The Price of Convenience

Big stuff up today.

I got the airport bus from Plaza Catalunya to Barcelona Airport. Mike's tip of the day - don't take it for granted, asdk WHICH airport (and terminal) the bus is going to!! Not a big deal in the end, 20 minutes on the complementary shuutle service put me where I needed to be.

Arrived at Malaga airport and decided to try an experiment. I ciould get a taxi from the airport to the hotel in 10 minutes for E20 to E30. The taxi driver last time was not happy with such a short fare.

OR... I could get the bus into Malaga, then change to the bus that goes past the (same) airport in the other direction to Torremolinos. Bus to Malaga cost E1.10 and took 40 minutes. Bus from Malaga cost E1.35 and took 30 minutes for the longer journey back. The round trip took me 2 hours and cost E2.45 plus E1.75 for an ice cream while walking from one bus to the other (a fairly long walk along a beautiful garden next to the port).

So you can work it out from there.

The really dumb thing happened when I got to Torry. I knew it would be a long walk to the hotel (the map indicated as such). It started out okay because I discovered some stuff we hadn't noticed last time around. I don't know how long it took but it felt like I'd walked at least half way to Malaga again (at least I could now "justify" the earlier ice cream) and the 33degC and backpack didn't help. This would really skew the "price of convenience" calculation if I knew how long it actually took.

Anyway at least I have a view of the Med from the hotel room (as well as a really good view of the next building) and the pool is really, really relaxing. It turns out All meals are included in my package (not just breakfast as I had thought) so that too is a bonus. This may not turn out to be a good thing, but in this neck of the woods it should be okay - the yummy stuff can wait another coiuple of days. The main down side (apart from being a fair walk to the town centre) is that the building next door (approx 100m away) seems to be directly under the flight path from busy Malaga airport, a bit like being at PEGS in Essendon when we used to take Thomas there for school sports. As long as the planes stay where they're supposed to go, it won't be a problem, the noise is low and isn't an issue :)

My few hours in the south of Spain so far have revived some memories from my previou strip:
-> How useless the tourist offices are, although it's not their fault I arrived while they were having their siesta.
-> It is more important for staff to continue their conversations with their friends on their mobile phones than it is to serve paying customers - they can wait, or if lucky they will be served as the conversation continues.
-> The roads down here are atrocious (except the freeways). I think the workmen have moved some of the barriersw and craters around from last time I was here, but the many roadworks are not keeping up with the needs. To be fair, the road INTO Malaga was much worse than I remember but the road OUT was a lot better (different bus, different route).
-> From the few places I've seen in Spain, the Malaga suburbs are the ugliest so far in my opinion.
-> This is not Barcelona or Madrid - the pace at which things happen here is much more relaxed. Not surprising really.

Tomorrow will be pool and Med, weather permitting.