Sorry about the lack of updates here lately. It’s just that the Internet access here in Egypt has been sort of limited to that old-school method of using manual switchboards.
The operator operating this particular switchboard was nice enough to prioritize my bytes and I’ve pushed through a few packets of past blogs. Be sure to check the next page for an older post about Sevilla.
Will post more about Cairo in the coming days. Probably from Greece!
Once again, it’s a travel day. Here we go…
The Madrid airport is gorgeous!
Africa, here we come!
Holy Guacamole! The women here in Benalmadena are gorgeous! From our hotel balcony…
…we saw tons of ladies flocking down the street to the harbor area below. Naturally, we just had to see what the the hubbub was about. Who would have guessed this small beach down would have so many potential wives!?
The parties go late into the night here. And by ‘late into the night’, I mean into the early morning. We didn’t get back to the hotel until 6am!
After a nap till noon we checked out of the hotel well rested, and smashed out of the city on the way to Malaga.
Blog posts have been kind of lagging as of late. Sorry to keep ya’ll waiting, it’s just that all this traveling has been pretty tiring, so today it was a day of relaxing on the beach in Benalmadena. We didn’t really do a whole lot more than just lounge around by the pool and the beach.
After a long day of doing nothing we needed some food. We stepped into a nearby market on the way back to the hotel and picked up some cheese, salami, and tomato & oregano flavored crackers to make a little snack. Here now is a sequence of how the snacking went down. Starring our resident professional eater… Mr. Moore.
Step 1: Assemble mini-sandwich and insert into mouth. Chew.
Step 2: Laugh hysterically, causing yourself to inhale cracker crumbs, thus heaving the previously chewed snack out of ones mouth and onto the salami packaging.
Step 3: Repeat Step 1.
Step 4. Enjoy the pre-chewed delicacy immensely.
When Jay is happy, everyone is happy.
Like this happy guy sipping on some happy soup in a “Happy Dog” bowl!
With newly cleaned laundry on our backs (we were wearing some of it as well as carrying it in our backpacks) we boarded a choo-choo train from Sevilla to Cadiz. It was a really old train which is why I refer to it in the childish like manner. It took just as long to get from Sevilla to Cadiz as it did to get from Madrid to Sevilla, aka slow.
We got in at around 18:50 and picked up our rent-a-car right there in the station. We then spent the next couple of hours trying to navigate the province to locate our sleeping quarters for the night in the city of Jerez De La Frontera. It wasn’t easy, but eventually with a lot of trial and error and good old fashioned gut instinct, we found the place.
The next morning we hopped in the ride and set out back down the AP-4 freeway to the city of Cadiz, the most ancient city still standing in Western Europe. First order of business… FOOD!
After parking the car in an underground lot under Plaza San Antonio, we walked into a hole in the wall that had a decent looking menu. We needed to redeem ourselves from the last burgers we ingested, so we each ordered a fatty hamburger with lettuce, tomato, cheese, and fried egg! Mmmm. We should have heeded the warnings of our Aussie friends in Glasgow. He warned us that when ordering a hamburger, it realy does mean ham, as in meat from a pig. Not the cow variety. So no, this burger is not rare…. it’s just pork.
Either way it was tasty and gave us the energy we needed for the long walk through old town we were about to embark on. There are 4 different walking tours you can take in old town. The tourism bureau was nice/smart enough to color code each of the routes. In addition colored lines are painted on the ground to help you follow the yellow grey brick road. We picked up the purple line at Plaza de la Catedral…
…and then picked up the green line outside of the old town hall.
Finally we found Plaza de Espana (yes, another one)…
Which has the mega Monument to the Constitution of 1812.
From there we picked up the orange line and followed it along the old walls of the city…
…past some ginormous trees in Alameda that were supposedly brought to Spain by Columbus…
…to Castillo de Santa Catalina.
From this star-shaped fortress…
…we could see Playa de la Caleta.
So we walked down to the beach for a little R&R.
After all the walking and time in the hot sun, we were quite parched so we picked up a couple of liters of agua, and footed it back to the car. We need to start making our way towards Malaga where we would eventually pick up a train back to Madrid for our Cairo flight. We popped the Juzzie Smith CD into the deck and smashed out into the sunset on the way towards Benalmadena.
