kids...but, then was a little sad about it that night when we saw other kids doing so. Fortunately, when we got home to Belfast, Rosa and Elsa had saved him a bag of candy and that seemed to make him happy.

8) Jubin and I spent some time musing about the state of our vacations at this point in our lives. We spent a good 10 years traveling prior to having children, and think fondly of times spent relaxing at a cafe or pub with a cappuccino or glass of wine... Of course we love our kids and are so very thankful for them, but during this week in Spain we hardly had a moment of relaxation. And, we never even got to sleep in the same bed! It is certainly not the easiest thing ever to travel with 2 young children (how do people do it when the kids are only 2 years apart in age? how do they do it with more than 2 kids?). So, I decided that what we experience this year while living in the UK will be an education - For Jubin and I, we will learn all about the places that we want to return to when we retire, and for the kids, they will (hopefully) learn the value of other cultures, taking risks, and traveling. We'll see!