Andalusia

Preamble

How hard can it be to arrange flights to the south of Spain? Harder than I thought if you want to travel outside the main tourist season, which as far as the airlines are concerned ends on 31^st October! This trip needed to take place during the Autumn half-term break, which in 2012 included the first few days of November. In the end the best solution turned out to be to take a one-way flight into Malaga and another one-way flight out of Madrid. Actually it was to a little more complicated than that, while Lynn would indeed fly into Malaga and we would both fly out of Madrid, I would be arriving in Spain by surface transport from Morocco.

The plan was that we would meet at Hotel Las Americas, chosen for its location in the centre of Malaga very close to both the train and bus stations.

The plan for us to meet in Malaga works out perfectly, the journey from Morocco went fine with just a small wrinkle, I mistakenly got the ferry from Tangier to Tarifa instead of to Algeciras. I still managed to arrive in time to meet Lynn at the airport only for her plane to be an hour late. We didn't get to checkin at our Hotel until nearly midnight. Nick, my travel companion from Morocco, joined Lynn and I for a snack and a drink before we parted ways. Nick and I had left Chefchaouen before 07:00WET and the clocks in Malaga were changing as we drank so when you called it a night at about 02:00CET I had not the slightest idea how long we'd been on the go! Goodbye to Nick and back to our hotel.

We've joined up and it is now time to set off for the sights of Andalusia!

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Afterword

We travelled ~350km (~220miles) by bus and about the same distance by train. The terrain and scenery was attractive and both forms of transport were comfortable, on time and resonably priced. I supect that one day we will return to Andalusia and visit Seville, Toledo and some other places that were not considered for this trip.

The Good

I found this trip to be very enjoyable. It was unhurried and the public transport meant that even the travelling was relaxing. I liked the city of Granada, not too many tourists and plenty of places to eat that were frequented by local people working and living in the city. I am glad that we opted for Cordoba in preference to Seville, the Mezquita de Cordoba exceeded my expectations.

The Bad

Nothing particularly bad comes to mind though the Alhambra and Generlife of Granada did not quite live up to expectations. Don't get me wrong, it was magnificent and I do not regret visiting but my expectations were high.