Almeria was a breath of fresh air, actually it was a breath of sea breeze but you know what I mean.
Our accommodation, Hotel Don Angel, was right on the beach outside of the city centre.
Ofcourse, we arrived during the heat of the afternoon without having stopped for lunch. Oh dear!
The hotel itself didn’t have parking for our car – how rude – so we had to park with the plebs by the road ☺
As it was a hot day there were heaps of people at the beach so we found ourselves parking down the road slightly.
Side note: I’m not sure how people learn to drive in Spain but how people park is very amusing. Nobody parks inside the lines of the parking bays. It’s amazing. They cannot park on an angle in between the two lines no matter the size of their vehicle. Steve and I would often look at each other in bewilderment at how obviously people had missed the bay.
After checking in our primary mission was to seek out and eat food – oh and before that we went looking for an ATM.
We endeavoured to stick to the ‘designated ATMs’ of our bank to avoid any extra fees.
This was harder than it seemed some of the time and when it came before food, very challenging.
Sustenance needed… now!
In the end we walked in to a very local pub for sustenance. There were only locals inside and nobody spoke English.
The food smells were amazing so we settled in and tried to read the menu, which was a tad challenging because it was all in Spanish. In the end we both got our phones out and used Google translate to do exactly that, translate the menu.
I was very happy with a salad and chicken while Steve ordered the grilled squid which was no lie an enormous whole squid. Amazingly, he managed to eat it all – okay I helped a little bit.
Another successful food mission which was completed with a little cup of gelato just down the road.
Of course we checked out the beach which was made of small pebbles rather than the white sandy beaches like home. We even dipped our toes in the water but OMG it was too cold for anything more than that.
Instead we went swimming in the hotel pool, wimps I know.
Exploring Almeria
A run down of our exploring the local area. So, we checked out the local shopping centre. I found a Pizza Hut Restaurant, which I got rather excited about and we just had to have thick crust pizza.
We wandered around the mega shopping store, not to buy anything other than food snacks but it was fun just to wander. Plus, we found chilli sauce to have with our cooked chook – yumo.
For something different – okay maybe not so different for us – we checked out the local castle, Conjunto Monumental de la Alcazaba de Almeria.
Conjunto Monumental de la Alcazaba de Almeria
Built by Arabs in the 10th century the fortified castle sits on top of a hill with an impressive view of the surrounding area.
Like all extravagant Arab structures, garden areas and water play an important role in the architecture. Here was no different, with beautiful layered gardens, fountains and running water throughout to simulate heaven.
Did you know in the Koran, heaven is described as gardens with flowing water.
Some may notice from the photos; that the parapets are all rather phallic shaped – I won’t say anything else about that.
We also wandered around the city of Almeria and accidently found the Guitar Museum – insert Steve happy face here. Listening to historical video footage of Narciso Yepes play the Concierto de Aranjuez on a 10 string Spanish guitar. It wasn’t a big place but it was Steve’s happy place for a little while.
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