Travels of a Fish Nut

Mum and Dad went to Gibraltar the year before I was born and I was keen to go and hear mum reminisce about a time when they were a young couple without a care in the world(!). I double and triple-checked my passport's presence before setting off and we drove to La Linea de la Concepcion, the town on the Spanish side of the border. When mum was last here there was no border and travel between countries was practically impossible (I read a book by Simon Winchester called 'Outposts' written in the early '80s where he had to get a boat from Spain to Morocco and then catch another boat to Gibraltar because there was no other way of getting there). Now border control has been lessened slightly and you now only have to go through the arduous process of either queueing up to drive across or, slightly more difficult, find somewhere to park that isn't ripping you off in La Linea and walk across, waving your passport at two Customs and Immigrations guys. It was so stressful(!!...

Tuesday was supposed to be our trip to Gibraltar but somehow at the last minute it slipped my mind to bring my passport. Somehow I think I thought it would be obvious I'm British and they'd let me through. Mum didn't want to risk it (!) so we headed into the hills to Ronda instead. Ronda's one of the White Towns - towns in the hills where all the houses are whitewashed so they are very visible from a distance. Ronda's probably the largest and oldest of the towns, with large parts dating back to the times of the Moors. The town is built on the side of a gorge, which was used in times past as a quick and easy execution site (simply chuck people over the side). Now it's got fencing to prevent tourists slipping over and looks out across a vast expanse of farmland. It is possibly most famous for it's bullring - one of the oldest in Spain. I went in, mainly because mum and Steve had already gone in and I didn't want to stand around waiting half an hour for the...

Monday was a day where I got to laze by the pool and generally enjoy being on holiday while mum and Steve were subjected to the hard-sell. The only requirement for them to get the free holiday was that they had to have a tour of the complex and be subjected to a few hours of someone trying to get them to buy a timeshare. At least they got a free breakfast! We had breakfast with the rep (proper English buffet - cereal, toast, full English, etc) then I went off to the pool while they had a tour. Apparently they were taken into Fuengirola as well and shown the sights. They were gone for hours and in the end I went up to the room to find them still talking about it, despite the fact I knew mum had decided beforehand they weren't interested! Eventually they finished and we went for food at a restaurant just down the road. Then we headed out on our first proper trip. We went to Malaga. Malaga is the provincial capital of the Costa del Sol and is the second-largest city there. We arrived...

Our first day was a lazy day as none of us had had much sleep. We rendezvoused at about 11am and went back to mum and Steve’s accommodation. They were staying at a timeshare resort which was trying to sell them timeshares by giving them a free holiday (alright for some!). We had lunch at the overpriced and very unSpanish bar then sat by the pool and sunbathed. Yes, I sunbathed!! It was really hot and so nice, after living somewhere where exposing skin often meant windburn, to be able to start synthesising some much-needed vitamin D! In the evening we headed up to Mijas, a town in the hills behind Fuengirola (the town where we were staying). It’s a lovely little town. All the houses are whitewashed and there were loads of horse and carts and donkeys around, ready to take tourists for tours around the town. I’m normally a bit wary of these sorts of things as you never know if the animals are well-treated, especially in such a hot climate, but the horses all seemed very well groomed and t...

Mum and Steve had planned a holiday to the Costa del Sol for the second week in June, which was the second week I was back in the country. I didn't think I'd be ready to stay at home by myself that soon after getting back (my default activity when at home alone was to go down Dave's and I knew that every time I'd sit at home thinking 'what should I do?' the thought 'go down Dave's' would quickly be followed by a realisation that wasn't possible and would result in a flood of emotions I wasn't ready to deal with alone). So I decided to tag along to Spain! We flew from Bristol with Easyjet. It was my first time on a budget airline (having been a bit isolated from them!) and it was a lot better than I was expecting. We landed in Malaga on time. The airport was a lot larger than I was expecting and lots of the signs were in German, then Spanish followed by English. I didn’t realise it was such a popular destination with Germans but there were fli...