The country of Spain holds a special place in my past as it is the first country I ever visited, barely hatched out of my birthplace of Romania. Indeed, the travel bug bit early in this one.
While I had been to Barcelona several times, I had never had the chance to see the rest of Spain and all of its complex history and culture. It was also an opportunity to retrace my long forgotten footsteps over four decades ago.
This trip was also an experiment in this new-fangled concept of being a digital nomad, and I was lucky enough to be able to work remotely but the question was could I do so effectively? The answer is sort-of.
I began my trip in Andalusia, and in Puerto Banús specifically, a beachfront district within Marbella on the southern coast, which usually at this time of year is home to Finns, Estonians and Russians fleeing the winter, but in the summertime, home to the ultrawealthy and famous. Due to the impact of COVID on travel, it was especially quiet this winter, and you could see by the copious amount of bird droppings and thick layers of dust on cars parked outside, that some of the seasonal occupants did not expect to be gone for a few years. A more grisly thought was that some other seasonal occupants have since moved on from this world.
Following Puerto Banús was a daytrip to Ronda, a small city literally built on a precipice. Worth visiting for a few hours, but beyond the novelty of where the city was built, not much to say.
Tarifa was the southernmost point of Spain and the official divider between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean - great place for some seafood by the beach.
Algeciras was a brief visit to just see Gibraltar - which I had wanted to visit but no one for the life of me could tell me what the COVID rules were for leaving the EU and re-entering it by land, and how to get a COVID test within this British territory that served as a thorn in Spain's proverbial and literal bottom.
Estepona was another cute Mediterranean village with a lot of flowers.
All in all a very nice start.
Puerto Banús and Marbella
Ronda
Tarifa
Algeciras
