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Costa Del Sol |
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Our drive along the Costa Del Sol wound through ocean-front cities like Malaga, onward to Mirabella, and eventually to La Linea where we spent the night at the Hotel Mediterraneo. Along the road we saw stone watch towers dating back to the days of the Barbary pirates.
We stopped beside the Mediterranean. Dot went wading. The sand was gray and coarse, the water chilly. Nonetheless, Dot can honestly say she went in the water along the Costa Del Sol!
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Lunch was at Mijas, a beautiful village on a hillside.
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The residents were preparing a festival scheduled for the evening, but of course we couldn't stay for the celebration. Some of the inhabitants were dressed in festival garb. The little girls were charming in their dressy fashions.
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We drove through Malaga and eventually arrived at the yacht club at Mirabella. Mirabella is a mecca for the world's rich and famous. The enormous yachts below were moored across from the car rental agency--which rented porsches, ferraris, mercedes, etc. No economy cars for this clientele!
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Hotel Mediterraneo was adequate but definitely unpretentious. Its central air conditioning system broke down just as we arrived. (At least that's what the proprietors claimed.) That was troublesome because the hotel was right on the coastal highway and persons who left their balcony doors open in the evening for fresh air, had to contend with traffic noise throughout the night. Some in our group may have been bothered by this.
Dot and I, on the other hand, felt the hotel was delightful. It was right across the highway from the beach. As they say in the real estate business, "Location! Locationi! Location!" And, from the hotel, we got our first glimpse of the Rock of Gibraltar. What a sighting!
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I took a swim at the beach. The water was oily from the many ships passing through the straits of Gibraltar; it had a fishy stench; and it wasn't particular warm. In short, it was the kind of swimming experience that only a child would enjoy. And indeed there were children (besides me) swimming and playing on the beach. Some hammed for our video camera. When I got back to the hotel, I took a shower with my swim suit on--and even wearing the sandals and t-shirt I had used for crossing the road. Everything was full of oil and smelling of fish! But Hey! I had my dip in thm Mediterranean near "the Rock." For us, the Hotel Mediterraneo couldn't have been a better place!
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Early the next morning, "6, 7, 8 Kate" hustled us off to Algeciras for our ferry crossing to Tangier, Morocco.
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