We departed Seville at 10:00am for our long drive south through the White Hill Towns to our destination of Algecitas on the southern coast. That would be our hopping off point for our trip to Tangier, Morocco.
The first part of the drive from Seville was not pretty until we started getting closer to the hills.
Our first town to visit was Zahara. I got separated from Ed's car and we ended up going to the top of the town by the castle and coming all the way down through the very narrow streets. But, we found it charming and waved to all the locals as they had to step almost in a doorway as we passed.
Zahara - from the distance - our first White Hill Town
This is the old castle above Zahara
The roads were very narrow, hilly and curvy so the driving was very slow going. We stopped in Ubrique, about the half way point, for lunch. We just drove into town and parked in the first parking space available and Ed continued down further in town. We meet up with them on the street. We stopped a couple of different times to see if the "restaurant" was serving food. We found them to be a bar and no food. We continued searching and a local told us where to go. It was a small place and the bar was in the front of the building so they escorted us to the back room.
We all felt safe eating the breaded or roasted chicken. It turned out to an a great meal and more like home cooking than most of the places we ate.
After lunch I think the whole group was about done driving the twisting roads and wanted the expressway. We arrived on the north side of Algeciras and had some trouble finding the hotel where we had reservations. We were staying at the AC Hotel by Marriott that is located on the corner of two busy streets and the hotel did not have a driveway for registration. Ed just parked on the narrow side street the hotel was on and went in to find out where we off load. I drove around the hotel and on the other side of the building was another hotel and I parked near there driveway.
We learned from the less than friendly or helpful registration staff there was a problem with our reservation. I had made it for us to all have "half board" that was dinner off the menu. We were told that our room didn't include dinner and I would have to deal with the company I booked with…
The hotel bar and restaurant was not open until 7:30 and it was only 6:30pm. We would have been happy to have a drink in the bar and wait until the restaurant opened but they were so snotty about the whole thing, everyone opted to take their business elsewhere. I opted not to join the group for drinks and dinner. They ended walking about a mile, cursing the whole time, before they found some place to eat. Ed didn't even get back to the room until close to 10:00pm. I had had a hot shower and curled up in bed reading.
The following morning was going to be an early start for our trip to Tangier, Morocco…I'll save that for the next blog.
Peggy
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