Home

The dawn of the final day and I remember being excited to go home and see Edinburgh again, whilst being surprised at how quickly everything seemed to go. Out of habit, I cleaned the hotel room while packing the suitcase for our return voyage and made sure the room looked as though we'd never been there. We still had a couple hours after checking out, so we decided to go walking around the town one last time and pick up last minute gifts for friends and family, and even a little something for myself as a souvenir.

The taxi arrived at our former hotel and I felt comfortable to speak to the driver in Spanish while heading to the airport, while switching to English to speak to my friend and sometimes mixing the two up. The journey to the airport was nowhere near as long as the one to the hotel as I didn't feel exhausted like I had on the way there whilst there was also minimum traffic and a beautiful, sparkling coastline to watch wistfully. 

Overall, the airport experience wasn't too bad as security was quick, along with baggage and there were plenty of seats in which to wait for our plane home. Whilst in Spain, I felt a constant undertone in all that I did of discomfort due to not being a part of the Spanish culture or being particularly good at Spanish, but when we arrived at the airport and sat with a bunch of people from The UK, comfort came back and I felt able to relax for the journey home. We sat together this time and mainly watched YouTube videos/ Netflix for three hours before landing in Edinburgh and being back home.

To summarise, the trip was good overall and I enjoyed being able to walk in warm weather whilst eating fresh, local food, despite an undercurrent of discomfort marring slightly what should have been a great time. I'm not sure if I'll visit this particular town again, only because there are many place in Spain I'd rather visit first but it was definitely a good place to see with plenty to offer even if I didn't take the town up on all of it.

Granada!

After having booked a hotel in the wrong city, I felt as though it would be prudent to visit the capital of the region and see what I'd inadvertently missed.

The day did not start off the best; we woke up at 7AM, as we had done each day of the trip, and decided to try a Spanish cafe before heading to the coach station - the food itself was nice but I somehow forget the Spanish definition of customer service and punctuality is different from the British idea. As a result, breakfast took much longer than anticipated and we had to rush to the coach station, which was a 20 minute walk away. Whilst we arrived at the station in time to catch the bus, there was only a single seat available which caused us to wait an extra 40 minutes for the next one which had no seats together but at least it took us both to Granada. Once the bus arrived, we took our place in a long queue of animated Spaniards and pretended we belonged there. The next two hours weren't the most comfortable as individually, we were next to people we couldn't understand in a country we were unfamiliar with and the bus route went along las sierras, which meant we were being driven along narrow and twisted mountain paths on a coach. Needless to say, this experience is was the catalyst for getting my driving license.

Arriving in Granada, a sudden realisation hit us both: what do we do now? This was not an easy question to answer, and thus, led to walking around the city in order to find the main part with all the interesting shops and beautiful sights. Now, due to my inability to walk past a bookshop, we ended up a little sidetracked after taking photos in the Parque Federico García Lorca by a few bookshops which then led us to walking around aimlessly until we saw a signpost for Alhambra and decided to try and find it using the signs around the city. This turned out to be the best thing for us to do, as it enabled us to see the city whilst having a goal in mind and made the adventure more comfortable. Once we got to the bottom of Alhambra I excitedly started running up the hill whilst my friend just walked. Upon reaching the top, we got some beautiful views of the city, although that was all we got due to Alhambra being closed at the time. We decided to call it a success anyway, until we reached the bottom of the hill again. My friend rushed to the bottom this time, which ended up being a bad decision due to both his inability to speak Spanish, and attraction of pan-handlers to popular tourist spots. When I reached him, he was trying to get away from an elder Spanish woman who was speaking quickly in Spanish about blessing him and his family before handing him lavender and asking for money.



For safety, we decided the best idea was to walk back to the coach station after this to make sure we were able to get the earlier coach due to there being 4 hours between that and the next. The rest of the time in Granada was rather uneventful as we walked through side-streets for fun and talked about my friend being scammed out of nowhere. Though, I do remember hearing a really interesting series of conversations while waiting on the coach; there was a Dutch, University of Granada professor speaking to someone on his phone in Spanish to a colleague, before then taking another call in English from someone in The UK about a student's admission status being blocked by lack of funding due to Brexit, and listening to a Dutch man in Spain speaking English to someone in the UK whilst making sarcastic comments about Brexit is a hilarious event to witness.


If you'd like to see what to do in Granada, then this video has you covered;

The Initial Incident Through to the First Day

This story begins, as with all the best ones, with a mistake. I had been wanting to go back to Spain to practice my Spanish after having spent a bit of time there by myself the year previous, but didn't want to go by myself whilst also not knowing where I wanted to go; just somewhere in Spain. This was the first issue, without knowing where to go I asked a few Spanish friends to get their recommendations and through this I heard Granada mentioned to me at each pass. Due to the praise I'd heard, I decided why not? What's the worse that could happen? As such, I asked a friend to come over so we could look into everything and this is where it all went wrong; like me, he just wanted to go on a holiday in general and wasn't too fussed about where BUT one stipulation is that he wanted to do the booking himself through mine and his discussion about what we could do and what would suit both our interests. I decided "You know what? I want to be in charge of booking the trip, I'm sure it won't be too bad" and thus I took the reigns, we talked and after much discussion on what we would do whilst in Granada, we found a hotel with good reviews, a price to match and next to a beach, it sounded perfect! It wasn't. There was one small snag with the hotel we chose to book; it wasn't in the city of Granada (which is where we wanted to go) but instead the province, which is a bit of an oversight on my part. Neither of us realised this until around a month before the flight and we had to hastily make some plans and extra bookings as a result, demonstrating the effect that stress has on a relationship; not the best.

The day arrives and neither of us are sure of what's to come; all we knew was that we were going to spend over an hour in a taxi heading down through Spain to the coast, which was surrounded by mountains. An extra snag, though deliberate one, was the time of our flight. It was 6AM. My friend was extremely adamant that we HAD to be at the airport at least 3 hours before the flight. Nothing is open at 3AM, and that's not even mentioning the debacle we faced in regards to parking at the airport nor our activities prior to leaving (which weren't sleeping nor relaxing). From arriving to the airport to getting to the hotel in Almuñecar, a long story short is as follows; from spending an hour doing nothing in the airport whilst sleep clouded our minds, through to two extra hours of doing nothing before we encountered our first problem with Ryan Air; lack of clear queue signage. Then there was the long 3 hours on a tight flight without the ability to sleep due to having Aisle seats. Once we got off the plane at Malaga Airport, we then had to see through the hoards of taxi drivers to find our own. The hour drive to the hotel felt like a lot longer as the lack of sleep and heat of Spain got to us whilst I tried to make small talk in Spanish to the driver. Once we arrived at the hotel, I instantly realised how small the town was as not even the receptionist spoke English; usually I'd be happy with this, but after no sleep, I wasn't the most thrilled. After a little stumbling, I managed to procure the keys to room, directions on how to get there and find out a little about the area. We then decided, for some reason, to climb the nine flights of stairs to our room with our suitcase and bags and by the time we got there - we were ready to collapse onto the beds. Looking around our room, we were impressed for the price: a fair size, decent balcony with a view, and a nice kitchen area. Setting our bags down, we realised that we wanted food and went for a walk.



The water glistened on a warm day as the promenade stretched out before us and the local sights settled in our vision and we said to each other; this might not be too bad after all, just need some food first and see where that takes us. Our slow walk took us through the charming old town of Almuñecar with winding brick streets and twisted alleys, onto a large open park filled with green. We settled upon a little tapas bar and enjoyed our meals immensely after not eating for a while. Walking seemed to be the word of the day as it's what we ended up spending our time doing with so much nature to see around the town. By the time we arrived back at the hotel, we decided to relax and play some games on the TV with my Switch before calling close on our first day.