Aug 26 - mind boggling

Sandy said it best.  The drive from Valencia (well, just south of Valencia) to Malaga was done on the inside route, vs the coastal route.  We picked "no tolls" and the gps did its job -- still Autovia all the way but no tolls.  We hit a maximum elevation of 3000 meters, if I recall, and the entire drive was huge vistas of olives after about the first hour or less of a 7-hour drive.  1000 square kilometers of olives ?  More ?  Of course that's all that we could see, but there's more.  Amazing.

Olives notwithstanding, it was a very scenic drive, much more interesting than the day before.  We stopped once for a snack and got to Malaga just after 5pm.  Then the gps led us astray, trying to take us on streets that were either one-way the other way, pedestrian walkways, no-drive zones ... we circled and found that not only couldn't you get there from here, you couldn't get there from anywhere !  It was Florence all over again, deja vu all over again.  The historic district is a no-drive zone and it's large.

So, we found a big blue P and headed down, parked the car and used the bike gps to get us to the hotel.  What a beautiful city !  It wasn't a long walk and soon we were in our hotel, back to the car for luggage and back to the hotel.  Parking will be paid through the hotel as I'm sure that paying directly would be the same as in Florence, i.e. parking costs more than the hotel.

We've been researching trips to Tangiers and have found that a) we probably don't want to stay overnight and b) we should probably use a tour group rather than simply booking the ferry and doing it that way.  Horror stories abound otherwise.  I expect that it's going to be like visiting Tijuana -- vendors pressing in everywhere -- I'd skip it but it's on Sandy's must-do list. 

Time for some pictures ... these were all shot with iPhone during/after dinner.  First off, look at the size of this squid !!  Protein to the max !  Then there are some shots of the streets, blocks and blocks and blocks; the historic district is quite large.  We'll be exploring that today as well as likely extending our stay and doing a day trip to Tangiers from here, rather than Algeciras SP.  That may mean four nights at this hotel, which will make things easier anyway. 

Oh yes, time for laundry as well.  That seems to come so quickly.  Next time perhaps I'll travel with a huge supply of old underwear and throw them away as I use them although the multi-packs from Walmart are cheap so I could use new ones as well.