Hotel Spa Armuna Oasis Almeria

... I headed back into town. There were two restaurants I had spotted earlier that looked good. But guess what, they're both closed for personal rest. Hmpf. I found another place that looked decent-ish. I ordered the pasta with gorgonzola sauce. Oh. My. Goodness. It was like they took a hunk of blue cheese, melted it down and poured it over pasta. It was so rich and biting. Ugh. I covered it with salt, pepper, olive oil -- even vinegar, because it was on the table and I ...

I am on my way to Cabo de Gata from Granada. I, as usual, didn't do diligent enough research and so ended up in Almeria with a 4 hour layover. Normally I would be ecstatic about this as that is plenty of time to drop my bags at the station, roam around on a city bus and get a feel for one more Spanish city. However. Almeria doesn't believe in baggage drops at the station. In an "I am Josie. I am American." moment, I walked to a hotel to leave my bags there. No. Neither being ...

... really interesting. We decided to check out the cathedral instead. It was ok but nothing like Toledo's. We didn't really like anything in Almeria - so we headed on our way north to Cabo de Gato. We traveled another 30 minutes or so and found a long stretch of white beaches with a small little town (also pretty shut down for the winter). We drove on in search of the Parque Natural - but ran into a dead end at a huge lighthouse and observatory. Our gps was all over the ...

... it turned into sand and stones. We could barely walk the bikes. This seriously slowed us down. Whats worse is that it meant that we ended up on the grotty outskirts of Almeria as it got dark. Desperate for a place to sleep we went to check out under a motorway bridge. Whilst we were down there we saw some kids needlessly kill a goat with rocks and sticks. Not a great site to be honest. I still thought it would probably be alright to stay. They were only kids after all. Quote ...

Returned to San Jose. Next day drove around to the town of Cabo de Gata, saw the salt-pans, went up the the "Cape", saw the incredible beach of Cabo de Gata, had great lunch there, then went around to the beach at Monsul. Eventually decided I HAD to leave!! 

... The terrain became more and more barren. This is the area where all the "spaghetti westerns" (Good Bad & Ugly, etc) were filmed in the 60's and 70's. Allegedly because it looks just like Arizona, but I wouldn't know because I've never been there. Reputedly, it's the driest part of Europe.  I headed off the motorway towards Tavernas, spotting a couple of "Wild West" towns along the way, and went to "Mini-Hollywood" which is basically a theme park. Having ...

... 2009 ESPAGNE vers GRANADA on les fait fuir et on se couche...lendemain matin, grand soleil, on voit un pecheur arrivee de son bateau et decharger sa cargaison directemet sur la plage, du coup, on prend 1kilo de seiche a 8euros et les lave dans la mer. On se baigne apres mangerm un peu fraiche mais trop benefique... on se decide enfin a reprendre la route pour granada...

... park it offers a pleasant retreat from automania and all the noise pollution that goes with it. Once we all regrouped we enjoyed exploring just a few dozen of the 2800 rooms in the Palace Real. It was pleasing to see a fresco in the dining room depicting Columbus returning to Queen Isabella with exotic treasures from abroad. One of them of course was cocoa beans. Following suit we took to the shops to find some treasures of our own. The kids can ...

... She loved our nightly visits and would bray excitedly when she saw the couple with her cucumbers coming to see her. The next morning we were greeted by our new dog friends Haba (fava bean) and Concha (shell) who licked us and wagged their tales at us until we were awake. After breakfast on our terrace (mmmm, the best pear yoghurt), we drove to San Isidro to the Sunday open air market that was a mixture of Spanish, Moroccan, African, and Lithuanian stalls selling vegetables, CDs ...

... de français et d'arabe. Tout le monde s'installe. On va faire les papiers pour la douane pour la voiture. Papa et moi avons laissé des papiers dans la voiture. Tant pis ! On va manger à la cafet et tout le monde mange pareil... « Monsieur M___ Jean-Baptiste est prié de se rendre au bureau d'information ». Il y va. Il faut les papiers et il les trouve pas ! On monte pour les trouver et un jeune qui a le même problème râle, ils refusent ...