Day 6 - The Costa del Sol

We were up and packed by 10 a.m., and took a cab to the parking garage to drive out of town. We headed south again, this time all the way to the Mediterranean, which the kids has never seen. We got off the highway in the first town we passed, but there was no good place to stop and stick our toes in the water.



A bit further on we came to a mirador overlooking a pebble beach, left the car in a parking area, and clambered down the cliffs to the beach. We spent a lovely hour playing with the pebbles (or skipping them out over the water, in Zac's case), wading (in Meg's case), and relaxing. It was a perfect beach experience, without actually including swimming.





To our horror, when we returned to the car we found that it had been broken into. (Zac: "Mom, did you leave the seats pushed forward?") Missing were Jordan's laptop, Meg's iPod and phone, all but one of Margy's credit cards, and all four passports. End of the happy day at the beach!

We found the Guardia Civíl in the next town, Nerja, and reported the theft. The nice policeman put through a call to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, and we found out that we'd need to leave at the crack of down the next day (Friday) in order to apply for passports before the Madrid office closed for the weekend at 1 p.m. We got some sandwiches in a little place run by a Dutch woman ("De Gekke Koe") and Jordan used an international phone card to call the States and cancel our credit cards. He also asked a neighbor to find Zac's birth certificate and fax it to the embassy, since Zac is too young to sign his own passport application. Nerja looks like a lovely, low-key beach town, a destination for a lot of English tourist, apparently, and we want to come back under happier circumstances.

We got to Córdoba too late to be able to see the Grand Mosque, so that was a big disappointment. We walked around the outside of the building anyway, and Margy pressed her nose against the doors in an effort to peer in and see something! But Córdoba is a lovely town, much smaller than Granada and much more of a real place that Toledo. We'll just have to come back.

We left everything in the car except a change of clothes and our toothbrushes, so we could get up and out early the next morning. Oh well... Jordan wisely suggested that we not make the theft into the centerpiece of the trip. We've been having a wonderful time, and this doesn't change that. The thing we are sorriest to have lost are our pictures of us in Granada.