Torremolinos and Granada

Day 8: Fes/Málaga/Torremolinos, April 20th
We woke up at 6am in Fes, caught a quick breakfast at the hotel, and jumped in the car with the same driver from the Marrakech-Fes trip to catch an early flight to Casablanca (where we would then transfer to a flight to Málaga).  We made it safely to the airport (not too much lane passing this time-- the road really wasn't too crowded at 7am... although we did see plenty of sheep, goats, and their herders on the side of the road).  And guess who we saw at the airport!  My friend and her family!  So this was the second time we ran into them!  Although this would be the last time because they were headed to Marrakech and we were headed to southern Spain.  The flight was super quick to Casablanca.  But our flight to Málaga was delayed about 4 hours.  So we passed the time in a hotel internet cafe, the only restaurant we could find for lunch, and all the touristy gift shops.  
Finally we got to the Málaga airport.  We looked around for our hotel transport to the Bed and Breakfast, but we didn't see them and had trouble attempting to use a pay phone, so we took an expensive taxi ride to the bed and breakfast.  The B&B was located outside of the city, up in the hills.  They told us that they owned a restaurant in the city and they go back and forth between the B&B and the city several times a day.  We arrived at the B&B and buzzed the outside gate to let us in.  Finally a frazzled maid came down from the house (which was the B&B) to get us.  She said that she was the only one there at the moment and couldn't find the owner so we should wait until someone got home.  She showed us up to our room and left us, saying that we could take a shower and get comfortable.  Okay, so if you haven't noticed a lot of things that are off about this place so far, you're not reading very well.  We were the ONLY ONES there!  When my mom booked the place, she thought that maybe the 10 rooms they had would be full and bustling with people because of the busy weekend.  Apparently there aren't 10 rooms, but only one room-- the one we were going to stay in.  There was no reception, or anything else you expect a standard hotel/B&B to have.

The owner, an old man in his 80's, finally gets back (from waiting for us at the airport?) and the first thing he says (yells) to us is "How did you get here?!" I don't know about you, but if I ever owned a B&B, I certainly wouldn't yell at my guests.  What a fantastic first impression he made.  At this point, we decided that we weren't going to stay at this B&B even one night.  So we ask the old man to drive us to the nearest town-- Torremolinos, not Málaga.  On the way, we hear about his life crisis.  His leg is bad, he owns a Jaguar, and he's broke. He's also a landlord and his renters haven't paid in awhile due to the crisis.  That's why he made one room of his house into a B&B... to gain extra money.  Turns out that his decision to turn his home into a B&B was very recent and we would have been the second group of people to have ever stayed there. 

He drove us to Torremolinos, but didn't leave us.  He insisted on helping us find some place to stay for the night (some shabby hostel owned by a friend), taking us to a tourist agency to plan day trips for our stay (we made no reservations but kindly took a pamphlet or two), and going to a bar for a cup of coffee.  FINALLY we shook him off, payed him for gas, and said GOODBYE.  We got our bags from the hostel making a quick excuse why we couldn't stay there, and went to the nearest decent-looking hotel around to find a room.  This turned out to be the hotel Cervantes that had a nice view of the sea.

For the rest of the day, we tried to plan our last 3 days of vacation (this day was of course sourly wasted).  Our hotel recommended a good fish restaurant on the main street where we ate mussels and fish.  Afterwards, we found a gelato stand.  A Madrid-Barcelona game was going on while we were finishing up our gelato.  It seemed that everyone in southern Spain is a Madrid fan... so I felt a little out of place.  (Although living in Barcelona hasn't converted me into a hardcore soccer fan yet... so I didn't mind).


Day 9: Torremolinos/Mijas, April 21st
We decided to stay 2 nights in Torremolinos so that we could take a day trip to Mijas, a Spanish village that my mom heard about that is whitewashed and only allows donkeys on the streets.  Turns out Torremolinos was disappointing and we already wanted to get out of there.  It felt like what a Florida beach town is to the US:  most of the tourists are from the same country and there are swimsuit and beach paraphernalia shops everywhere-- really not much Spanish culture to be found.  So we had breakfast at our hotel-- a large buffet, and hopped on a bus to ride to Mijas for the day.  The ride was about 30 or 45 minutes, but there were excellent views of the sea along the way.  Looking outside the windows of the bus, we realized that just about every village we passed was whitewashed and sat on a hill.  So Mijas was already starting to become less unique than we had thought.  When we finally arrived, we realized that it was not the quaint village we were expecting, but rather a village that was probably quaint at some point in its history but has been fully converted into a tourist town.  Every shop we walked by was geared towards tourists.  Plus, the sky looked like it was about to pour (although the clouds made for some cool photos).

All the horses and donkeys in the town are now used for taking tourists on rides.  Poor animals-- feel just as bad for them as the donkeys we saw in Marrakech and Fes carrying too much on their backs.

The best part about going to Mijas was the views of the Meditteranean.  Yes, the views probably would have been better if it hadn't been so cloudy, but what could we do... certainly not change the weather at our command!

Future house, haha not.

Here are some photos of the town itself-- just to prove we were there, perhaps.  We walked around, took pictures, and grabbed lunch.

We hopped on the bus again, very exhausted.  Again, a lovely bus ride back with excellent views.  We wanted to take the metro into Malaga to go see the Picasso Museum, but as soon as we stepped foot outside the hotel, it started pouring rain.  So we cancelled our Picasso plans because there was no way we wanted to try to find the museum in throngs of people watching the Semana Santa processions in Malaga in the pouring rain.  Plus, neither of us had bought warm-enough clothes for that sort of adventuring.  Finally the rain let up around dinner time so we walked to the beach to find something to eat-- fish at a pizza restaurant. Here is a photo of the beach in Torremolinos.

And Torremolinos' "main drag" closer to our hotel.  Of course we stopped to get gelato again for dessert.

Day 10: Torremolinos/Granada, April 22nd
It was raining again when we woke up in the morning.  We found a hotel in Granada to stay at for our final two nights because we felt like we were done with Torremolinos.  So it was off to the bus station!  First we took a 1-minute taxi ride (it was pouring rain and we had suitcases, okay?) to the bus station in Torremolinos only to find out that the 11:20am bus we wanted to take to Granada didn't exist.  So we hopped in a taxi again to ride to the bus station in Malaga.

After the 1 1/2 hour bus ride where we watched Pride & Prejudice on my ipod, we arrived in Granada where it was only lightly drizzling.  We hopped in a cab that took us to our hotel in the center of the city, dropped our bags, then wandered a bit to find lunch at a crowded restaurant.  And, hey, it stopped raining!

We hopped on a bus to go to the Garcia Lorca museum that we spotted on the map.  It was located in the middle of a park and looked like it could have been someone's private home rather than a museum.  Actually, it was Garcia Lorca's home at some point, so that's not too far off.  A sign on the door told us that it was closed for Semana Santa.  Oh well, I guess we can say we saw the outside of Garcia Lorca's house?

There was a lovely rose garden right next to the house too.  And the sun came out for a few minutes!

Instead of taking the bus, we decided to walk back to the hotel because it didn't seem like too far of a distance.  We walked by tons of closed shops because it was Semana Santa-- a holiday for everyone but the tourists and restaurant and cafe owners.  We ran into a very large crowd and discovered that a procession was about to begin!  Since it wasn't raining (although the sun went back behind the clouds) we decided to sit on the sidewalk and watch along with everyone else.  It felt like the fourth of July a little because the 4th of July parade is really the only parade I go to annually in the US. Except obviously it was all religious and there were no American flags.

And the procession begins!  I think the people in the cone hats with masked faces are anonymous members of a brotherhood who are expressing penitence.

The people carrying the floats are people who have put their names on a waiting list to do it.  I guess if a family member is sick or if they have some other trouble in their life they want healed, they make a promise that if it is fixed or healed, they will carry a float during Semana Santa-- and perhaps even barefoot.

And then it started raining again.

The procession had past us and that was about all the processions we needed to see while we were in southern Spain.  We wandered back to the hotel for awhile, then came back out to find dinner.  Upon request of the receptionist, we found a tapas restaurant where mom ordered some Manchego cheese drizzled with olive oil.  Yum.

Next up in the day was a trip to a flamenco show!  It's hard to be in southern Spain and not see what the part of the country is most famous for (I'm not counting bullfighting).  We took a taxi to another hotel we were being picked up at for the show.  The neighborhood we were going to, Sacromonte, perhaps is famous for something besides flamenco dancing because the show also included a 45-minute tour of the town.  Everyone was quite cold, even though it wasn't raining, and it was already dark out.  I personally didn't listen to our guide as he spoke in Spanish first and repeated everything in English second.  Hearing everything twice (even in a different language) just made the tour seem longer than it was and even more unnecessary than it was.  Here is one house in Sacromonte. Yay.

The best part of the tour was that we got a nice view of the Alhambra, even if it was at night.

Next on to the show!  We hopped back on the bus to see the flamenco show at a place called Cueva de la Rocio.  All of their advertising pamphlets weren't shy to the fact that Michelle Obama had come to see them. We waited outside for a gigantic group of people to finish up their show.  They rushed out and we rushed in. Obviously it was the height of tourist season because there wasn't an empty seat to be found in any of their several 'cave' showrooms.  We got the last seat in one of the rooms and our view wasn't the best-- we saw the back of the dancers more than we saw the front of them.  And we sat right next to the band-- it was quite loud!

Here are a few pictures and two videos (!) of the show.  Honestly, we weren't really impressed with it.  One, we were squished in a very small room with music that was too loud, and two, the dancers just didn't really impress us-- not one of them smiled the entire time.  (But perhaps flamenco dancers aren't supposed to smile?  They should, though-- it would make the show much more enjoyable).

Then we hopped back on the bus and arrived back at the hotel between 12 and 1 in the morning.  Whew!  Such a long day.


Day 11: Granada, April 23rd
The last full day of our vacation!  Late wake-up and breakfast at a sandwich place close to the hotel.  We took a bus to the Alhambra hoping that even though this was the most busy week of the year, perhaps there would be 2 tickets left to enter.  Of course they were completely sold out.  Although we weren't entirely disappointed because 1) we had been expecting it and 2) we had just seen a lot of the same type of architecture in Morocco-- so it wouldn't be entirely new to us.  First we wandered around the gift shop and quickly discovered that there was an M.C.Escher exhibit on the other side of the Alhambra which was free and open to the public.  So we wandered along outside the Alhambra's walls and made it to the show which was a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside the exhibit, but I will say we saw some of his most famous works up close and personal!  Then we wandered around a bit and got a few glimpses of the outsides of buildings in the Alhambra.

And there was a nice view over the Alhambra looking out at the town we were at the night before for flamenco dancing, Sacromonte.

We then walked back to our hotel, grabbed some lunch on the way, and got ready to be picked up for an olive oil tour that afternoon.  This was by far my favorite part of our time in southern Spain... and it wasn't raining!  We were picked up by a driver who informed us that we were the only ones who signed up for the afternoon tour-- fun!  At least we knew it would be in only one language this time.  We were driven to the countryside to a small Andalusian village.  We got a quick tour of what an olive tree looked like and we also tasted olives straight from the tree (blegh).  This tree is 300-years-old!

At one point, when we were waiting for the guide to park the car, a man guiding his goats walked by us.

Wherever they had dropped us off (I can't find the name of the town) was quite picturesque.

Here are some olive groves that use old irrigation systems.

An almond tree!

And a pomegranate tree! (Where Granada gets its name).

After seeing the trees, we went up to the village to see an old XV century olive oil press.

This is where all the families would weigh their olives to ensure they'd get a fair share of the olive oil that resulted when all the families combined their olives together.

Where a donkey would walk around in circles, grinding the olives to get a thick paste.

And then the old olive oil press itself.  The olive paste was placed between mats which acted like strainers so that when compressed, the olive oil would seep out.

Next stop: an olive oil tasting!  Yum!  First we learned why extra virgin olive oil was better than virgin olive oil and plain olive oil.  It comes from the first press of the olives-- so everything is more pure and you get more nutrients.  The second press is where the virgin olive oil comes from and sometimes they have to heat up the olive paste to get the oil out (so nutrients are lost in the process).  And just plain olive oil is essentially useless because all the nutrients have disappeared from the process that was used to extract the oil from the 3rd pressing on. Once pressed, the olive oil might be filtered to make it look better.  This is bad because it also takes away nutrients from the oil.  Some sediment at the bottom of your olive oil bottle is okay!  Here are two extra virgin olive oils, one filtered and the other unfiltered.  When in doubt, go for the cloudy-colored one!

How to properly taste olive oil: 1) Put a small amount in a cup and warm it in your hands.  2) Smell olive oil.  3) Drink olive oil, making sure it touches all parts of your mouth.  And that's it!  Although drinking olive oil is difficult (it's actually a little peppery!), so we just dipped bread into it to taste it instead.

And apples to clear the palate.

All the olive oils we tasted lined up in a row.

After buying a bottle of oil from their gift shop, we hopped back in the van to head back to our hotel in rainy Granada.  We ate dinner at a seafood place recommended by the driver.  Turns out the food was way too expensive for the not-so-great taste.  First, bland white asparagus.  Second, mussels in a strange sauce.  And third, fish (with head cut off on our request) that was a llittle undercooked.

And since it was raining cats and dogs again by the time we finished dinner, we headed back to the hotel to call it a night!  We woke up early the next morning to catch a flight back to Barcelona!
And that concludes the last post on our spring break adventures! (And an adventure it certainly was!)