A Taste of Spain.

Spain is to set up promotional campaigns in Britain to try boost tourism for this year. The reason behind this is the 22% drop in bookings from the UK market during the first 3 months of this year
''A Taste of Spain'' promotions are to be held in open air festivals in large cities such as London & Edinburgh. These will include all things which we associate with Spain, such as Flamenco Dancers, Spanish horses will be performing and giant paellas will be on the festival menus!

Estepona - Costa del Sol

One of the quieter resorts on the Costa del Sol is situated 75km down the coast from Malaga airport. Maybe this is the reason it still retains much of its fishing village character, with none of the high rise apartment blocks as seen in other resorts along the coast.
In the older part of town is where you will find the typical white washed homes of the locals, with their flower filled balconies and the decorative wrought iron gateways.

To the west of the seafront is the marina where you can stroll around the magnificent yachts moored here, and also early in the morning see the fishing boats land their catch and see the auction taking place.

Views of Ronda

A view of the house's perched on the edge of the 100mt deep Tajo gorge as seen from one of the archways below the new bridge. Although this is classed as the new bridge it was started in 1751 and completed in 1793.

This is the outstanding sight of the El Tajo Gorge which brings thousands of visitors to Ronda year after year.

The second photo in this selection of Ronda shows the Tajo gorge looking up towards the 'new bridge'
To get a real sense of how sheer this drop is, take a look at the two people looking over the edge in the top left of the photo !!

Next is the view looking towards snow capped Sierras.

Its said that the architect who worked on the bridge after its completion was looking over to admire what he had accomplished, when a gust of wind came and blew his hat off. When he tried to catch it he lost his balance and fell to his death in the gorge!

Costa's Price War !

Owing to the poor exchange rate for the Pound v Euro it looks like a price war is starting on the Costa's to try entice people to still come to Spain for their holiday this year.
This is a price list as seen outside one of the usually expensive bars on the award winning marina in Benalmadena. Other bars along the same stretch were also starting to lower their prices. Its along time since we have seen coffee sold for 50cents, even when the Spanish currency changed from peseta to euro the price of a coffee was priced between 80cents-1€. They do seem to have a mix up with their prices for a beer though, I suspect that a half is only a very small glass and not a half pint!
One thing I wouldn't do is to queue for a table just to get a cheap drink, which is just what was happening in these bars!