S P A I N

Monday, 15 March 2004 - Day 2
 
Nerja
 
After breakfast and before setting out to explore Nerja properly, my wife happened to read one of the many notices the hotel management always leave around their rooms and which I always ignore.  This one, my wife informed me, stated that the hotel had placed an assortment of obscenely overpriced beverages in the mini-fridge for our convenience.  If, however, we chose not to drink them and, instead, bought our own and put them in the mini-fridge, there would be a €1.80 per day charge.
 
One Euro Eighty is not a lot of money, but there's a principle here, so this gave rise to the idiotic ritual of removing our beverages from the fridge every morning, hiding them in our suitcases, then returning them to the fridge after the maid left.  Unless they were conducting secrete fridge raids at odd hours of the day and night, we felt confident we could outwit their little scam.
 
On our second trip into Nerja, we accidentally ended up in the municipal car park, which proved to be a happy accident.  The car park is easily accessible and conveniently located, making trips into town a relative breeze.
 
Built on the edge of cliffs that hug the Mediterranean Sea, the views along Nerja's promenade are spectacular, taking in the craggy peaks of the Sierra de Tejeda (or the Sierra de Almijara, depending on which map you are looking at) as well as the expansive turquoise waters of the sea.  There are also a number of lovely sand beaches just a stones throw from the promenade.  I mean that literally; all you need to do is drop a stone over the wall and watch it fall about 300 feet. I don't recommend it; sunbathers can get pretty cranky when they are disturbed.

Despite the formidable drop, I had to touch the Mediterranean, so we set out on the second longest stairway I have ever been on (the longest was up the Empire State building) and we were soon faced with the blue and foaming waters of the sea, racing toward us at an alarming rate.  Back peddling as fast as we could, I managed to get wet just up to my ankles before the waves receded.  The water was cool but not cold, like the Channel off of Brighton.
 
Climbing back up took so much effort that, for the rest of the week, I couldn't navigate the stairs to and from our room without my knees beginning to buckle.

Near the center of town, and jutting out into the ocean, is the Balcón de Europa, an expansive plaza offering an unparalleled view of the sea.  It is here, in the better weather, one finds the buskers and merchants hawking dodgy merchandise to the tourists.  It is also where, if you are homesick for your native language, you can spend half an hour or so to get your fill. Americans, Brits and Germans swarm this plaza in abundance at any time of the day. 

Shopping was a pleasant experience.  There is, of course, no shortage of tourist shops hawking wicker cacti, sombreros and stuffed burros, but it is not difficult to find stores selling items near and dear to the British, like digestive biscuits, Mars Bars, a wide selection of British newspapers and, luckily for me, cheap cigars.  This is due to the large number of Brits who move to southern Spain permanently for the sun and inexpensive lifestyle.  Indeed, many of the British we overheard in the cafés and wandering the lanes were obviously not on holiday but simply out for an evening stroll.
 
We ended up having dinner at The Californian, a restaurant owned by a British ex-pat and which serves some familiar dishes, like chicken curry, lamb and jacket potatoes.  I, however, had the Mexican chilli.
 
The irony of eating Mexican food in a British restaurant with an American name in a Spanish tourist town was so delightful that I talked my wife into going to the British pub across the street for an after dinner drink.  The place turned out to be too much like a working-class Glasgow pub, so we opted to retire to the terra once more, to enjoy the traffic and our contraband beverages.

Tuesday, 16 March 2004 - Day 3 
 
Frigiliana
 
My slumber that night was fraught with dreams involving angry bolster pillows hunting me down.  My wife tried to wake me at one point but I mistook her for the King Pillow and, after that, she wisely let me be.  I awoke in the grey dawn, feeling like ten miles of bad road, and gripped with the unshakable conviction that there had been "a profound disturbance in The Force."

A long, hot shower and some strong coffee set me straight, and after hiding all our beverages we drove to the nearby, hilltop town of Frigiliana.

There's a certain, comforting ritual we follow when encountering a new town.  It involves finding a decent car park and locating the tourist information bureau, from which we emerge with brochures, maps and, occasionally, short histories of the town and surrounding area.  It's a great way to get one's bearings in an unfamiliar location.
 
Unfortunately, the tourist bureau in Frigiliana is closed on Tuesdays, so we opted for wandering around aimlessly with no idea of what we were looking at or where we were heading.

We needn't have worried; Frigiliana has just two main roads connected via impressively steep alleyways that are so narrow even the Spanish won't attempt to drive on them.  The only way to move freight from on side of town to the other is via donkey, and we saw one at work, patiently plodding up the terraced walk with a load of bricks on this back, looking as if he wanted to knock off early, sit in the shade and have a beer.

Cars, however, do use the main streets, which aren't a lot wider than the lanes.  Though I would have laid money on it being impossible, they even manage to squeeze busses through the tiny streets.  And I do mean squeeze; when a bus approaches, the only mean of getting out of its path is to duck into a doorway.
 
My wife and I were admiring the wares of a closed jewellery store when we encountered our first bus.  Initially, we flattened ourselves against the side of the building and then, judging that wasn't going to cut it, crammed ourselves into the ever so slightly recessed doorway.  At the last moment, the shopkeeper noticed our plight and opened the door for us.  We tumbled in just as the bus rumbled past, its fenders mere inches from the edges of the buildings.
 
For the remainder of our visit, as soon as we heard a bus we ducked into the nearest shop.  I strongly suspect that the merchants of Frigiliana must have some sort of arrangement with the bus company.
 
The narrow streets didn't developed simply because the original settlers lacked the foresight to account for tour busses, the closeness of the buildings keeps the oppressive sun off the streets during all be the middle part of the day.  This, coupled with the blindingly white architecture, keeps the people at street level as comfortable as possible without air conditioning.  It also creates the impression of walking through slender canyons.

On these narrow streets, women swept the cobblestones in front of their houses and scoured dust off of their front doors.  A young girl, weighted down with shopping bags filled with bread, strode purposefully along the steep pavement.  Every so often she hung one on a door latch.  Above us, laundry was festooned from balconies.  Add to this the stunning vistas and you have to conclude that living here would be peaceful, relaxing and impossibly quaint.

Fast on the heels of this thought comes the realization that it would also be mind-crushingly boring.  There is nothing to do in Frigiliana; after walking up one street and down the next, we felt we had experienced about as much as the town had to offer so we returned to the hotel where I sat on the terra and drank too many beers and smoked too many cigars.

We dined that evening in an actual Spanish restaurant, owned and run by Spanish people and offering traditional Spanish food.  This was the only Spanish restaurant we would visit during our stay, not because the food was bad (far from it; I had the swordfish steak and it was marvelous) but because they are so hard to find.

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