Discovering Andalucia

It's our favorite beach in Manilva at the moment.

Tourist site like www.turismomanilva.com tell us that this sandy beach (fine dark sand) is 1600 m long and 30 m wide (on average) and that the waves are moderate. I hardly can agree on the sand: to my mind, it's rather coarse sand with fine pebble, partially with some artificial additions of fine sand.

It's again about my own experience, i.e. about apartments up to Euro 50/day. And don't forget there are always exceptions.

1. Availability of your hosts. Normally your hosts will live not far from the apartment you rent, so you'll be able to get any help promptly. Foreign hosts are ready to help, too, but they often are in their country when needed, and in this case it may take some time...

I'm talking about the inexpensive apartments. I have never rented seomthing over 50 euro/day in Spain. The situation may be different in other price segments.

I also have never rented apartments from any nationalities other than Spain and Russian, so I won't compare others.

And apparently every rule has its exclusions; I'm just trying to summarize.

1. Size. Spanish people sleep in the sleeping rooms, prepare meals in kitchens and watch TV in their living rooms. Therefore, traditional Spanish apartments are quite small. Russian people like spacious apartments with large rooms and lots of space.

We've just relaxed for a half an hour and went to Mercadona for some food having left the car on the parking lot. It ws in Calahonda, the parking there is probably very good for such "jobs": no windows are looking into it, just occasional customers come in and out, not really often. Calahonda is really quiet, and we've been to the shop a few times, it's always been a pleasant experience... To make the long story short, it was the only time that we'd left the backpack in the car.

When we planned the upcoming trip, we were sure that the easiest way for us (as we love travelling by car and don't mind spending some extra money on this compared to buses or trains) would be to rent a car in Madrid. But this is in fact way too inconvenient.