Two full days on the coach and a night in Madrid. Fairly uneventful. Beautiful scenery coming into Valencia - plenty of orange groves and fresh-squeezed orange juice everywhere. We also had a good guide on the coach who was very informative about the areas we passed through. Tapas for dinner in Madrid with two girls in my room, both also solo travellers, both from Canada. Katie, 22, had been to Ibiza and spent €1000 in two weeks! Apparnatly the clubs are between €60-80 to get into, then the drinks cost from €10. Ouch. That´s more than we pay in Tokyo and we´d never pay a cover charge. Loads of drugs and a huge club scene there with the hard-core rave music and ´world-famous´ DJ´s I´ve never heard of. Call me old and boring, but not my scene at all so glad I never got a ticket to go there.
Only one night in Madrid, but to be honest, I´m not a huge fan of museums. I am figuring out that I much prefer all the smaller towns to the big cities.
Costa del Sol in the Andalucia region of southern Spain. Turned out to be the best hotel yet, with AIR CONDITIONING in the hotel and was also right on a small pretty beach overlooking Gibraltar, but still away from the hoardes of English tourists. Sharing a room with a couple Danny and Emma (both 24), from Adelaide. Literally nothing to do in this tiny town expect eat and lie on the beach. First night we went over the road to a great Indian restaurant. We also had ´happy hour´ at the hostel restaurant; 3 home-made Sangria´s for €3 - bargain! Had a few of these too. :-)
I was at the beach by 10.00am, leaving everyone else asleep in bed... I can´t waste all this glorious sunlight. A full two hours before I saw anyone from the Busabout crowd. Caught up on some much needed sun bathing for the entire day, hanging around the beach swimming, (lunch at the Indian restaurant again ´cause it was so good), and generally just doing lots of nothing. Met a lovely woman from Gibraltar, Jenny, (she called it Gib´), and we chatted for hours about things whilst out in the water on her lilo. She was half-Spanish-half-English, with a Spanish husband. There were also loads of the most adorable kids from around Britain, between the ages of about 6 and 13. We sent them all off to collect sea-shells for us. Then they spent a couple of hours telling us what they aspired to be when they grew up - actors, midwives, vets... They were all either related to each other somehow or had been coming to this beach in Spain every year since they were born so all knew each other. I know I'm getting all clucky here but it was so refreshing to chat to kids instead of adults all the time.
Finally left the beach around 7pm, a little redder but very happy. Showered and Sangriad, I was very good and had a nice greek salad for dinner with Gazpacho. It still wasn't a patch on my Aunty Mavis' gazpacho though. I still want that recipe please Mavis!! Martha Stuart did one once but it was so complicated and must have had 50 ingredients. Stuff that.
Anyway, I digress. Over dinner I met some of the girls who were booked on the same Morocco trip as me. Lots of Aussies (mostly girls) and travelling on their own or in pairs. Lots of school teachers working in London on their holidays.
Totally psyched about Morocco, but decided to have a wee slice of the UK before going there and made plans to go to Gibralter the next day for a day trip.
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