Maps Motorways and Mental breakdowns!!

It's been a pretty hectic last couple of days on the move from Barcelona into Alicante, Grenada, Ronda and Marbella. The weather has been pretty crap so far with rain and low teens temperatures.

We picked up a rental car in Alicante and ths surely raised my stress levels for the first time on our adventure. It took us over 1 hour to get from the rental car spot to our pension which were only about 500 metres apart as the crow flies but with no map on hand, ne way streets everywhere so of which I couldn´t say for certain I drove down the right way as they were only just wide enough to fit one car at a time.

After this it was time to navigate our way to Grenada .. a relatively easy task we thought as we had our bulletproof directions off the web (via Michelin great website !!). The only problem was the navigator got a bit premature with a turnoff and we ended up on the right freeway but heading on the wrong direction (Valencia) & straight back in Alicante we we started from about 45 minutes previous. All was not lost atleast we now knew the right way out of Alicante and young Elise learnt the error of her ways and paid a little more attention to the map and signs.

We were now feeling pretty good and commending ourselves about successfully heading in the right direction being on the road for over two hours when l suddenly realised that I had left my passport at the pension reception .... BACK IN ALICANTE!!!!!! So I had to take a few deep breaths to get myself together. To say I was unhappy would be an understatement, and I was tempted to call them and ask in my best spanish to post it to our next destination but this seemed all too risky as I obviously am not quite fluent in Spanish and really did need the passport. So Elise convinced me to turn around and go back to collect it.

Arriving back in Alicante it seemed like a bad Chevy Chase movie where the humble little roundabout turned into Big Ben. Eventually 3 hours after picking up the car we were on the road and arrived in Grenada after 6 and a half hours of driving a journey that should have taken us 3 hours.

You will be happy to know that we have since driven from Grenada to Ronda and from Ronda down to Marbella without any of the forementioned dramas so the mood in the car has been alot cheerier!!!! I must say I am even attempting the dodgy European car parking in the streets after taking the easy but expensive car park option at first attempt.

We finally got some sun today in the south of Spain at a place called Marbella which is the Monaco of Spain which as the pix show there is certainly no shortage of money around.

It is quite a beautiful place but we were just so happy to see the sun shining. Hopefully we'll be able to get our shorts out of the backpack soon as we are really over wearing the same pair of warm clothes.

We leave the little town of Ronda tomorrow for Tarifa the most southern tip of Europe hoping for more warm weather.