Costa del slum!

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Day 468 (23/7/09)
Costa del Sol- Fuerngirola
We arrived to the tiny bus station with low expectations and curosity as to why so many brits headed here annually. Immediately we were struck with a sense of Asia, lots of people hassling about the bus, pushing past you.
We made a quick phone call to the hostel for directions and it turned out we had less than a 100m walk to our room. We were equally surprised by the large, clean room and free breaky. We dumped our gear and headed towards to the promade for a bite to eat. The beaches were filled with tourists leaving for the day, lined by massive concrete apartment blocks, and the promanade itself lined with cheap shops selling lilo's and beach gear and English pubs and restaurants. The place is so British the menu's were listed in English before Spanish. We passed the London Pub, the Underground, the Irish Sports Bar, just to name a few, eventually settling for some Indian. Owned by a lovely Indian man serving up great curry and cheap. After a delicious dinner, some people watching we called it a night despite some enthusiastic attempts to get us to kick on by the club touts all with unbeatable deals buy two drinks get free shots etc. It was easy to see why its so appealing for stag do's etc.

Day 469
After organising our onward journey, (we hadn't fallen in love with Costa del Sol in fact somewhat the opposite we couldn't wait to leave). We headed down to the beach, already packed with people. The sand dark and gritty, the water cold and grimmy but refreshing and the clientele Jez would rate as disappointing.
We soaked up the run inbetween very brief dips into the ocean with a mag and English paper. Then it was time to grab a late lunch, with time escaping us we had another quick swim and back to our hostel to collect our bags and get the bus to Sevilla.
We passed through the quaint town of Ronda set in the hills filled with small white washed houses (initially on our itinerary but we were short of time) and the incredibly dry paddocks filled with Olive trees and sunflowers.
We arrived in Sevilla and immediately felt back in Spain again, glorious buildings, filled with tapa's bars and Spanish. We also discovered we has arrived to a different bus station and were no longer within walking distance to our hostel. After a very confusing conversation with our hostel we opted for a taxi which required another phone call cos he didn't know where it was. But we arrived to our very nice two star dropped our bags and made our way to the other bus station less than five minute walk and purchased our tickets to Lagos for the following day. We stopped at a tapa bar offering five tapas and beers for 15 euro an offer too good to refuse and stumbled our way through the purely Spanish menu, essentially coming up with an assortment of meats with chips.
With a temperature still well over 30degrees we continued on through the old town to the magnificant Cathedral, past the Alcazar and finished with a stroll down by the river making it home just before midnight.

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