The start of everything

meal on the sidewalks

So getting there was a complete pain although for some reason everyone was in a good mood and no arguments came! We arrived in Grenada in the evening (flights are cheaper when you fly to Granada instead of nearer Nerja or Neehee as it came to be called which would be Mallaga!) and it was a BLUE SKY!!! AND HOT! Floods had been constant in Sheffield for the last month and Doncaster had become Doncaster-under-water and nights out had to be planned on when there would be the least rainfull. So basically, summer had yet to arrive in green England and we were escaping the floods in order to find the sun somewhere in Europe, and Spain is a pretty good bet.

  So we arrive, and wait...and wait.  We'd booked this minibus to come and collect us from the airport and take us to the villa but it didn't seem to be there...so we looked around....people from our flight seemed to be quickly disappearing onto their own buses, taxis or cars....eventually we found a bit of paper with the number to call in case of problems. They spoke Spanish. We had only two spanish speakers with us. So the girl that organised it gave the phone over to Livi and after some confusion, they said they'd send someone right away...so we sat and waited and waited.....believe me when they say the Spanish are relaxed about timing they certainly are. It didn't turn out to be a bad wait though. We had all our suitcases and hand luggage and outside the front doors of the arrivals gate of Grenada airport we made a circle and played card games. When forgotten about and abandoned at a froeign airport, play cards!!!! No one paniked though, which you might expect from a group that size but we all realised that there wasn't much we could do, so lets wait for the bus guy to arrive.

Maybe when you travel you should have some idea about where you're going. Sometimes it may be a good idea to plan even if you aren't organising the trip. Just a bit of advice. So when the busguy eventually turned up, say about 1030pm we thought yay! lets go to our spanish home! no sir. you will not be doing that.

Nerja is actually miles away from Granada, i never knew that. and none of us had eaten since the MealDeal at the airport in East Midlands (bloody good plan though, very cheap, ideal!) So we started weaving through the mountains, occasionally glimpsing the sea and the moon.  Hannah and I retreated to the back of the minibus where Ellen and Matt joined us shortly and soon we pantively sent up cries about our stomachs and when that all turned to dust we started messing about. The driver didn't seem to know where he was going and we soon got sick of seeing signs for Mallaga everywhere...where's Nerja!!!!! we expected it to be signposted at SOME point.

  That point arrived around 1230am but then finding the house. With no real directions and Hannah and Livi sitting at the front with the driver.  He soon began to lose his temper and left the bus to go into a restaurant. A restaurant=FOOD. it just seemed like too tempting! Eventually he returned and we actually wondered how much english he had understood when we had talked about how useless his driving was (he didn't seem inclined to change gears). Somehow we got into the right area but then another problem arose. We didnt know which house was ours and their were two 28's....what the hell!!! Ellen found a woman who was one of those snobby middle class cows who think that just because they own a villa in espania that means they are by default better than the rest of humanity, especially a bunch of teenagers. And she told us basically that we were on private property and how could we even leave the bus!!!! Oh how she must have loved it when she woke up the next morning to us living opposite her, all nice and legal.....after we had discovered the right 28.