Spain diary, 6th entry
At this point in our adventure we were getting tired of moving, every day or 2 and we also wanted to experience life in a small town. We booked ourselves to an AirBnB in town/village called Alora, about 30 kilometers North-West from Malaga.
We booked a traditional townhouse with one bedroom and roof patio, hoping we can relax there reading a book, sipping nice wine. It did not dissapoint, but we will come to that in a minute. As is becoming the norm, getting there was an experience worthy of description.
I’ll start with an advice. Read carefully the instruction on AirBnB. I will also say that one of the lures of this particular accomodation was free parking in the description. It did say it is on the street, it did say it is not always in front of the house but there is always space nearby.
I punched the directions to navigation on my phone and off we go. As mentioned, we feel a bit queasy at this point and really want to be somewhere with bathroom close by. Thankfully it is only about 20 minute drive. Alora shows up on the horizon, nice looking village snaking around a hill. We enter the city and approach the address through increasingly narrowing winding roads. When we get to the street we are heading for, it looks like the chance of finding a parking space on it is pretty slim, but we carry on. Maybe it will get better around the bend, where the house is. It did not get better, but it got narrower. It was obvious we won’t find a parking on this street. I decide to push on, go around the corner and drive around adjacent roads to find a space. As I start to make the bend in our huge Hyundai i10, I notice the corner of the house is getting dangerously close to my door, while the front bumper is almost scraping on the opposite side. Gulp. What the hell do the locals drive here ?? I barely make it and continue. The next bend, which will get us on the bigger road, is even worse. Not only it is tighter, but it is also in what seems like 45º incline. I start making the turn and it became clear that I won’t make it in one go. Not to worry, I’ll make it multiple-point turn. Only I have about 1 foot of space to do it in, on a45 degree incline. To make things worse, some helpful local lady gets out of her house and start giving advice to my wife, who is now outside, showing me how many inches of space I have on which side of the car. My wife does not speak spanish, so the exchange is not very productive. Following 3 minutes are kinda tense and sweaty, doing many very small shuffles with intense usage of manual handbrake. I am very glad I got a manual, there is no way I could do this in an automatic, without having to do some heavy masonry repairs on the adjacent houses. We made it out with a scrape on the car’s door handle, because the door handles stick out of the car by about 2 centimeters.
Now about the lessons learned from this. Google maps does not show this street as passable. I didn’t notice. The description on AirBnB also does not recommend to go through the street, before checking you can fit with your vehicle. Preparation is everything. It is also boring. Adventure can be exciting, not always in a good way and also expensive. I guess as with everything, it is all about the balance. Being spontaneous is not always a good thing.
We finally found a parking space on nearby street. We were happy we made it, for many reasons. The house was very nice and charming, clearly very old building. It had 3 rooms on 3 levels. 1st kitchen, 2nd living room, 3 bedroom.
4th was a rooftop patio. The mornings and evening spent on the patio, eating olives and drinking wine were spectacular.
It was relaxing few days where we did not much else, in part because we felt sick for the good part of it. It will be a long time until I have fried sardines again.
Staying here was defnitely good way to get immersed in the way the locals live. We could hear their kids screaming well into the night, often past midnight. It was good and just long enough to make us excited to go back to the city. Our kids arrive soon and we can’t wait for them to see everything. We are looking for a place to stay until our apartment is ready to move in. Another hunt for an AirBnb starts :)
