Hello everyone - I am back on Random after a totally indolent week in Sunny Spain with my daughter, Kathryn. We ended up in Torrelominos, a resort I last visited when I was about 17 years old and very nervous at travelling abroad to what was then an exotic location. This resort, along with the dreaded Benidorm, and Magaluf in Majorca, has acquired a poor reputation over the years as being the home of weak Sangria, Fish and Chips, Tea like Mother makes and wall to wall bars full of drunken teenagers. When I told friends where I was going their reaction was to hoot with laughter, but a few years ago I was in Fuengerola, a little further along the coast on the Costa del Sol, and found that it was a much improved resort with an immaculate beach and a wide promenade, also clean and litter free, where the daily passagiata could take place and I found the same here.
I had booked flights from Manchester and Stansted to Malaga and Kathryn and I met up in the arrivals hall, grabbed a cab and within 10 minutes were checking in. Picking a hotel on the internet is a tricky business and it is good that Expedia and Trip Advisor publish opinions and comments from 'real' travellers who express their thoughts cogently and very funnily at times. On Expedia the ratings for this hotel were pretty high, with reservations about the food. On the Trip Advisor site, some of the comments had me in stitches with one recent visitor calling the hotel, rather worryingly, Fawlty Towers. However, the die was cast and off we went.
First up we had an excellent bedroom, the best in the hotel as we found afterwards by checking from across the road - two windows, one looking out onto the swimming pool in garden grounds, beautifully kept and the other larger window looking out to sea and with a wonderful view of the beach (which was literally ten yards from the hotel entrance). So we were happy with that. The hotel was attractive, unpretentious, comfortable lounges and bar area, cleaning was excellent with as many clean towels as we wanted and asked for and, as mentioned, the beach was a hop and a skip away.
Downside, the reception staff were not exactly brimming over with joi de vivre, but as it was getting towards the end of the season and they had probably had a bellyful of tourists by then, one could understand their vivre had worn a bit thin on the ground. Had very little to do with them anyway, asked for an extra pillow and got one, they ordered a taxi to take us to the airport on departure (minimal chat: Ok and yes it is coming) and then ignored us when we finally left, no waving of hankies and shouts of Adios but could live without it.
BUT the main downside was the food. The comments on this on the aforementioned websites had ranged from 'Excellent' to 'Dire' so Kathryn and I were quite keen to see which camp we would join. Breakfast fine - cannot really go wrong with croissants, pastries and the obligatory eggs and bacon etc (though the coffee was undrinkable and tasted of washing up water), but the evening meal was simply DREADFUL. It was help yourself and most evenings we hovered at the counter stirring the individual tureens and trying to work out what was in them. Stews which seemed to consist mainly of bones with the odd bit of meat attached to them (it tasted rather strong and I suspect it was dead bull after the matador had done with him), meatballs that clearly had no meat in them at all, chicken thighs - all thigh and no chicken and fish with so many bones in that eating it was highly dangerous and we gave up on that very quickly. One glorious night, Kathryn was eating something, chewing with a thoughtful look in her eye: 'Mum can you taste this and tell me if you think it is fish or chicken'. Well I did and my response was that I did not have the faintest idea. And then, on the odd night, good soup, delicious cutlets and some fresh veg. But only once or twice. Luckily there was a salad bar handy but by the end of the week I felt if I saw one more lettuce leaf and chopped raw onion, I would go mad.
In a weird way, this food issue kept us entertained all week as we would try and second guess what delights would be in store for us and we spent most of the evenings giggling over its awfulness. However, as the other guests in the hotel were troughing it for all they were worth and going back for second and third helpings, Kathryn and I began to feel that we were being overly critical though on further consideration, I don't think we were.
But we had a good time - the holiday did what it said on the tin. We had sunshine, glorious blue skies, a golden beach (half empty and we could sprawl all over the place and change sunbeds as we wished) and we sunbathed, slept, read books and in the evening sat at the outside bar of the hotel with a drink and played cards and talked and laughed. Incidentally, the bar had a cappuccino machine that made the most wonderful coffee with whipped cream and cinnamon on top which rather put the brekky brew in the shade.
Now books read during the week:
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Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant. Only recently discovered her history books set in Renaissance Florence and thoroughly enjoyed this one.
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The Earth hums in B Flat - Marie Strachen. Debut novel recently sent to me by Canongate. Kathryn annexed it, read it and said Mum you are going to love this, it is great. Well, I did and it is and will be posting about this separately
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Archangel - Robert Harris. A fun spy book Kathryn brought with her. She gave it to me to read and after 50 pages, my cut off point, decided life was too short to waste on this and gave up.
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The Water Horse - Julie Gregson. Ditto.
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Bleeding Heart Square - Andrew Taylor. Ditto. Very disappointed about this as I have found his others, particularly the Lydford mysteries, very good.
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The Madness of Queen Maria (Life of Maria 1 of Portugal) - Jenifer Roberts. Sent to me just before leaving and as I know zilch about Portuguese history was intrigued by it - read and enjoyed very much. Another one to post about separately.
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The Luck of the Bodkins - PG Wodehouse. Total mad complications of an assorted bunch of lunatic characters on board a cruise ship. Very funny.
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The Lost art of Gratitude - Alexander McCall Smith. The latest Isabel Dalhousie novel by this author and out of all the various series of his I have read, these are my favourite. Picked it up in the airport specials section of WH Smith at Stansted and saved it up for the journey home. Loved it.
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Huntingtower - John Buchan. Another ripping yarn this time involving a retired grocer who goes for walking tour of the Highlands and ends up rescuing a kidnapped Russian princess. Great stuff.
In between I read the paper, did the crossword and Sudoku and dozed.
Kathryn's return journey was a bit of a pain as it took her two hours to check in at Malaga airport which was heaving, but I was very lucky. Flights to and from Stansted were spot on, I was able to park my car there and though I flew Easyjet where there are no seat allocations, as I was on my own, I managed to get a spare seat at the front of the plane on each flight, left the plane first, got to the baggage reclaim first and on both occasions my bag came up pretty quickly. This does not happen to me very often. I then left the terminal on my return, found a bus to the long term car park was ready to go and within half an hour of the plane landing I was in my car and ready to drive home. This has to be a record and as I know the route back to Colchester very well and it was a sunny day and I put the radio on and poodled back home, I felt very relaxed and at peace with the world.
I then got home and found several parcels of books waiting for me, and a couple of catalogues from publishers telling me to mark up what I wanted and they would send them to me.
So, all in all I am a happy (and nicely tanned) bunny....
Ola everyone it is good to be back with you all.
