Andalucian Adventure

On 6th August 2017, we flew out from Glasgow this time (which was a fabulous airport and so much quieter than Manchester) to Malaga for our two-week family holiday.

One of my fellow TC colleagues has a time share week in Mijas and we had the pleasure of staying at a lovely two-bedroom apartment on the Matchroom Club Resort in Mijas Costa.

The accommodation was lovely, very clean and well maintained and there were three lovely pools to choose from including a main pool, baby pool and a smaller pool near the indoor sauna/jacuzzi with a sliding roof.

Mijas Costa is on the Costa Del sol and is around a 5-8 minute drive inland from Fuengirola on the coast.

There is an abundance of golf resorts such as this one and our apartment complex centred its internal views around the main pool and the golf course behind the accommodation.

Most of our first week was spent relaxing by the wonderful pool and trying to recharge our batteries as it has been a whole 12 months since our last two-week holiday.

During our stay, we visited Fuengirola to purchase some pool inflatables for our girls and also drove down to Cabopino, a small hamlet with a wonderful marina, bars and restaurants and a great beach which was around a 15-20 minute drive from us on the Mijas side of Marbella.

We ventured out a few days into our stay to Mijas Pueblo. This is a beautiful traditional Andalucian village in the mountains, with horse-drawn carriages and donkey rides and fabulous tapas bars and restaurants along the round into Mijas Pueblo. There is a square with craft stalls to mooch around on certain evenings in the summer months. Usually Tuesdays and Thursdays are Tapas Trail nights so definitely worth a visit. The streets towards the back of the resort contain small walkways and lovely little gift shops, we liked it so much we returned there for a second evening during our one week stay in Mijas Costa. Highly recommended is Tomillo Limon in Mijas Pueblo, a fabulous tapas restaurant with great food and service. Also in Mijas Costa opposite the Eurostars hotel in Mijas Costa, a wonderful traditional family run Italian restaurant Zia Lola, also worth a visit.

After our week in Mijas we travelled down to Gibraltar for three nights – please see my separate blog about this part of our trip.

After that we made our way to Benalmadena for our last four nights at the Diamond Resort property Sahara Sunset in a two-bedroom apartment. We had some pool time with the girls and they even managed a session at the accommodation run kids club there too.

On day two we took the car and drove down to a lovely beach towards Torremolinos, Playa Carihuela, which has some water-sports on offer. We hired a pedalo with a slide on top which the girls and daddy loved and on our second visit to this beach on our last day, the girls tried their hand at paddle boarding for the first time too which they really enjoyed. The sunbeds were 10 Euros for the day and that included two beds and umbrellas/shade.

At the part of the beach where we stayed we struck lucky in finding the most fabulous Spanish fish restaurant Merendero Patati – great food, fast efficient service and excellent value for money, we liked it so much that we ate there both days for lunch.

Where our accommodation was we saw parrots and parakeets and realised that they were coming from the nearby Paloma park just behind our apartments, so we had a wander there one afternoon with the girls and they loved the wildlife in the park.

In the evenings, we met with some friends one night and another night we enjoyed a fabulous evening at our accommodation with a flamenco evening which was excellent.

Overall we loved our two weeks in Mijas, Gibraltar and Benalmadena and would definitely return again to this area of Spain in the future.