Saturday November 7 - Frigiliana

[Photo: Chocolate & Churros at Nerja]

 

Back to our day on/day off routine, which seems to be working our very well. Both of us were still tired on waking, and breakfasted in bed. We thought we would all go and check out some of the things close to Nerja, such as the Caves of Nerja and an old aqueduct on the way. Back to warm weather again – the car said it was 24 degrees on the way down. Drove the 6km to town, parked up again in the parking building, and sat down at a café. Sandy & Lynette were determined to try out the chocolata con churros that we had eaten a couple of times previously. So we put in our order for three of these. Karen chickened out on the churros, thinking of her waistline. They were duly enjoyed, but they feel so decadent and rich that I think I will be the only one prepared to have another round of them sometime.

 

We tried to find a small coastal walk from the Balcon de Europa, but it either wasn't there or was very overgrown, so we had to give that away and jumped in the car to find the Caves of Nerja. Passed the aqueduct on the way – a tall structure of five stories supporting a rather small top layer carrying water over a small gorge. Got to the Caves, and parked in the carpark. We found they cost 8.50€ each, which seemed rather steep after just 12€ for the whole complex at Granada, and we were not keen enough to think it worth the money. Karen and I could go another day anyway if we reconsider. To add insult to injury, it cost a Euro to get out of the carpark.

 

Rather pleased to be back home for an afternoon around the pool. The water was down to 26.5 today, but 27 by afternoon. Still OK for swimming, but not as tempting as if it had been 28. Karen did 90 lengths, I swam rather fewer, concentrating on technique. I have been enjoying the swimming, although sometimes it has been triggering a vicious toothache attack, so I am a little wary. Karen made the fatal mistake of challenging me to a length's race, which much to the great surprise of both of us, I won by a good half body length. Then trying to get her own back, she challenged me to two lengths, which again I won, though not by much. I must say I was pretty chuffed, and Karen not so! I had to refuse to do a 10 length rematch.

 

For dinner Sandy & Lynette took us out for a meal as a thank you for the trip, which was lovely of them. They had hoped we could get into a restaurant run by four sisters, but it was closed up, as indeed were most of them. However we ended up having a very good meal at one in the church square. An excellent day tooth-wise, with little hassle at all, and no Voltaren needed.

Friday November 6 - The Alhambra, Granada

[Photos: The Alhambra, Granada. Details, Courtyards, Courtyard of the Lions, Generalife, Views to Granada]

 

Another good 8-ish getaway for the hour- and a half drive to Granada for the Alhambra. Most of it on 120km/h roads, so the distance disappears remarkably fast. We have had the first properly cold weather since New Zealand. On the way into Granada, the car thermometer went from 18 to 15 to 10, then finally as low as 9 degrees coming over the hills just before Granada. It was blowing a gale too. The GPS took us to the Alhambra carpark satisfactorily. Thankfully we had learnt from previous daytrips, and had warm gear in the boot, so we were able to add the bottoms onto our zip-off trousers, put on shoes and socks and don our polarfleeces.

 

Got our tickets in a few minutes, with only one or two ahead of us in the queue. Obviously there is no issue about needing pre-booking at this time of year. We were given the 10am slot for the Nasrid Palaces where the best carving, decoration and fountain courts are to be seen. We got there a couple of minutes before opening time, so had a coffee, partly to warm up as we were cold even with our warm gear on. Later on at one point during our tour we discovered the reason why – there was fresh snow on the hills above the city!

 

The Alhambra was every bit as good as last time we were here 27 years ago. More of it open, some places closed or under renovation, but that is par for the course. Last time we used a whole 36-shot roll of slide film – easily twice as much as any other single sight in our 4-month Europe OE of 1982. This time, using the wonders of modern technology, I took 215 shots. I must say our camera has been superb. Its zoom is 25-300 (12X) giving both a very generous wide angle, and a hefty telephoto. It is very rare that I am ever forced to use the flash, and the low light quality is streets ahead of any previous digital camera we have used. Yet it is still small enough to pop into a packet. We have seen literally hundreds of these Panasonic TZ cameras, so I can't be the only traveller who likes them. This time, I made sure I had plenty of detail shots, as it is in the detail that the Moors excelled.

 

As before, we really enjoyed our visit. The spaces are so attractive, and the detail so special. Since 1982 they have opened up Charles V's palace as three museums, which though small were interesting. There were two things we missed – the Court of the Lions was without lions as they are being restored (a 4-20mm coating of hard water deposits being removed), and I couldn't find a particular 1982 detail shot I wanted a new digital copy of. Come to think of it, the donkeys the staff were using for maintenance tasks in 1982 were missing this time too. However the visit was a real thrill. One of the few times we have returned somewhere and been just as impressed.

 

The normal recommended tour time is 3 hours. We managed to stretch it to 5 hours car-to-car, which gives a measure of how much we found to marvel at. There were plenty of things in this visit that we hadn't noticed last time round, and in particular how attractive the city of Granada is as viewed from the Alhambra. There are so many trees, gardens and lovely courtyard houses. A huge advantage of the time of year we are here is that the crowds are entirely manageable. If I wanted a shot without people, it was normally achievable, even in the long vistas of fountains on the Generalife. So all up, a trip well worth making again. Sandy and Lynette as first time visitors here thought it was the single best thing from their trip.

 

After the Alhambra visit, we drove down the hill to the city, where we wanted to check out the cathedral and have a bit of a look around. At the cathedral, we were in two minds as to whether to pay for yet another cathedral visit, but we were glad we paid up. It is a massive building, with the distinction of the altar being near the middle rather than right at the top end.

 

I had found Voltaren so effective that I decided that some more might prove useful. No problem at all over the counter at a farmacia.  A pack of 40 tablets cost me the grand sum of 3.12€. How come a similar purchase in NZ is so massively more expensive? Somebody is making a whopping profit. We keep thinking that New Zealand is a cheap place to live, but the more we see of southern Europe, the more expensive NZ looks.

 

For dinner we were looking for a decent meal, but not much open so we ended up back at our place of a few nights ago, where we had another good and simple meal.

Thursday 5 November - Frigiliana

Had a dreadful night. Tossed and turned with aching teeth, and for some reason my brain going in three directions at once, at a hundred miles an hour. Don’t know if it was last night’s coffee, the anis, the various painkillers or the new fancy toothpaste causing the problem, but the net effect was most unpleasant, and left me sleepless much of the night.  There’s no way I felt I could sensibly trip to Granada and back, so we had to give that away for today. My teeth were as sore as ever, though I’d hoped the new toothpaste would work very fast. Obviously not.

 

Sandy & Lynette went out for a walk in the town, while Karen and I tried to catch up on sleep. An afternoon around the pool, though I stayed inside much of the time catching up on sleep and trying more pills to look after the teeth. Dinner in, with more yummy Spanish tasty sausages, and finally, my teeth co-operating and not bugging me during dinner. Hopefully this marks the turning point.

Wednesday 4 November - Frigiliana Old Town & Nerja

Tooth was particularly bad this morning, so we decided to go back to the dentist in Nerja for another look and possibly an x-ray. I looked up the Spanish for x-ray just in case! We worked on our tans and lunched, then headed into town for 4pm when the first of the shops start to reopen. Yet another lovely day with clear skies, and 32 degrees on the car thermometer on the way in.

 

Found the dentist again OK, but they were in the middle of implanting teeth, so asked me to return around 5:30pm for a check. We used the time looking though more of Nerja's shops. It has a lot of interesting shops with a good range of wares. A lot of imported stuff – African, Indonesian and more, and most of it very well-priced. I found some nice jewellery for Karen, and then in the same shop a lovely small handbag on sale. We hummed and haa'ed a bit, got offered a discount and decided to take up the offer, before heading to the tooth factory.

 

Again, very pleasant and prompt service, this time with a white-coated man. He had another look, couldn't find anything visible so went on to taking an x-ray. This took only a minute or two to do, and showed precisely nothing other than a normal looking few teeth. His diagnosis was that I had developed surface sensitivity, and he gave me a prescription for some desensitising toothpaste, which we were able to collect at a nearby farmacia. I immediately rubbed some on in the hope it might start working. Total bill – just 20€. How can NZ dentists charge so much?

 

Talking things over with Karen, we have come to the conclusion that our travel toothbrushes may be the root of the problem. They were chosen as nice little ones that fitted well into the small pocket at the top of our toilet bag, but they are a bit harder than our home brushes. Karen had wondered if that was a problem, and had been (unbeknownst to me) deliberately brushing much more softly. Her tooth pain symptoms from France were remarkably similar to mine – pain with hot and cold, never quite in a defined location, throbbing rather than stabbing – and so we think the hard brushes have been too much for our teeth. Incredible that something so basic could cause such a problem.

 

Mentally I felt a whole lot more cheerful, having some kind of explanation, even if it still hurt like crazy at times.

 

Sandy & Lynette needed to confirm their RyanAir flights, so we did that in an internet café so they could print out the boarding passes. The manager's English sounded so like Juha, our Finnish Couchsurfer, that I asked if he was Finnish. Very close – Estonian.

 

On the way home, we all got a big load of groceries at a big supermarket, including a new set of soft (suave in Spanish) toothbrushes. We had decided it was time for a decent dinner out, so walked out from our home towards the old town. The place recommended by our hosts was closed, so we took one a little further along. Very cheerful and pleasant service. We all had the menu del dia starting with drinks. My anis was of Turkish proportions, being a wineglass with a couple of ice cubes topped ¾ full with anis.

 

Entrees were superb – garpacho, noodle soup and sausage soup, followed by squid rings, veal cutlets and veal kebabs. Simple food very well cooked and delicious. Even a nice dark chocolate mousse was included. We will probably come back here for another meal sometime.

 

Went to bed full of hope my teeth were on the mend, with the alarm set for an early daytrip departure for Granada.

Tuesday 3 November - Nerja

[Photos: Nerja, Frigiliana, Pastry, Pool at night ]

 

I felt very tired this morning. I think the driving is getting to me. It is much less relaxed than NZ driving. The roads are either 120km/h, which is just a bit too fast for comfort, or quite narrow. Either requires a lot of concentration. On the way to Malaga a few days ago, there was one place a truck had broken down and traffic suddenly had to squeeze into a single lane, requiring some pretty serious braking. Braking hard from 120km/h makes you realise how much less control there is at that speed than at 100km/h. Our little car, while fine most of the time, simply doesn’t feel as stable at the higher speed. I suppose I could go slower, but then we’d be on the roads longer, and that isn’t an appealing thought either. We’ve now done 5800km since Rome.

 

We all went down to Nerja this morning, partly for a look around, and partly as I too now have a toothache which has been steadily getting worse over the last few days. It started as a vague discomfort, but has now got to the point where a hot drink causes a vicious throbbing a few minutes later.

 

We arrived in town about 10, when the shops were just opening, and got a local street map marked up with dentists’ locations. We agreed on a time to rejoin Sandy & Lynette, and Karen and I went off on a dentist hunt. The first was closed, and the second location didn’t have a dentist at all. The third however was just right. I walked in off the street, and thirty seconds later was in a chair with a dentist or dental nurse having a good fish around. She couldn’t find anything, so blasted the sides of the sore location with cold water to try and get a reaction. No reaction! So we agreed that I would come back in a day or so if it got worse. Cost zero. Couldn’t help compare that to New Zealand. You’d be weeks getting an appointment, and even for a toothache you’d be hanging about waiting for a gap. And an inspection would certainly not be free. Walking away, the tooth went mad, causing me to think the problem might be deep rather than surface.

 

I was felling pretty low. Having a nagging but non-understood pain is a sure way of getting me down, and I wasn’t the best of company for a bit.

Monday 2 November - White Towns

[Photos: Ronda - Mill houses, Bullring, Bridge, Butcher. Setenil, Plains]

 

We had always had Ronda on our list of places we must visit, and today was the day. We got up really early – 7am and were away by 8am. Pretty good for us, and way ahead of most Spanish, who sensibly prefer a slower start to the day. It was only about an hour and a half to Ronda, through mostly pretty dry landscape. It was a very attractive drive, taking in some smaller roads, which is always a whole lot more pleasant than the 4-lane 120km/h motorways.

 

Managed to find a park easily in Ronda, and worked our way down towards the old centre. First we came across a very nice, broad and tree-shaded plaza, which turned out to be right on the edge of the cliff that Ronda is built on. Plenty of Spaniards about as today was a national holiday for them. From the plaza, we could see the older part of Ronda (where it started on an isolated rock), the original track to it, and all the mill buildings below us along the river. It is very attractive country around here.

 

Next along from the plaza was a bull-fighting ring, said to be the first purpose-built bull-ring in the world. Previously there were clearly plenty of bull-fights, but only in squares or other spaces. This one was a good size ring which we were able to walk around, complete with interesting bull handling facilities, and a museum built under the seating. The bull handling area showed the respect they give the bulls – all the movement and confinement of bulls was done from above with ropes, sliding and hinged gates, and was very heavily built. The ring is clearly still in use.

 

We finally go to the sight Ronda is known for – the bridge separating the original outcrop and old town from the newer areas. It was built twice, with the first built in the 1560s collapsing 30 years later killing 50 people. The next build was massive, with bases going the full depth of the narrow gorge. Karen and I went down the original entry path to get a view back at the bridge – a long way down and even longer back, but the reward was a good view of the chasm and the bridge. Some looneys were abseiling down a waterfall directly below the bridge. Abseiling can be fun, but why add the discomfort of doing it inside a waterfall?

 

Again found ourselves lunchless at 2pm – we seem to be adapting to Spanish time, without really trying. Picked up some tasty bocadillos for lunch, then finished off the town visit with a trip down to the Arab baths where we arrived at 3:05 to find the gates closing up. Siesta can be very frustrating at times. Back up to the streets, the car and then the next of the white hill towns. We haven’t found the white hill towns here as spectacular as the Italian or French equivalents. Sure the white makes them different, but they are not as tightly contained as the other countries towns, nor in such good locations. Here the intensity of the original town has been diluted with newer buildings radiating out from the old centre, while in France or Italy, we saw many where the new town if there was one at all, was below and outside the old town walls, and so the integrity of the original was preserved.

 

Our second white town stop was at Setenil. Ronda is said to be the most attractive white town, while Setenil is the most unusual, as it is built into a volcanic tufa gorge, and a number of the houses are tucked in under tufa overhangs, with caves digging into the rock at the rear of them. We got there just as the sun was setting inside the gorge, well before real sunset of course. The streets each side of the gorge are called Sunny Street and Shady Street (in Spanish of course). It looks like those on the north and shady side may well never see sunshine at all. We had a good walk up the village, like Ronda very tidy and well looked after.

 

Back home on a different set of roads, through entirely different country. While the trip out was through hilly land, with plenty of olives and a lot of unused land, the return was over huge plains of cultivated rolling land, at this time of year lying fallow. A number of beautiful farms, with big clusters of buildings complete with stables, yards and houses.

Sunday 1 November - Frigiliana Old Town

[Photos: Our exchange home, Frigiliana Old Town]

 

Got out and up to the old town of Frigiliana. We are housed a little lower down, in the new town. Our hosts have left a huge amount of helpful information for us to wade through, including a very booklet containing an excellent self-guided walking tour through the old areas. In the 80s, the town won a Spanish competition for beautification, mainly by paving their streets with the traditional vertical stones in cement, and a series of ceramic explanatory posters of the history of the town, and in particular what happened when the Christians finally conquered the Moors. Frigiliana was one of the very last Moorish strongholds, and the story of the conflict was fascinating. The town here has the only remaining molasses factory in Europe, and one of only three in the world.

 

The walk took us most of the morning, and by 2pm we were decidedly hungry, so found a restaurant with a lovely view where we ordered one of all the tapas dishes they had to go with our beer or wine. A nice range of tapas – anchovies, whitebait, meat, morcillo, sardines, mackerel. Each not large by itself, but with sufficient of them, it made for a delicious lunch. Really a bit late for a sunbathe by the time we got back, but we did so anyway