almerimartoday

I was chatting to some people the other day about how great a visit to the Alhambra at Granada is. I was also mentioning that it was better to book your ticket in advance to reduce queueing time.

The Alhambra is just under a two hour drive from Almerimar and I would strongly recommend that people have at least a long day visiting the place and the nearby gardens. It may also be worth visiting more that once in my view as there is so much to see.

You can find out more about the place and how to buy tickets here on the Alhambra website.

See here on the BBC website for details.

A planned ‘Wild West’ style campsite in Tabernas has been given the go-ahead by the regional government of Andalucía and now awaits the final stamp of approval from the local town hall to begin construction, the promoters claim.

Costa Almería has the story here.

The article here on the Ideal site has more details. 

In summary it says that  machines will begin to add up to 12,000 cubic metres of sand on two beaches punished by the weather over the winter.

Two new hotels are threatening two of the remaining unspoilt sections of the Andalucía coastline, with the Supreme Court ruling that a hotel can be built next to the salt flats at Cabo de Gata in Almería, and two hotels planned for just 500m from the El Palmar beach in Vejer de la Frontera in Cádiz.

Read the full story here on typicallyspanish.

The article here on the Expatica site has more details.

Further to our previous stories about Cueva de Aladin, markets and Thai food.

We have just been informed that there will soon be some changes to where Som will be cooking her Thai food in Cádiar. Apparently she will be moving to the Nuevo Central Bar.

We have been in touch with the owners of the bar and asked them to send us details of the new arrangements. Once we have them we will publish the details here.

Also, we understand that Som the Thai chef plus Jane who works with her could be available to do outside catering for people in Almerimar if there is a large enough group and a suitable kitchen. If we get more information about this offer of outside catering we will publish it on the site.

Last Saturday Jacqui, Jules, Mary and myself had a fantastic day out in the Alpujarras when we visited the wine festival at Láujar de Andarax.

Read More for details.

When I called into Alcor Properties yesterday I picked up the leaflet above about horse riding in the Alpujarras. Click on the image above to see a larger version of the paster.

We are just back from a trip to the Alpujarras and the Laujar Wine Festival with Jules and Mary. We will write a full story when we get a chance. In the meantime we have added some photos from the day to the Gallery and uploaded a video of some dancing to YouTube. We have added a link to the video on our videos page.

Further to our earlier story about our visit to the Clisol greenhouses in March of this year that you can see here.

We have now arranged with Lola from Clisol that we will make a second visit on August 24th at 18:30. We are starting late in the afternoon so the temperature should not be too hot in the greenhouses.

We expect that the visit will take approximately 3 - 3.5 hours and will include a guided tour around 3 different greenhouses (traditional and modern) plus a visit to the delicatessen.

The maximum cost will be 9 euros a person. If we get enough people coming along we may get a discount.

We will maintain a list of people who have said they wish to attend in this story. If you would like to attend you can comment against this story or send us a Private Message if you are registered on the site. Or you can contact us using the details on the Contact Us page via the top menu.

Attendees:

Ann G + 5 (2 children), Jacqui, Joan + 2 children, John Wo - total = 11 so far (4 kids)

Two thousand British tourists who were trapped in Spain will soon be docking in Southampton.

Due to arrive between 1700 BST and 1900 BST, some 2,200 holidaymakers will shortly arrive back in the UK after being rescued from Bilbao by a luxury cruise ship.

The sight of the 500-million euro Celebrity Eclipse was a dream come true to Britons stuck in Spain after the Icelandic volcano eruption grounded their flights.

After days of uncertainty and camping out on airport floors, they were finally able to relax and enjoy five-star service served up by the lavish ferry.

Tourists were offered champagne as they enjoyed the free ride home – paid for by travel companies Thomson, First Choice, Thomas Cook and Cooperative Group.

Read more here.

 

Even in these times of crisis, CLIA, the Cruise Lines International Association predict that 14.3 million people shall take a cruise during 2010.

Last year, Spain benefited from 52.2 million visitors, from which 11.6% or just over six million came by cruise ship. Barcelona is by far the most popular Spanish Port, ranked the busiest in Europe and the fifth busiest in the World, mainly thanks to her Geographic location, hotels and airport. Such has been the success of Barcelona, which 25 years ago logistically struggled when more than two ‘small’ cruise ships came to town, that she now can hold the largest ships in the world and boasts seven terminals.

Read the full story here on Spanish News.

When we were driving to and from Cádiar on Saturday we passed signs for Orgiva which got us all taking about Chris Stewart, the author of Driving Over Lemons and A Parrot in a Pepper Tree.

In answer to the query in the car, yes he does have another book out. See here for details about The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society.

Also today, by sheer chance, I stumbled over the article he has written here for the Olive Press - an interesting read.

Yesterday a group of 11 of us went for a Thai lunch at Cueva de Aladin in Cádiar. We understand it was Marion´s first trip away from Almerimar since she came here to recover from breaking her leg in 4 places while skiiing in Austria. As you can see from above she was on good form.

Read More for some details of the day.

Just read this article in Nerja News....

The Sierra Nevada ski resort has recorded its best ever Easter vacation period with an average of 9,700 skiers on the main holiday days, Wednesday to Saturday, with a total of 76,632 users since last Saturday.

The quality of snow and good weather conditions have meant over 100 kilometres of tracks being open each day of the holiday period.

Hotel occupancy has averaged 85% over Easter with some of the major hotels even reaching 100%. Occupancy during the coming week is expected to be around 60%.

The resort remains open until May 2nd. 

Almeria airport has started its summer flights schedule with flights servicing the UK and Ireland including Birmingham, Dublin, Manchester, Nottingham and Stansted as well as the all year round Gatwick Easyjet service. The summer schedule will operate until Oct 30. Great news for property owners in Almerimar who come and go during the year and also for the local businesses.

Some new routes will also come into operation with flights to Alicante, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Valladolid and Faro in Portugal.

UPDATED 27 MARCH 2010 - Jane has emailed us the menu for the day (see below). 11 of us are planning to go along so far. This is about half of the number the place can hold so if others are interested you better get in contact soon.

I have just checked with Jane from Cueva de Aladin and the next market day at Cádiar is Easter Saturday, 3 April 2010. Jane also confirmed that Cueva de Aladin will be serving the lunchtime Thai special deal as they normally do on a market day.

For more details about the Thai lunch see the story here and for Cádiar market see the story here.

We are thinking of going again as we enjoyed the meal so much last time. However, Jane did point out that we would need to book in advance to confirm a table.

MENU

The menu for market day is as follows, 3 courses 6.95euros.
 
Starters
 
Spring Rolls
Prawn Toast
Fish Cakes
Tomyum Soup
 
Main
 
Yellow Curry Chicken
Red Curry Pork
Sweet Chill Fish
Prawns with Sesame and Vegetables
 
Dessert
 
TBA
 

 

UPDATED 21 MAR: Lola has emailed me the latest advertising material for Clisol in PDF format. You can see the items here (please note they are large documents and not suitable for people on dial-up or using pay as you go modems): Schools brochure,  Poster, Brochure.

Last Thursday around 20 people from Almerimar went on a group trip we organised around the Clisol greenhouses just above the cliff here in Almerimar. We all had a fantastic time.

Read More to read about the visit. Click on the image above to see a larger version of the flyer that we picked up while at the greenhouse.

 

We have now uploaded the pictures from our greenhouse visit on Thursday to the Gallery. You can see them here.

It will take us a few hours of solid time preparing the story about the visit to do it justice and we are a bit busy at the moment. So we hope to write something about the visit in the next few days.

In the meantime, I would once again like to thank Lola for a brilliant tour that I would recommend strongly to others. It was fascinating.

 

Nerja News reports that last weekend has been a good one at the Sierra Nevada ski resort after three weeks of partial opening due to high winds and storms.

On Saturday, around 102 kilometres of pistes, the best so far this season, were open with 18 lifts operating.

The bus from Granada city to the resort has been ferrying people free of charge to enjoy very good snow conditions, with the snow depth ranging from 80 centimetres to 5 metres.

Off-piste skiing was not recommended due to a high risk of avalanches.

Our trip out to Cádiar included a wander around the market. The market days are the 3rd and 18th of each month. This month's market was a lot smaller than normal according to Jane who runs Cueva de Aladin where we had lunch. We don´t know why it was smaller this time.

Mary and Wendy both snapped up a few bargains from the market.  Mary bought a couple of jumpers for 5 euros a go and Wendy found a rather nice little black wool number for 10 euros.

Here we are all wrapped up warm as you can see. It was quite a bit cooler there compared to Almerimar.

Read more.

Thanks to Alan & Judi for this information. We have planned to do such a visit at some point so perhaps we will try to organise a group visit if people are interested.

Read More to read the story.

 

Spanish bull breeders fear their animals will not be fit in time for the new fighting season due to too much rain.

The rain in Spain has been falling almost continuously for two months in Andalusia and Extremadura, the southern regions where most of the country's bull ranches are located.

The ground is soaked and so are the bulls, heralding an unpredictable start to the bullfighting calendar.

Water causes the bulls' hooves to swell and soften, and makes their joints sensitive, sapping their mobility.

Read here for the full article in the Telegraph.

As it was too windy for Friday golf today in Almerimar we went on a day trip into the Alpujarras with Alan and Sharon from Alcor Properties. We had various things to discuss about upcoming golf events plus some other stuff so it was an ideal opportunity to mix business with pleasure.

By chance we ended up going to a town called Cádiar. The first place we stopped at in Cádiar was an internet cafe called Aladins Cave (Cueva de Aladín) where we met a very friendly lady called Jane Woods.

Read More for information about our day out.

Air Europa, one of Europe's most modern and fastest growing airlines, announced today their new non-stop service from Miami to Madrid.  Air Europa will offer convenient connections to more than 20 cities in Spain and to some of the most important European capitals, such as Paris, Rome and London.

Air Europa will operate a fleet of Airbus 330-200 with a capacity for 275 coach passengers and 24 Club Business passengers.

Read the full story here on Euro Weekly News.

 

Costa Almeria News has this story.

A survey of the best European beaches published by a leading UK daily failed to mention a single beach in Almeria.

Despite numerous beaches in the province possessing international awards for quality, an article entitled ‘The 20 hottest European beaches for 2010' published last month in The Times passed over Almeria's coastline in favour of other Spanish beaches. Read more here.

I was looking at the Ideal website and they had a photo of a London airport over a story about the Gatwick- Almería cancellations.

I am not certain that this is Gatwick but I can see why they may have been having problems.You can see the story in Spanish here.

I happened to notice the leaflet above near the pro shop when Sharon & I had finished giving Alan and Jacqui yet another hammering at golf this afternoon.

It is all about the New Years Eve party in the AR Almerimar hotel this year and 1, 2 or 3 night stays over New Year. Click on the image above to see a larger version with all the details.

Back in the days when we used to work in London and have lots more money we used to love coming out to Almerimar and staying in the hotel for New Year. We used to hope for a bit of winter sun, some dry golf and a good booze up.

Hopefully we will get the same yet again this year now that we live here full time.

A petition containing 127,000 signatures was handed into the Parliament of Cataluña demanding the abolition of bull fighting. Read more here. There is also an earlier related article dated May 2009 which you can read about here.

The article here in Ideal talks about an exhibition of Spanish photography at the Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía (CAF) in Almería.

If you are interested in attending you can see a map from Google Maps showing the location of the CAF here.

We were meant to play golf with Alan and Sharon this afty but the weather was so bad we went to Grand Plaza in Roquetas and did ten-pin bowling instead.

Alan was the best player and my darling wife didn´t quite keep up with the rest of us.

It was 2.5 euros a person a game this Sunday afternoon before 5pm. So we played 3 times at a total cost of 30 euros for the four of us including shoe hire.

It was really good fun and a very pleasant afternoon out with friends.

We have been to Nijar on a number of occasions when friends have been staying with us. It is about 1 hour drive away past Almería on the motorway. You can have a very pleasant stroll up the high street looking in all the shops (mainly ceramics but other things as well) and stopping off for the odd drink and tapa.

The article here in Euro Weekly News talks about a new rural path in nearby Agua Amarga.

Sounds like it might be possible to combine the two into a very nice day out.

Earlier today I was chatting to someone about the science park at Granada. I mentioned that I might like to go there sometime and I had a leaflet describing the park.

I have scanned in the leaflet and uploaded it. You can see it here (double click on the image to see a larger version). Note it is nearly 2MB in size so perhaps not suitable for people on dial up or pay as you go usb modems.

As John mentioned earlier, we spent yesterday at Granada. The main reason for going was to meet up with my brother and his wife as he is working in Granada for about a week. Although we have been to visit the Alhambra on several occasions, we had not seen any of the city centre. The cathedral was quite striking as you can see in the photo below. 

Read More.

Thanks to Jules for spotting this interesting article in today´s Daily Express about Almeria. You can read it here.

We decided to take a bit of time out yesterday and pop along to Aguadulce for a relaxing afternoon.

Read More for details.

While we were out shopping earlier today I noticed a big advert for holidays in the Sierra Nevada. It mentioned their website so I have added it on the Useful Links page. You can see the site here.

Just read the article here from Euro Weekly News explaining that the aquarium in Roquetas is now 3 years old.

They celebrated by getting reporters and local footballers to swim with piranhas and sharks. 

You can see more about the aquarium on their website here (in Spanish).

I guess it might be a place to take the kids if they are getting bored of the pool and the sea this summer.

Yesterday Jacqui, Jules and myself visited Vélez Blanco in the north east corner of the province of Almería. This is where there are cave paintings of the Indalo and the Chaman or Brujo (pictured above).

Read More for details.

Further to the earlier story here about our recent trip to Paraje del Rio Nacimiento near Laujar.

My brother, his wife, his mother in law and her friend have been staying for a few days in the Alpujarras. By chance my brother suggested that we meet for a picnic at the same place we went to near Laujar not long ago.

We had a very enjoyable picnic and rounded it off by calling in at the restaurant on the site for a coffee. It was quite dark inside but it appeared to be very clean. There was a separate bar area as well as the restaurant. We had 6 coffees and a glass of wine at the bar and it cost 8 euros in total. This seems pretty good value to me.

One other important fact was that the toilets were miles better the the ones in general use lower down on the picnic site. So if you go to this place for a picnic or a barbecue it is well worth popping in for a drink at the bar in the restaurant if you need the loo.

Further to the earlier story here about our trip to Paraje del Rio Nacimiento last Monday.

Read More for details and more photos of the day.

Today 9 of us took a trip from Almerimar to the Paraje del Rio Nacimiento park and barbecue area just outside Laujar de Andarax. We all had a really enjoyable day out.

I will write a full story about the day once I get a bit of spare time as I feel this is an excellent tourist trip from Almerimar. Hopefully I will have a chance to write something in the next few days.

In the meantime, I have uploaded the photos we took to the Gallery and included a couple below as a taster.

Having pottered about in the morning Daisy decided that he fancied a little trip out this afternoon. I suggested a trip to Laujar de Andarax via Berja. Mike didn´t know any better so he said yes.

Read More for details and see the Gallery for more pictures.

This is the first in a series of news items covering places you might like to visit when staying in Almerimar. All places will be less than 2 hours drive from here.

The first place we feature is the Alhambra at Granada. This is the wonderful place to visit with a massive moorish castle and the Generalife gardens next door. Read more for more details..

Tickets are limited each day and you get allocated a specific time when you can enter the Nasrid Palace. You can wander around the whole of the Alhambra but you must enter the Nasrid Place within a 45 minute window.

Here is the website for the Alhambra. You can read more about the place and follow a link to where you can book tickets online. It is well worth booking in advance online or by phone as this will save you from what can be very long queues at the entrance.

To get to the Alhambra take the motorway towards Malaga and turn inland just after Motril. Then follow the signs to Granada. You reach the Alhambra via the ring road around to the south-east of the city. Just follow the signs.

Although part of the journey is not a dual carriageway and can sometimes be slow it should normally take just under two hours to reach the Alhambra from Almerimar.

As promised, here are some details of another place worth a visit if you are tourist staying in Almermar.

The Cabo de Gata Natural Park is about an hour drive from Almerimar signposted off the E15 motorway after you pass the Almeria airport turn-off when heading towards Murcia. At the southern end of the park there is the seaside town of Cabo de Gata, salt flats and birdwatching area. Further up the coast there are seaside towns such as San Jose and Las Negras. In between there are lots of hills which are very good for those who like long walks.

Parts of the park are spoilt a little by a few greenhouses but all in all well worth a visit.

See here for more details (in Spanish).

If you want somewhere to take the kids then Oasys may be worth considering. It used to be called Mini-Hollywood and is a Wild West theme park based around sets used for famous 60s and 70s cowboy movies. There is now a zoo there as well. Read More for details taken from a leaftlet you can pick up at the tourist office near Copo.

A really great day out is to go into the mountains to a pass called Puerto de la Ragua which is 2km high. Take in the sights on the way and on the way home. We have done this trip a few times and our latest visitors (Jacqui´s brother and his wife) absolutely loved it. A wonderful day trip from Almerimar.

Read more for more details.....

Some details of another tourist day out for the kids not far from Almerimar. This time it´s the Aquarium in Roquetas de Mar about 25 minutes from Almerimar. The is just next door to the water park.

Read more for details.

Ever fancied going potholing? There are guided tours of the Caves of Sorbas about 1.5 hours from Almerimar.

Read more for details.