Get a Room Girls

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Today we bid a sad farewell to our cute little Malaga apartment as we head fifty kilometres or so east along the coast to the town of Nerja for the next leg of our Spanish sojourn.

We’ll be taking the bus, so I take a few minutes to check the tickets just to make sure everything’s in order. And just as well I did. The rules include “avoid talking to other passengers”. Huh? I tell Issy that in the unlikely event of us seeing any long lost friends on our chariot we must just ignore them and look the other way, or we risk getting kicked off. I’m now also starting to wonder if we're even allowed to talk to each other. We board in silence, to find everyone else chattering away across the aisles with reckless abandon. Surely the rules don’t only apply to us; haven’t these guys read their tickets. We set off. I start to wonder what’s special about talking, and why other marginal behaviours didn’t also get a mention. The two young girls right in front of us can’t keep their hands off each other, and they soon launch into a passionate session of face sucking. And what about the guy across the aisle whose finger keeps creeping just a bit too far up his nose for my liking. Nothing in the rules about any of that, although that said I guess the rules also didn’t say anything about not murdering any of your fellow passengers, so maybe some things are just taken as read.

The route takes us along the coast past a seemingly endless string of well occupied beaches, among them the curiously named Playa del Dedo, which I think roughly translates as "Beach of the Finger". We turn off the highway into the largish seaside town of Torre del Mar where we see some bulls in a small dusty “paddock” completely surrounded by multi-storey apartment blocks. Fortunately there doesn’t seem to be a bullring in town, so maybe they’re just pets that grew a bit too big for their owners’ apartments … or more likely I just really need a coffee.

The bus slows down as it approaches the Torre del Mar stop, and our young lovers launch into yet another session, which we assume signals that one of them is about to disembark. But no, as we pull away they’re both still there in front of us, and it’s not too long before they’re at it again. I think it might be time to get a room girls. At least the man with his finger too close to his nose seems to have desisted for the time being.

Suburbia thins out, and as we approach Nerja the hills are now virtually down to the water’s edge. Our apartment is ridiculously cute. It’s in a large complex that includes a hotel … and a pool. We’re up near the top of the hill and we’ve got spectacular views from our large terrace down over one of the local beaches, Playa Burriana.

The apartment’s got air conditioning, but the owners “discourage” us from using it. Huh? What about the other ”amenities”. Is it OK if we use the beds? Anyway, they suggest we instead open the doors and windows and just let the breeze do the work. It’s way too hot for that at the moment, so we just switch it on anyway. They tell us that it’s usually windy in Nerja, and that the Costa del Sol, the Coast of the Sun, used to be called the Coast of the Wind, which probably didn’t sound all that attractive to your average sun seeker. Now I’m not sure if the owners are just making stuff up to save on electricity, but if what they say is true, changing the name does indeed seem to have been quite an effective marketing ploy if the density of sunlovers we’ve seen on the beaches over the past few days is anything to go by.

I head out for an early evening stroll down through the apartment complex's very attractive gardens and then further on down some steep steps down the cliff face onto Playa Burriana. It’s very busy on the beach, no surprises there, and the multitude of beachside eateries seem to be doing a roaring trade. The town and most of the accommodation is up at the top of the cliff, so if you plan on going to the beach here it seems you need to be prepared for steps …. lots of steps. I head up from the beach towards the old town up a particularly steep set. Progress is slow. The youngsters in front of me are carrying a long heavy paddle board, and I don’t think the windy staircase was designed with that particular type of activity in mind.

The old town is an impossibly cute maze of paved alleyways between traditional buildings. The town square fronts the massive and apparently famous viewpoint known as the Balcony of Europe which sits on a clifftop jutting out into the sea. The views along the coast in both directions are excellent. It seems I’m here on the town’s feast day, and I join the massive crowd watching a brass band serenade a statue of the Virgin Mary as it’s paraded through the streets …. or I thought that’s what most of the crowd was watching, so why are so many of them facing the wrong way … oh I see now, the Wimbledon final, which apparently involves a Spaniard ….

We decide to eat in tonight, and enjoy a sumptuous feast of bread rolls topped with olives, olive oil and tomato sauce … OK so I didn’t realise it was tomato sauce when I bought it. The setting is idyllic and is capped off by the obligatory fireworks display to end the feast.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Nerja
I've heard good things about this town and like the looks of it. Thanks for posting.

[DaveandIssy]

Nerja
We would highly recommend. We absolutely love Spain. I think this is our fifth visit and I don’t think we’ve been anywhere that we didn’t like, and Nerja would be fairly high on the list.