Oddly, my first ever visit to Spain wasn't until 2002. I had had my digital camera for over a year but was still thinking like an analogue photographer. Only the previous week I had taken delivery of a new PC - Windows 2000, I think - to replace the one that had been running on Windows 95. I could find no photo editing programme that worked with Windows 95, and the PC didn't have the facility to burn CDs for back up.
Many of the photos I took were of Jimmy (or he took of me) working our way round the bars, restaurants and ice cream parlours of Mojácar, in Almería, south east Spain We went on two excursions into the mountains, and also to Granada, which I shall blog in due course. But we spent most of the time round and about the town.
We stayed in a lovely apartment block. Although we had only booked a double room we had a two bedroomed suite (no photos), and the complex included a few shops, a bar and a swimming pool (didn't use it). We had arrived late at night and the tour rep had suggested we turned right to find an English pub that served food. We turned left to find a Spanish place where I remember getting a filling & delicious fish soup. I later discovered that the English pub was much more of a walk, and would have stopped serving food by the time we arrived!
Unfortunately, we had the worst possible neighbours, an extended Irish family. We often spotted them round the complex, or around town, the adults palatic by lunchtime, the kids bored stupid and running around inside when every other kid in town was down on the beach. We were there during the World Cup, broadcast during the day from Japan and South Korea. When England were playing, the hotel laid on a big screen, and face painting for the kids, and this lot were pushing their way to the front, demanding Irish flags. At night they were noisy - but fortunately, we were generally drunk, so slept through all but the worst of their fighting. They left before us, and we had a peek into their apartment where the chamber maids had a Herculean task of restoring what was a wreck!
A pity, because there were several other parties we met from time to time to have pleasant inconsequential chats with, and they, like us, had deliberately chosen a resort that was less lary than some of the better known places.
We also ventured to the nearby fishing village of Garrucha a couple of times. Slightly bizarrely, when we were enjoying coffee in a pavement café we realised that the bloke at the next table lived on our road. He was waiting for his girlfriend - they had taken a year out to live over there, but were planning to return to Brixton. I never saw them again, so I guess they liked it so much they stayed.
