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..............Cindys Gallery - Photos of my Life
Our flight to Madrid is with EasyJet, the terminal is ordinary, you know you are travelling budget class, there's no allocated seats, so a mad scrum starts as soon as boarding is announced. Two hours later we touch down in Madrid, we have to wait 30 mins for our ride to the hotel and the bus is a wreck and the driver was miffed he didn't get a tip. The Hotel Intur in Palacio San Martin turns out to be very nice and very central. We booked the cheapest room available, so no surprise that it is at the very end of the corridor with a view out over the dustbins. The view was not actually over the dustbins but its a saying we have, after once booking a cheap room in Agra that did look out over the bins. Madrid is hot, about 36c during the day so an afternoon siesta is called for. About 6pm we head down towards the Plaza de Oriente which has gardens, but not like Paris. Here it is hot and dry with little grass to talk of. A few cafes surround the Plaza and at first I thought they were watering their plants, but no it was a low tech cooling system. From each corner of the large umbrellas a mist of water was being sprayed into the air. The spray was so fine it evaporated before it could wet anyone and cooled the air.
Hotel Intur
Plaza de Oriente
Plaza Cafe's

We only have 3 days here so day 1 is spent doing all the sites on the west of our hotel, the Palacio Real and the Catedral de Ntra Sra de la Almudena. We paid 6 euros to enter the Cathederal via the museum, just round the corner you could enter the church for free. The museum was dreadful, the first exhibit was 2 rooms with the most gawdy murials in bright colours with lots of gold. The rest of the exhibits were a testament to how much money the church has wasted on the finery of relgious office, crowns, jewels, elaborate costumes. Cindy and I are atheist, the whole religion thing is bit of a mystry to us, and to see so much money spent on frivolous artifacts. Much of that money came via the collection plate, donated by poor people over the centuries to fund a lifestyle they could only dream of. During this visit Cindy's runners decided to come apart, the sole of one was flapping open at the front, this from a nearly new pair of $4 runners from Tesco's!

Palacio Real
Cathederal
Interior of Cathederal

The city has some great buildings, many of them owned by the Cathlic Church, others Government Istitutions. The older parts of town are narrow with cobbled streets and some wide "pedestrian only" streets that are packed with people in the evening. Pavement cafes are everywhere with people drinking beer and dining on Tapas. The old city is home to many people living rough and begging. This is a problem in a city that has no public toilets. Toilets are available in most resturants but they are for patrons only, so you have to buy something. This is an example of P.P.P. (Public Private Partnership) the city saves money by not providing toilets and the cafes gain by getting extra custom. There is just one fly in this ointment, what do the homeless do?. They don't have money to spend in cafes which leaves them with no toilets. You see where this is going, they piss in doorways, corners, behind rubbish bins, in fact anywhere. On a hot day the smell of urine is very strong, walking down the street it suddenly hits you, sitting at your outdoor cafe with that smell is not pleasant. Maybe with time you don't notice it, not a nice thing to say about a city but it's true.

Mayor Square
Puerta de Alcala
Monumento a Alfonso III

Sunday is market day, Madrid is home to Europe's largest flea market with over 3,500 stalls. The main street of the market is fairly typical apart from the Spanish fans and castanet sellers. The side streets are full of antiques, collectables and junk, well it looked like junk to me but as they say "one man's junk is another's treasure". We have a friend who would have loved it, we kept saying "You would never get Graham out ofhere". Cindy had her eye on the crowd in the hope that "Enrique Iglesias" would appear and whisk her off to lunch. She had to settle for a baguette on a park bench, bummer! Our last evening was spent doing a little shopping for Cindy, then a meal at a cafe, yes we did check for the smell before sitting down.

The key cutter
Spanish dresses
Junk?
We arrived at Malaga airport and had to wait for a bus to go and pick up our rental car. Cindy had chosen Malaga Car Rental as they said they had cars less than one year old with full insurance. Rental car companies couldn't tell the truth if their lives depended on it. They wanted extra money to cover wheels, tyres & windscreen and the car was 4 years old if it was day! Scratched, dull paintwork, dirty inside, stained seats etc etc. It was cheap and they had people waiting for cars to check in, so we had to just take what we were given. The drive down to San Pedro took about 45 mins and the directions we had were great. We were about to start our second house swap. John had been at our house in Phuket for a couple of weeks by now and seemed to be having a great time. We collected the keys from the next door neighbour and headed for the front door. John had given us instructions on how to turn the alarm off, but when you know you have only seconds to de-activate the alarm you get all fingers and thumbs.
John's house
Very comfy
Outside dining

The house is a sprawling quaint villa with rooms everywhere, patios on 2 sides and a pool, for the first few hours we kept getting lost. The garden is a real pleasure and reminds us of our old home in the Gold Coast. Wednesday we head into Marbella (pronunced Mar-bay-er) to have a look around, the traffic is heavy, the streets are narrow and parking is hard to find. We visit a local shopping mall and decide to call it a day. Next morning we are off into the hills. First stop Ronda an old Moorish town built on a fortified promontory above the Rio Guadalevin river, about an hours drive away. We walk around the town visiting the main sites including the Plateresque Colegiata de Santa Maria la Mayor, a church built over the remains of a 12th century mosque, the minaret of which is still retained. We have lunch in a small square below the old fortification and while eating, men arrived in local dress riding Andalusian horses. Then the horse drawn carts with girls in those tight fitting Spanish dresses with all the ruffles around the bottom and hands. I don't mean the ruffles were around their bottoms, they were at the bottom of the dress, nice thought though. Cindy was in heaven running around with her camera taking pictutes of horses and costumes.

Ronda
Santa Maria la Mayor
Children playing
Frilly dresses
Traditional dress
Andalucian horse & rider
Next stop Grazalema nestled below scree mountains rising to a height of some 1,644 meters. Nearby are the last few surviving Pisapos (pine saps/trees) left over from the last Ice Age. The Pueblo (town) has the same central square with diners having a late lunch, narrow streets of white washed houses with pots of bright red geraniums. Apart from the diners the town was almost deserted. We next head to Gaucin and this was where our day started to go wrong. I was driving and Cindy is sitting in the navigators seat, well it may be the navigators seat but that's where it ends. Cindy can't read maps, in fact she might just as well have a knitting pattern on her lap. After 30 mins we arrived at what Cindy thought was Gaucin, there was no sign as we entered the town and I never checked that assumption. A wander round town, few pics of the church and the bull ring and it was time to go. There were no signs when driving out and we ended up going out the way we had come in. Turn round and give it another go, there should be 3 roads out of town but I could only find 2. We took the 2nd road but after 20 mins we found a sign A313 and Cindy convinced me it was not the right road, even though the sun told me we were heading in the right direction, we turned back. On entering the town again we asked for directions it was now we discovered that the town we were in was called Cortes de la Frontera, some 30 kms from Gaucin. So we headed off down the same road for the second time and found Gaucin 25 mins further on, but by now it was getting late so no time to stop. I can get grumpy when things go wrong, I can hear Cindy saying "tell me something I don't know", at my age I'm allowed a little grumpy, it comes with the grey hair and creeky knees. A note from Cindy.... Derek has omitted to add ...... had we stopped to ask directions an hour earlier (as I repeatedly suggested), we'd have saved ourselves a lot of time & frustration. Why won't men ask directions? In fact if you google this question, 4,440,000 results come up! I rest my case.
Cute houses
Local sign
Bull Ring
John, who's house we are staying in, arranged for a friend to contact us and show us around Marbella. Victoria turned out to be a delightful Spanish woman, who teaches French at a local high school. The 3 of us had a walk round old Marbella then stopped for Tapas at a small street front bar. The Tapas arrives on large plates each piece with a cocktail stick to pick it up, you take what you fancy. At the end of the meal they just count the number of sticks and charge for the Tapas plus the wine. Victoria wanted to pay but it was our treat, she then invited us to lunch at her place in Puerto Cabopino on Saturday.
The Rock
British Postbox
Gibratar Street
Today we are off to Gibraltar about an hour's run down the coast. Not sure of the history between Spain and Gibraltar but I think it's a bone of contention. There are no road signs with directions to Gibraltar, even when you can see the rock quite close. It's not until you are 1 kilometer from the rock that the first sign appears, by now we are in the line of traffic waiting to cross over. We had been told not to drive onto the rock but park on the Spanish side and walk, we found a park and hoped it wasn't too far to walk. Gibraltar airport is on a thin strip of land just before the rock, the only way on is to cross the runway. As we approached, a plane seemed to appear from amongst the buildings and take to the air, we crossed the runway and passed through the almost non existent passport control and saw our first British phone box. English Bobbies, Union Jacks and British Fish & Chips all topped of by a Mark's & Spencers store!. It was like England with sun. The streets in the old town are narrow and filled with character, the main square is all cafe's and resturants serving good old British food. The thing we did notice straight away was TOILETS, they were round every corner, clean and open to the public, we could drink and not worry about finding a loo. We wandered around for a couple of hours then sat down for Fish & Chips. They weren't special, dry fish and rubbery chips but the service was good, the english girl who served us was very chatty.
We have found that service in Spain is not very good, most people don't look happy, they mumble Ola (hello) but no smile and a face that say's I'd rather be somewhere else. We are spoilt in Thailand, the land of smiles, not only do people smile they put their hands together (Wai) and bow when you walk in. You can't complain about the Spanish weather however, 32c everyday and blue sky, the wine is good and cheap and beer is really cheap. If only we could take that back to Thailand. We have visited all the small towns just inland from the coast, we find the coast very busy and the traffic very fast, I'll not complain about the Phuket traffic when we get home. It was Cindy's birthday on 8th September and she wanted to go back to Ronda for the day. We had lunch and found some more of the town we had missed the first time.

Our time in spain is coming to an end, we have a very early 6.30am start for the airport and a 45 minute drive in the dark to get there.

Continued on Next Page Next stop Turkey