Our flight back to Holland wasn’t until evening, so we had one last day to explore the Costa del Sol. We drove into the quaint town of Marbella. We walked along the oceanfront and through a promenade filled with sculptures by Spanish artist Salvador Dali leading into the old city center of Moorish alleyways. Here the kids are enjoying a 3-course lunch in the main square. It’ll be hard switching back to sandwiches after all those excellent Spanish lunches.
Jimmy didn’t belay the whole day as he also got to do some climbing. After they each climbed this rock face twice, it was time to move onto another location.
Can you spot Ashlynn? She’s the blue dot just about in the center of this photo. They didn’t actually climb all the way up this rock, but managed to get pretty high as advanced beginners. While they were busy being daredevils, I went into a small mountain town with Sally’s family for a nice lunch and to stop at an aloe vera farm.
Despite the exceptionally late return from Morocco, Jimmy was able to get the girls up early the next morning to go rock climbing. He hired a British rock climbing instructor who met them at the climbing school to get them geared up. She took turns climbing with the girls while James belayed.
No surprise, but the girls had no fear on their first outing to climb on real rocks. They had complete faith in the equipment and really liked the instructor. They were disappointed that the boys weren’t able to come along, but didn’t let that stop them from having a great day.
Unfortunately, our 5pm fast ferry turned into a 10:30pm slow ferry without dinner. Lucky for us, all four kids are generally good natured and just shrugged it off. While David,Veronica, Sally and John managed to get couches to lay on, Ashlynn, Andrew, James and I slept in chairs. To complicate matters, the ferry took us to a different port than where our cars were parked, so we didn’t get back to the villa until after 3am!
The shopkeepers were very polite, but there were several hawkers that followed us around trying to sell us bracelets and wooden animals. Poor Sally had a horrible time getting away from this persistent hawker. Unfortunately, his obnoxiousness paid off because Ashlynn couldn’t find a better wooden camel.
Our original plan was to tour Tangier until 5pm, then jump on the fast ferry back to Spain. Mother Nature, however, had other plans as her winds were kicking up and the fast ferry was cancelled for the night. Rather than having to wait for several hours at the ferry terminal, we were brought to a nice hotel to hang out and await updates from Said.
Next we ventured into the Medina, Tangier’s shopping area, which is also a maze of narrow alley ways free of cars and bikes. Our stop for lunch was at a local’s restaurant, but as we were the only ones there, it didn’t seem very local. Regardless, the food was excellent, especially the chicken covered in a sweet pastry dough. After visiting an indoor food market, our tour guide dragged us to several crafts cooperatives and a supposedly government-run spice shop. No surprise, but we preferred to wander the little shops on our own.
