I love holidays
I love holidays. I do, I really do. They are great. Especially, as was the one I’ve just come back from, they are free. (Apart from spending money, which I managed to get through quite a lot of.)
I went with Alex, to Nerja, which is 60km east of Malaga. It was a bit “Brits Abroad”, but not too bad. I can imagine places like Marbella and Torremilanos are worse…
I urge anyone who is flying budget to anywhere in Europe not to fly with Monarch. Our flight on the way was delayed by 3.5 hours, and we were given FOUR POUNDS each in food vouchers as compensation. FOUR POUNDS. That goes nowhere in an airport, you can barely buy a cup of coffee for that. So then when we finally got on our flight, the seats were miniscule and the aircrew like weird fake people.
I spent a lot of the holiday feeling nervous about driving, as every day seemed to come up with a new driving challenge. First day – driving for the first time on the right, in the dark, not knowing where we were going. Second day – driving in the light, with lots of traffic. Third day – driving up a mountain, on the right, with no barriers to a sheer drop. You get the picture. The last day was actually the worst, driving through Malaga city centre on Saturday afternoon was hairy, to say the least. 4 lanes of traffic going into a badly signposted roundabout (and not knowing where to leave the roundabout), created a jelly like Becca. We did finally find some parking, nearly had a fit because we couldn’t read the tariffs and thought we were going to end up paying about 200 Euros for the day’s parking, but then managed to not speak to the very non-English speaking parking attendant and figure out it was only going to cost us about 10 Euros for the day.
So apart from driving experiences, the holiday brought a lot of Monopoly (travel set bought at the airport – initially felt tiny but very rapidly got used to), some sun, although not that much as Alex managed to get sunstroke on one of the early days that we had spent on a very windy beach, not realising quite how strong the sun was, and actual tons of delicious seafood.
The relaxed and rested feeling I had at the end of the hols was slightly ruined by a delay on the way back (I think I’m jinxed – out of 4 flights in 3 weeks, 3 have been at least an hour delayed), meaning I didn’t get into bed until about 4.30am, but I still can feel the sun on my face when I close my eyes…. awww….
So the next big thing is the move in with the boy! Very excited, but also very sad indeed about leaving The Catster and 3B. I am maybe slightly foolish in not having started to pack yet but I don’t think it’s going to take me too long. I may be wrong though. It feels like ages since I’ve moved and I know the last packing up procedure was super traumatic but that was more to do with us (when I say us, I actually mean me, with a tiny weeny bit of help from ex-flatmates) having to clear and clean the entire house which I suspect hadn’t been properly cleaned for nigh on 5 years. The imminent move surely can’t be anywhere near as bad as that one.
