Day 74: Granada/Nerja, Spain

First of all, happy father's day to our dads! (And everyone else's dads too)

Our drive today from Granada to Nerja was only about an hour and a half so we got here about 2pm. Nerja is on the Costa del Sol and is a small town, like many along the coast, that cater to tourists - particularly British and German tourists. It isn't particularly beautiful, and we had the misfortune of an extremely cloudy day which made it look sort of gloomy, but we wanted a stop along the coast so we could get a brief glimpse of the Mediterranean - my favorite body of water!

Here are a few photos from our drive through the Sierra Nevada mountains down to Nerja, just to give everyone a sense of the landscape:








This is an aqueduct near Nerja - unfortunately the safety barrier on the side of the road got in the way, but it's a beautiful structure.




Our hotel is adequate but I think would be much more appealing if it was sunny. This is the grey view of the Mediterranean from the end of the pool area of the hotel:




We wandered around town for a while, and the old section wasn't completely devoid of charm. Here is Frank standing in front of an archway that runs along part of the Balcon de Europa (balcony of Europe), which is an esplanade ending in a viewpoint that looks out into the Mediterranean (more pictures of that later).




This the street our hotel is on (currently undergoing some construction work). The hotel (Carabeo) is on the right.




As I kept saying to Frank, I think we would have enjoyed strolling through Nerja much much more if we had had the amazing sunshine of the past 2 weeks, but nonetheless there were some pretty spots and some great bougainvillea and other flowers to brighten things up.




We walked along the promenade that runs along parts of the coast and noticed that all the tourists didn't seem to care that it wasn't sunny.




We stopped at one point and looked over the edge of the promenade to find this lovely sand creation. I think someone was trying to make some money, but we threw a coin in to honor the creativity all the same. :-)




The sea looked extremely clear - here is a shot from the promenade above down toward the water.





We went down onto the beach area, which has tons of rocky cove areas, so we could at least touch the water. Here is Frank with his feet in the Mediterranean. The water was very cold, yet somehow there were a fair number of people in the water.




Here is a view from the beach up towards the Balcon de Europa.




This house was on the beach, built right into the rocks - so strange - we saw people in it and sitting out in front of it too.




After exploring the town from top to bottom and sampling the local ice cream (an important daily ritual), we came back to the hotel to Skype home for Father's Day and rest before dinner. The hotel restaurant has a live flamenco guitarist on Sunday nights so we were able to sit out on our patio and hear the music coming up from below - not too much better than a view of the Mediterranean and some flamenco guitar for a quintessential Spanish experience!

For dinner, we broke our tapas eating streak with some very good thin-crust pizza and sangria at an Italian restaurant in a square near the Balcon de Europa. We seem to be getting more onto the appropriate Spanish schedule because we didn't eat until 9:30ish and it was actually dark when we walked home (which is difficult with this 10:45pm sunset!).

We didn't get the sun/pool time we were hoping for in Nerja but I did get a glimpse of the water and we relaxed, so it wasn't a total loss. Tomorrow it's off to Ronda...

ILM