Spain Day 1 and Dan's First entry.

Saturday 14th February 2009

Hiya, Dan here. Thought it was about time I did one of these things, so here I go.
Now if I were a superstitious boy, I would think the world was trying to tell me something. Lucky I'm not.

After giving Benita a Valentine's Day card, a rose and cooking great bacon and eggs, we missed our bus to the train station. A second bus came 8 minutes later, just in time to reach the station and watch the 9.02 train leave the station, nice. But the 9.10 train was going to get to Fenchurch faster.

The "express" train to Stansted Airport left 15 minutes late.
We had three extra stops at stations.
At the station before the airport (which we shouldn't of stopped at) we waited for 40 minutes for a, wait for it, freight train to clear the tracks ahead of us. Not a very good start to the day. We got to Stansted with 20 minutes to go before check in closed, close shave, we were almost one of those people on the TV show "Airline" going crazy at the EasyJet person, almost. The rest of the flight to Malaga was uneventful, except for Benita's ears being blocked and well painful. Got out of the airport around 6pm local time.

Now with our trip planned, the bus between Granada and Valenica was going to take 10 hours, we decided to hire a car and drive around Spain. We had our International drivers licences and google map directions and off we go to the hostel in Malaga. What a great little idea that was…

Our little Silver Kia looked nice, Benita decided to drive first, oops, wrong door, they drive on the other side. Our drive was going to take 11 minutes, says google. Did it take that long?? I hear you ask. Well what sort of story would it be if it did…

We drove around to the departures car park, not where we were supposed to go, Benita is getting a little flustered. We found a freeway drove down it for a while in a south west direction, wrong direction, but was the right road we found out an hour later on the return trip after driving around an army barracks and 2 other highways. Benita was nearly having a panic attack now as she was putting the windshield wipers on every time we needed to turn and not finding the right gear, or gear shift (it's on the right). We turned off the E15 and the correct turn off to the A357, but alas trying to follow the google directions we found our way back onto the E15. We took the next turn off and travelled around a bit trying to find a servo for a map, but no luck. Benita couldn't handle it anymore, so we parked in a side street, to look at google maps, our mobile internet didn't work, it should have but didn't.

Dan's turn to drive. We find our way back onto the E15 and took the exit to go to the A357 again, got on it this time, drove for 30 minutes, thinking 1.5 km should take this long. It shouldn't, direction again. Found a servo, just off the main road. They had maps, but they didn't show the Malaga roads, great. No one at the servo spoke English very well, one of the girls working there tried, I got somewhere with her, found one of the roads we were supposed to take and discovered we had left Malaga. Drove back into Malaga, on the A357, off at the road just before the one we needed, got it second go. Drove on the road veering right just like the directions said, only to get back on the same road again. We went past the Carnival; happiness going on, but no time for that today, it's dark now and we need to get to the hostel. Now both of us are getting sick of not being able to read the street signs and forgetting where the gear shift is and turning on the windshield wipers, so we parked in a carpark and started walking. We decided to start asking people if they knew any of the roads near the hostel or the Church Victoria, which was near the hostel. Found a German guy who tried to help us, but while his English was good, he didn't know Malaga very well. Found a Spanish guy who tried to help us, but his English wasn't very good but pointed us in a direction towards a tunnel. After asking some other people near the tunnel for directions, then walked though it. Still pretty lost, no sign of the hostel or church. Benita is nearly in tears by now and I've got a case of the swears going. Until we found this wonderful woman at the taxi rank who said she lived near the church and could walk us there!! We were close! It took about a 15-20 minute walk up to the hostel, but we made it! Only took us 4 and a half hours.
Checked in, nice place, Casa Babylon Backpackers. Our helper said it is new, as she hadn't heard of it before. It looks nice, too much incense burning, but nice. Walked back down to the taxi rank to get some dinner at Café Istanbul- pizza and pasta; real Spanish. We couldn't read the menu very well but we recognised some words, like carbonara and bolognaise and champignons, so we had a nice meal. At least ordering Coke is the same. We decide to move the car closer to the hostel, so we walked back to the car, paid our 5 euro fee and went looking for a park near the hostel.

That took another hour! After finding the hostel nice and easy, there were no parks at all anywhere, but gee the Spanish are creative with where they park! Drove along one way roads (the correct way, I know what your thinking, Dan driving, I stayed in the correct side of the road, most of the time, only stopped at some traffic lights once on the wrong side), and drove along tiny little roads between buildings and up a hill and through the tunnel again, past the hostel 5 times and the church 4. Also managed to find a narrow, winding path only big enough for our little car, in the complete black of forest, which wound around a dirty big hill. Benita was a little scared… Ended up near the taxi rank in a full car park that we can stay in for 24 hours for 23 euro. Nothing like sign language and writing things down so us and a parking attendant that doesn't speak English can communicate. So in bed by 1am, finish blog by 2. Benita is asleep, bless her.