Celery Man's vacation slides - southern Spain

[Celery Man 20535]

Just got back from 10 days in the south of Spain for my honeymoon.  Spent the first several days based in Malaga traveling around, went to Gibralter and did that whole thing, then up to Sevilla (and back down for Caminito del Rey, which was closed for wind the first time we went).  Mostly hiking type stuff, apologies if the pictures are giant or whatever.  It was a beautiful trip.

 

Ronda - 

had a digital camera but it was a pita and the color was funny (I'm sure user error) so we mostly stuck with phones for pictures

 

 

[Celery Man 20535]

Hiking near... Monachil, in the Sierra Nevada.  Hired a guide, a brit named Wayne (zero gravity granada) who was a character, very good, very reasonable priced (everything was pretty cheap)

ibex

restaurant in town that was great

 

 

[Celery Man 20535]

Zipline in Comares.  Drive up to this place was insane.  Scariest road I've ever driven on.  Fucking Google maps, took a less scary way down (but still crazy)

[Celery Man 20535]

We were planning on going to Monaco but were tired and decided to hike El Torcal instead.  Good choice IMO, it was incredible

 

[Celery Man 20535]

Gibraltar - the Mediterranean Steps were cool, pretty decent hike.  And then we climbed up and down a lot.  Pretty amusement park on a lot of the rock, but beautiful and it was a good day.

Africa off in the distance.  UK, Spain, and Africa

Saint Michael's Cave

\m/

 

[Celery Man 20535]

Some random Malaga shots.  A bit of cool graffiti

also this dog in Monachil

 

[Celery Man 20535]

Sevilla

Real Alcazar (whistling Game of Thrones the entire time)

Plaza Espana

[Celery Man 20535]

Caminito Del Rey - really cool

One thing I learned - the Spanish can cook the shit out of some pork.  And Iberia Airlines is pretty weak.  Great trip.  Exhausted.

Also - abejas means "bees", not "below".

[Jersey Man10 3471]

Pics of new wife?

[gecko 1104]

Give us the run down.  Where did you fly into....cities where you did overnights etc etc.

I'm looking for a new destination.....

[South Austin 51411]

Badass pics. Haven’t yet been to Spain but it’s on my list.

[Kennythetiger 9274]

Do you kinda like their music?

[Celery Man 20535]

1 hour ago, gecko said:

Give us the run down.  Where did you fly into....cities where you did overnights etc etc.

I'm looking for a new destination.....

The route kinda sucked - Austin, Miami, Madrid, Malaga on the way there, Sevilla, Madrid, Miami, Austin on the way back.  American to Miami and back, Iberia/Iberia Express the rest of the way.  I can't remember how we went about choosing the route (may have been difficulty flying into Malaga), but I would have rather not flown Iberia (dumpy). The inside of those planes looks like the outside of a 1992 Compaq.  And I don't know if there would have been an easier route farther north back but the flight from Madrid to Miami sucked.

We stayed at the Hotel Mariposa in Malaga for the first... 3 or 4 nights?  It was nice enough, great location.  We didn't do much in Malaga itself other than eat - I don't know if I'd choose Malaga as a place to stay unless you were doing it for a similar purpose - a home base to drive all over southern Spain.  I was wary of driving, but am glad I did - it is beautiful and there's no way we could have gone all the different places we wanted to go.  I was talking about the drive to Comares - this is the way we took back.  The way we took up was an even smaller road with no barricades, at one point I was driving up what looked like an alleyway behind a town to get to it, it was nuts

at any rate, I was in a little manual Opel and, apart from driving in the city (fucking hate not knowing where I'm going and having the wife navigate and then figuring out... how does this four lane roundabout work if I want the third turn off of it?) and it was a blast when I wasn't shitting my pants.  Really beautiful mountainous country around Malaga, and when we drove from Sevilla to Caminito del Rey it was through all these rolling hills that looked like the stock Windows 95 background.

From Malaga we tried to do Caminito (was closed to high winds when we got there) and aborted to Ronda (which we were going to do a later day).  Monachil where we hiked in the Sierra Nevada is just outside Granada - you can see some of the edge of the city in the background here - 

I would have liked to have gone to Granada, maybe done the Alhambra, but that'll be for a different trip.  That was the hike we had a guide, Wayne, who was great and very knowledgable.  We would have had a hard time finding our way on that one, and if you want to do some hiking stuff there or near Granada I would recommend him and can give you his e-mail (which you can also find by looking for Zero Gravity Granada and poking around - we came across him through some blogger's post where he described a two day hike).  It was 70 euro for the two of us (35 each), well spent.

Comares was really beautiful - as I mentioned the drive above, but it's a little town up in the mountain, and there's some via ferrata as well as the zipline.  There's a company called Viva Aventura that we used for that - I was a little worried because they were a bit hard to coordinate with and i was half expecting some guy to show up pulling harnesses out of an old Peugot or something, but they were a legit operation.  Ran into a british couple up there trying to find the bathroom who just showed up to do the zipline, I guess expecting there to be staff or a stand or something, and that's not really the case - he ended up piggybacking onto our group.

We were supposed to go to Monaco, but didn't want to wake up balls early in the morning to get on a ferry to spend an afternoon wandering around.  Wayne had mentioned that El Torcal was great and easily self guided, so we did that instead.  Those pictures above (Torcal is where there are all of the rock formations) don't really do justice of how cool it is.  It's up on top of a mountain.  We did the longer trail, which said 45 minutes but we killed the better part of 2 hours exploring, and then walked back down the mountain.  The parking lot up top was closed, so you had to park and then take a bus - so, that whole thing not counting gas was 1.50 euro ticket for the bus for each of us.  Doing all this hiking, I can really see how mountaineering is more of a thing in Europe.  I could imagine it would make you adventurous to grow up being able to see so many different places across the horizon.

Wife decided she wanted a leather coat, and that region is actually the right one for that (a town nearby called Campillos) so we shopped a bit in Malaga.  I was actually glad - the sleeve ripped at the seam on my leather jacket and I was trying to decide if I wanted to buck up $5-800 for a good quality new one, and I ended up finding one with really nice leather (Zerimar from Campillos) for 180 euro.  Wife got one from Morgada Piel which is also very nice/quality leather for a similar price.  Then we drove to Gibraltar.

Gibraltar the city is pretty small and a bit grubby.  Reminded me of Port Aransas a bit in that way.  We had read that it was a pain in the ass getting in and out - we had no problem at all.  I think it may be worse if you come in early in the morning and leave late in the afternoon, which is what probably everyone else does.  We came in mid afternoon and the brit waved us by when he saw our American passports.  Stayed at The Rock hotel, which seemed like a kinda grand hotel that has gotten a bit shabby and outdated (but not as much as the other nearby hotels).  We had a couple of people kinda politely say that Gibraltar wasn't worth it - I can see how you'd feel that way if you drove in, took the cable car up, walked around a bit, took it back down, ate at a shitty pub, and then left.  If you're up for the hike though I thought that it was beautiful (going up the mediterranean steps) and really cool being right there on the very tip of Europe.  Monkeys everywhere, posing for pictures like they know there's a decent chance they'll ge some food out of it.  Just one night in Gibraltar, which was all I would've wanted.  Getting out in the morning, also no problem - the Spaniards waved us by without getting up.

Sevilla was cool - I think we just scratched the surface a bit there.  We stayed at the Lobby Room Hotel in one of the penthouse suites, which was really nice.  We did some shopping on Sierpes and whatever the other road is there - I think the wife was happy because all of their... upper mid places like Zara, Stradivarius, etc are actually cheap compared to here and so she got some stuff.  But I think Barcelona or Madrid would be a better city - I was kinda hoping I'd come across a higher end men's shop with Carmina cordovan leather shoes, but no luck.  Real Alcazar was a line - should've booked in advance.  It was cool, but I don't know enough Spanish history to really have appreciated or understood what exactly it was.  Plaza Espana was impressive.  I think we could have done a lot more of that type of stuff in Sevilla, but we were getting pretty worn out and weren't trying to do Cathedral tours and all of that kind of thing.  Got some pottery at the... whatever the part of town with pottery.  Ate a fuck ton of tapas.  Everything was pretty cheap.  We don't drink, but I don't know that we spent more than 70 euro on a dinner.  That was actually driving some of the shopping - we were way overbudgeted.  

Caminito del Rey - you have to get tickets in advance, and it can be closed down for weather or winds (as we discovered, thankfully they let you change the date and we were able to make it work).  That was really cool.  It was a really deadly trail/climbing path, but has been built up to be pretty accessible.  It was the most crowded hiking thing we did, and they let in groups of 50 every half hour.  But a really cool trail, and if you bust ahead of the high school field trip or old people walking side by side it's great and pretty breathtaking. 

I was a bit surprised at both how much I was able to speak functionally in Spanish, as well as how frequently that was a bit necessary.  Definitely not like Germany or Paris in terms of everyone around you also speaks English.  I had a great time - I really want to go to Barcelona at some point.  The trip was mostly hiking and eating, so I'm sure there's a lot we missed in terms of what at least Seville has to offer (although I did leave thinking it seemed like a smaller place than I was expecting), but I would highly recommend a trip to southern Spain where you drive and hike and see a lot of mountains and eat a bunch of tapas.  Also I made a not to learn how to cook pork like they do.

[Celery Man 20535]

also forgot that on the way back from Monachil/Granada, we took the A-7 highway along the coast, and that was a beautiful drive.

now that I think about it again - if I were to do the trip over, I'd get a fun car.  We were in a little Opel Astra, and I went with a manual just because it was cheaper (but I'm glad I did because it was fun).  The car was actually fine - it handled well and felt very similar in that regard to my sister's old GTI or my VW TDI (replaced in dieselgate), but it was slow.  Also, I forgot my international driver's permit (ruined my flight over, wondering if that was going to be a problem with getting a car, which it was not) and I was a little worried about getting a ticket.  If I had sprung for a fun Audi or something - the driving was great, and going up and down the mountains and on the surprisingly nice highways, it would have added another element of enjoyment to the trip.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Celery Man

[HenryJames 64907]

By Monaco do you mean Morocco?

[Celery Man 20535]

Sorry, yep.  Knew that sounded wrong haha.

[Mo Horn 8680]

Thanks CM. I love Southern Spain... hell I love Spain period. I've spent time in Cadiz and Rota and both great seaside towns. Love Sevilla as well. You said you didn't do the cathedral, but it's awesome. Also loved wandering though the small streets. I've not been to Rhonda but it's on my list. 

[Nueces River Rat 5485]

Very nice pics.

A 10-14 day trip to Spain/Portugal is on my top ten destinations list.   

[phdhorn 6224]

Pretty cool.

One of my bucket list items fo' sho' is Morocco, Gibraltar... and all the places they filmed The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly**, which generally is in North Spain south of Burgos, and way down in the Almeria region.  I'm definitely going to all of them within 5 years.  So this is cool.

**One cool thing that has happened is that the old Sad Hill Cemetery, which was 100% constructed for the film (didn't exist in real life) essentially through neglect was pretty much gone until 2015, when a bunch of enthusiasts got permission from the government to restore it.  They've dug it up and now you can go there and see it almost 100% like it was in 1966.  I will absolutely go there.

Edited April 7, 2019 by phdhorn