My holiday in Spain had a very stressful beginning when we were extremely close to missing the early morning flight to Malaga. To start with it was a mission to travel from London to the airport while the tubes were closed, and after getting up at 2.00am Owen and I took a couple of night buses into the centre of town. We had booked seats on a bus which went directly to the airport but after waiting for half an hour at the stop we realised something was wrong. While exploring the surrounding streets to try and track down the bus stop we saw the bus approaching in the distance. Travelling in the other direction. Across a four lane road.
After a mad dash across the road (during which I got caught up in two fences) we made it on board and spent a very stressful hour hoping that the bus would reach the airport in time. We pulled into the airport carpark with five minutes to spare and we raced straight to security where things started to go badly. Apparently my handbag was so large that it counted as an item of hand luggage, which put me over the limit as I already had another bag with me. While dumping everything from my hand bag into the larger bag and starting to panic I managed to cut my thumb and then my bag split open across the zip.
I wasn't going to let a little thing like a broken bag stop me from getting to Spain, so I picked it up and started running through the line to security with items spilling out all over the place. My wild eyes and erratic movements convinced enough people to let me go through security ahead of them and Owen and I both made it to the gate before everyone started boarding.
It was at this stage that I realised I couldn't find my wallet which had £500 cash. Usually I wouldn't carry any where near that amount for exactly that reason, and ended up running back to the security area in the airport trying to find it. After 10 minutes of madly searching I gave up and made my way back to the gate when I heard my name being called over the loud speaker. I arrived gasping for breath and found Owen waiting for me with the money which he had found in his bag. Everyone else was boarding the plane and he had convinced the airport staff to wait an extra few minutes for me to get back.
After recovering from the airport stress we spent a couple of days sight seeing in Malaga and Gibrailtor which involved looking at many forts and castles, riding cable cars, being chased by monkeys, and taking detours through narrow city streets.
Owen and I borrowed the car for a day and went on a few adventures in the surrounding countryside. Our first stop was a tiny town perched on a hillside which is famous for the public baths. We didn't realise that they were closed during winter, but ended up spending an hour or so negotiating the tiny streets of the town. The most narrow required the side mirrors of the car to be folded in to avoid clipping them on the sides of the buildings! We were happy to leave the town with the car intact, and continued on to the Pink Lagoon in hopes of seeing some wild flamingos. After a covet mission through some olive groves we managed to get close enough for a distant view of a handful of flamingos, but didn't stay long in case a shotgun wielding farmer was in the area.
Spain is another country I really want to go back to at some stage, there is so much more to see!
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