Spain! Oh my love, you are as good as I expected. With a few surprises.
Spain is just fantastic. My favorite part of Spain is the food. Such PLEASURE was absorbed by eating such whole, pure, real foods, untouched by preservatives or salts or a fistful of seasonings. It's just not needed.
We toured Andalucia. Starting with Malaga, this city was a little better than I expected! It's clean, beautiful, has towing buildings in the city center with fantastic shopping (not for me) and tapas bars. The architecture is fabulous. There is a castle and roman theater on the hill in town that makes the place feel old - cause it is!
The best part about Malaga was ordering the seafood platter and a pitcher of sangria on a mellow beach. This was absolute indulgence.
Granada is fantastic. I figured out the bus system and caught public transportation all the way to my AirBnb. Although I got sidetracked for 2 hours because I didn't have wifi and my host wasn't home, so I spend the afternoon hopping tapas bars and discovering that tapas in Granada are FREE! What a concept. Nobody gets too drunk or belligerent. I got some great hangout time with my hosts Monika and Miguel and a few of their friends. What wonderful people they are, fully engaged in their city and proud to take us to their favorite bars. Walking the gypsy neighborhoods in the backhills and taking picture after picture of the Alhambra were my days there, and trying to judge the next best tapa bar in between.
After Rus arrived and we had TWO HUGE BAGS to handle together (I think in my mind I was secretly hoping to move to Spain, so I brought EVERYTHING), we started fantasizing about having a car. We checked prices, which turned out to be cheap and do-able! So we grabbed a car at the airport and headed off to our home-base town Olvera in the best mood ever.
Olvera is a gem. It's a sleepy town, but a close community that has everything you need. Everyone says hello on the streets, and we can see that people don't recognize us. The siesta hits hard at 2pm, when the whole town shuts up and sleeps until 5.
With our trusty car, we were able to explore all the cool things around Olvera. Given we only had 8 days , I'm sure we didn't see it all. Every day we drive down the winding hills to leave the town, with olive groves as far as you can see!
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