A Tale of Two Cities

Last weekend we drove to Nerja, another city on the Costa del Sol about 40 kilometers west of Malaga. As it was just the weekend our trip to Torremolinos, the differences between the cities could not have been more apparent. To borrow liberally from Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of tourism, it was the worst of tourism. It was the age of wise development, it was the age of foolish development was the epoch of cultural exploration, it was the epoch of the packaged tour, it was the season of rain it was the season of sun, it was the spring of friendship, it was the spring of family reunion.

Nerja is a lovely jewel whose geography has saved it from the fate that has befallen Torremolinos. That is, it is nestled among some very steep cliffs and the beaches are really coves, rather than wide flat expanses that lend themselves to great hulking high rise hotels. Thus, it has retained a wonderful character where people travel to experience a relatively authentic Spanish city. In contrast, Torremolinos makes little illusion about being anything other than a beautiful beach where foreigners can vacation with little to no interaction with the locals.  

We traveled to Nerja to meet friends from England. John Cole is married to Ian Ratcliffe’s (Tom’s very good friend from Darden) sister Jane. We haven’t seen them in nearly 10 years. They have children the same age as ours, and in the same order. Zoe and JT were thrilled to have English speaking friends and the children got along beautifully. It was a vacation for all of us as they entertained themselves non-stop during our entire visit.

Unfortunately, both Friday and Saturday were intermittently rainy. We made the best of it by taking the opportunity to visit the Nerja caves on Saturday morning. We took the audio tour and really enjoyed it. The caves were vast and with many beautiful formations. The most stunning was a 32 meter column in the center of a gigantic chamber called The Hall of Cataclysm. Over 8,000 years ago an earthquake hit causing parts of column to collapse. Apparently, there are cave paintings also, but they are in much smaller chambers and one has to take a spelunking trip to see them. By Sunday the weather turned and the sun finally shone. Zoe, Tom and I all swam in the Med. It was much, much colder than in September, so it was in fairness a very short swim, but wonderfully refreshing.

We ate some wonderful meals and JT ordered gambas pil pil which is basically shrimp scampi at each of them. Zoe and Georgie (short for Georgina) had a little dinner party one night. We went into Nerja central town for dinner and the only available tables required a configuration of 2 from our group sitting separately.  It was a nice place and we didn’t want to subject anyone to a couple of 8 year old boys--even our extremely well-behaved lot J, so the girls sat together.  As you can imagine, they felt quite “grown-up” and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. (I thought of my friend Jana living here while learning Spanish as I passed a language school in the town center).

Sunday afternoon we went to an amazing paella place on the beach. Apparently, it was once regularly featured in a Spanish tele-novela. They alternated 3 paella pans, each 4 feet wide and stirred with paddles. The chef’s shin guards” made of cardboard stuffed into his socks. The place had at least 80 tables. Paella was 6 euro and one could take their plate back to the paella pan for a refill. Given the Spanish tradition of Sunday lunch, the restaurant was quite busy. We were told that the wait is really exciting in the summer as there are a lot more people and the restaurant has no queuing system. Even better, it’s an all cash establishment. It was a perfect ending to a very fun weekend and the children were really bummed when it was time to leave their new friends.