Our flight from Boston to Spain was mostly uneventful–we played games and watched movies, slept, and ate around the non-vegetarian meals we had gotten by mistake. A favorite moment was our stopover in Ireland, where I finally got to see HOW GREEN that island really is! (Um, can we go there someday, please?)
But then we arrived in Spain. For quite a long time, we thought our luggage was lost and ended up standing around forever in a long line at baggage claim until we suddenly realized everyone else around us was speaking English. How was it that only the American baggage had gotten lost? Finally someone came and told us that our luggage was in a different part of baggage claim. I’ve traveled internationally quite a bit, and this had never happened to me before. How were we supposed to know? There were no signs to tell us so. We eventually found a separate, smaller, dimly-lit room (totally not visible from where the rest of our flight got their bags) and there was our luggage! We had to scan them through an additional security check (also weird!), and then we were finally on our way to the rental car place.
Yay, we have a car! A very tiny car.
Prior to the trip, Erick had downloaded an offline GPS so we could get directions to the timeshare, which was more than an hour away from the airport in Málaga. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. Lol. Well, it kind of did–enough to get us out of the city and onto Spain’s version of an interstate. Ask Erick sometime how he enjoys Spanish on-ramps. It’s funny, cuz there aren’t any. It’s just a stop sign, basically perpendicular to the freeway, and you have to wait for a gap in traffic and then just floor it. We also very quickly learned that our little Opel didn’t have any horsepower, either. Only a few hours into married life, and I was already seeing a new side of Erick! Just kidding. :) He was actually really calm–just pretty annoyed that the car wasn’t going…anywhere.
Hoping we were headed the right direction, we eventually crossed over the mountains and caught our first glimpse of the Costa del Sol. It had been pretty cloudy for most of our drive, but suddenly the clouds parted and we saw the Mediterreanean, bathed in sunlight. It was more perfect than I had imagined. I tried to take some photos, but I think I was distracted trying to interpret the GPS directions leading us to the road our resort was on, Calle de Cádiz. We drove through a pretty coastal neighborhood (at least we saw a quintessential Spanish town) but ended up on a cliff overlooking the sea, no hotels in sight. We came to the conclusion that there must be more than one Calle de Cádiz in Spain. Or maybe it just loosely describes any road on the way to Cádiz. Lol. At least we got to drive through awesome narrow roads like this. (Not my photos, just things that look really similar on Google Maps.)
But now where we supposed to go? We stopped several times to ask for directions from locals, but this little town was nowhere near the touristy part of the coast, so it was tough finding someone who spoke English. A few people seemed to understand the word “Marriott,” but it was hard to tell with the language barrier exactly where we were supposed to go. We basically just had to keep stopping and asking for directions–sometimes having to backtrack the way we’d come, and sometimes getting stuck on these weird side roads that paralleled the freeway with no obvious way to get to the “on-ramps.” It was definitely an adventure.
And then, finally, we found the Marriott! Woot!
Except… it was the wrong Marriott. It was the Marbella resort, which coincidently my sister had stayed at several years prior when she lived in France. Fortunately, the nice man at the gate both spoke English AND had a handy dandy card with directions of how to get to Playa Andaluza, the resort where we were supposed to be, which was only a few miles away. We weren’t the first guests to end up at the wrong resort, apparently. :)
At this point we were tired enough that we had a hard time even understanding the directions on the card, missed the exit, and had to back-track once more, but FINALLY we made it to our destination. A trip that was supposed to have taken about an hour and a half ended up taking us over four hours, I think. But it didn’t even matter. We’d seen some parts of Spain we hadn’t expected to and bonded over our misadventures, and now we had found our beautiful resort. We weren’t complaining! Check out the view from our condo!
Our first order of business was getting something to eat. We were both too exhausted to get ready and go anywhere after being out that long, so we ate a delicious meal of egg rolls and curry ramen from the resort marketplace.
Yessss, instant food. It was absolutely delicious. We sampled some of the chocolates given to us by the concierge lady (newlywed perks!) and then collapsed for a long nap.
Next time: We wake up at an ungodly hour of the night and have more adventures. :)
