Saturday, 11 November. After a nice breakfast buffet at the Tropicana, we walked to the Nautilus for a 9:00 a.m. presentation on "Andalusian Culture and the Flamenco." It was very good. The professor who gave the lecture was accompanied by a woman who demonstrated many of the Flamenco movements. Afterwards we had lunch at El Candil with Tom and Kyoko. At two we left by bus for a tour of nearby towns of Marbella and Mijas. The weather was overcast and misty. Marbella is a very upscale resort town on the sea. It has beautiful parks, expensive condominiums and houses, and very exclusive shops. Many entertainment stars and other celebrities have homes there.
Mijas is very different, a village of whitewashed houses perched in the costal mountains. There were donkey taxis available to ride to the upper part of the village, but we preferred to walk. On the way, we sampled the delicious sugar coated almonds being prepared by a street vender. We saw the smallest Plaza de Toros in Spain, as well as the shrine of the "Virgen de la Peña," carved inside in a big rock by monks in 1548.
We got back to the Nautilus at 6:20 and decided to stay there (in the bar) until dinner at 7:45 instead of going back to our hotel first. All eleven of us staying at the Tropicana had been invited to have a "special surprise" dinner at the Nautilus to help make up for having been "bumped." We all sat at the table waiting for the "special surprise" while everyone else was going through the buffet lines. We finally realized that they were not going to give us anything that was either "special" or a "surprise," so we started the buffet. It was quite lavish with many choices. When we got back to the Tropicana, we had to repack our suitcases. We packed the smallest of the three with what we'd need on the overnight trip to Seville and Granada. Everything else went in the other two bags that would be moved from the Tropicana to the Nautilus while we were gone. |
