As we drove farther up the slope from downtown Nerja to our apartment for the next stay of our Andalucian road trip, one thing was becoming disturbingly clearer: things like cafes, restaurants and especially grocery stores with a wine aisle were rapidly disappearing altogether. The little hideaway bungalow that would shield us from the […]

  After departing Estepona, we stopped for our first fill up with the Fiat Cuisinart that we’d rented. Mind you, if a couple of thieves just picked the entire little dude up and carried it away, it might set you back as much as a two-stage snow blower, yet the car came with a key locked gas cap whose […]

  We were not able to reserve our little hacienda away from home for four consecutive weeks here in Rota. So, after much discussion (Carol: “We’re renting a car and taking a road trip!” she explained) we mutually agreed to rent a car and take a road trip.   Carol found a cheap car rental […]

  I was going to tell the story of our return trip to Rota chronologically. But since my objective in the return was to recapitulate my life at home – that would be: reading, writing and …well, watching baseball (at home) but staring blankly at the Atlantic Ocean (here) – such a simple (and boring) […]

Our upcoming European trip will be different on two fronts. First, we’re going for the longest stretch for one excursion: almost six weeks, give or take. Secondly, “excursion” is a misnomer. For we’re going to spend all this time in a place we’ve already been to and had extended our stay once we got there. This time, we’ll be expanding […]

Days 16-19 Beach Boy   When Carol and I first got together, I had stated unequivocally my opposition to sand, the reality of it, the very concept of it and the grit of it that manages to find itself into every crevice and moving part of my body – especially  and particularly how it winds […]

Days 12–15 Nothing happening and loving every minute   These blogs are written from a daily journal I keep when Carol and I travel. It’s little more than a tick-tock of the day’s activities, no matter how routine. Nothing of what I record is worth a blog itself; the notes are meant to jog the […]

Days 9-11 Meet the Rotarians   The winds had calmed, which meant our day-trip to Cadiz would be by ferry and not by bus. You might remember that Cadiz had been our original planned destination, but thanks to Carol’s monumental screw up, we wound up in Rota, and as Robert Frost said of the road […]

Days 6-8 Paradise extended   Carol and I had been in Rota for exactly four days, during which it rained on all four. On the fifth, the weather broke. We walked Rota’s Beach and streets without umbrellas and sat out on our rooftop terrace, all for the first time. In spite of the sometime sideways […]

Days 3-5 Devon and the Deep Blue Sea   While the weather remained quite unsettled by wind and rain, we were still able to take advantage of the breaks to make a couple of discoveries that would help define our stay in Rota. The first couple though, not so much.   A friend of Carol’s […]