Our Spain Experience: Torremolinos, Morocco, and Gibraltar Among a Few

So, due to the fact that we did not have a stable internet connection in Spain, the blog has been neglected and not kept up to date. That being said, we've returned to England, and now I feel the need to post some timely information on this website for all our family and friends.

We left for Spain last Thursday (October 18th) - after staying up all night in Gatwick airport, we were finally in the air around 6am and arrived in Spain to a balmy 26 degrees later that morning. We checked into our resort, only to discover that we had been assigned an incorrect room (a view of a busy street instead of the sea view that we had requested) -- so after some arguing and persuading with the front staff, we were assigned our new room with the sea view. The resort was also supposed to be all inclusive, but, we soon realized that our travel agent mislead us because no drinks of any sort (from Coke to any type of alcohol) were covered in our full-board arrangement. This was a disappointment, but, we tried to put it behind us and enjoy our break. The resort itself was in very convienient location -- very close to the main shopping areas in Torremolinos, and less than 5 minutes from the beach, where we spent a lot of time. All in all, the resort wasn't that bad - but, if I were going back to that area again, I would choose another resort.

While in Spain, we decided to take a couple of day trips to different regions by booking with local travel agents. The first of these day trips was to Tangers, Morocco, Africa -- so we offically stepped on another continent! Tangers was interesting -- a lot of building taking place, but many areas looked very poor and run down. The street vendors were VERY aggressive -- they kept in your face, and chased you through the streets until you finally went into another building or decided to buy something off of them. We did have a traditional Moroccan meal at a fancy restaurant and it was quite good. So, the day was long, and perhaps not as good as we would have liked, but we can now officially say we were in Morocco and Africa.

Another day trip we did during our vacation was the Rock of Gibraltar, which is essentially a huge piece of rock connected to Spain by a thin strip of land. What's interesting about Gibraltar is that it is offically a territory of Britain -- complete with the British Pound, all the shops, and everything else British. Gibraltar is a duty free island, which means the shops all sell things VERY cheap, including booze and tobacco (i.e. we bought a litre of Lamb's for 4 British pounds). Gibraltor also had a lot of cool tourist attractions -- there are wild monkeys that live at the top of the rock, and tunnels in the rock itself that were made by the British to defend against the Spainish and Germans during the war. Many other cool things as well, but it was raining during our visit, so it was difficult to enjoy the day. We were quite happy with the Gibraltar trip, and would definitely conisder going back there again at some point (for the shopping, if nothing else!).

That's all we'll write for now -- more pictures tomorrow, and perhaps we will add more to this post.