A great third impression

It's always good to come home but it sure is cold here in Dublin right now. Well maybe it's relative.

Last week I was in Estepona, one of the southernmost parts of Spain heading down towards Gibraltar and the equator, and the weather was wonderful, 29C or thereabouts every day. It was like a second summer for me and my family.

We didn't take a family holiday in 2005, mostly because I was studying and there just wasn't a great amount of opportunity.

Coupled with that, our youngest child was just 6 months old and we weren't quite at the stage a night's sleep could be guaranteed in a foreign bed.

So this year, a holiday away sounded like a great idea. You might remember that the family and I headed to Belfast back in June, albeit to go to a concert by The Wiggles.

So, although it was great to get away then, it was more of a mini-break.

That trip proved to us that we could all travel and get some sleep, and more importantly that the two boys would be able to sleep in the same room.

Enough of that and on to Estepona. What's it like?

Well, per the title of this posting, I've been to Spain twice before, both times on business. The first time was to a venue just outside of Madrid for a business workshop. The problem was that although the place was very charming indeed, it wasn't really possible to get out of the place I was staying in to look about and get a feel for the place. It was one of those "airport to hotel to airport" kind of trips. That didn't give me much of an impression at all.

The second visit was to Sitges, just west of Barcelona. That was a really lovely place and a place I'd be keen to visit again. It's a big destination for gay couples during the summer. Again I was there for a business workshop. This time we had an opportunity to go into the town and look around. Sitges had a fantastic atmosphere , a really lovely place. I'd definitely go back there if I have a chance in the future.

So aside from a few days in Sitges, and a brief stay outside Madrid, it was hard to say whether I had a solid impression of Spain.

This was the trip to form the impression. The opportunity to go to Spain was very fortuitous and it seemed like a brilliant opportunity to get away just as the summer was ending in Ireland. It was easy to arrange flights, car rental and everything else so it seemed like this was one of those trips that was destined to go well.

All I can say is that I am impressed. Impressed by the weather, impressed by the friendliness of the people and impressed by the really relaxed pace of life in southern Spain. I don't know a whole lot about the history or culture of the various parts of Spain, though I'll wager that life in the big cities is very different to that of small towns like Estepona.


Estepona is a fishing town and is not as tourist-orientated as nearby places like Malaga and Marbella. What that means is that there is not as much neon and not as much by way of built-up shopping complexes or "club districts".


Instead you get wonderful beaches (such as the one above), miles and miles of them, and a maze of charming and safe streets just off the main coastal promenade bustling with little restaurants with outdoor eating, small bars and tiny shops run by locals selling fruit, shoes and just about anything else you'd want at 8 o'clock at night.

There is plenty that is modern about the place too, with a huge Carrefour shopping centre on the edge of the town. Think of a french Wal-Mart and you get a sense of what Carrefour is all about.

There is McDonald's and Burger King too but you can't help but think these are places that mostly teenagers and pressurised-parents with young children eat at. There are so many other places to eat you just won't be eating under the golden arches very often at all, even if you don't speak Spanish and find the possibility of being limited to "Big Mac, por favor" as your best option of a meal.

Anyway, my wife and I obviously had the two boys with us and they really loved it too.

We alternated between beach trips, shopping trips, time spent in the apartment and time spent eating.

All the time there was a sense of time easing by gently that my wife and I have only experienced in one other place before, on the island of Maui in Hawai'i.

Yep, it's that kind of laid back.

Some things were different, like the funny motorway driving.

For some reason the off-ramps and on-ramps are really short. I mean really short. So you're tanking along at 120 km/hour (75 mph or so) and the guy in front slams on his brakes. Why?

Well he has to because there is a 50 foot off-ramp. Likewise you get people pulling onto the motorway right in front of you driving really slow and you have nowhere to go and no option but to stand on the brakes. This takes getting used to.


There's almost no shops open on Sunday but then again in hindsight this is kind of obvious. Then again nearly every shop is open well into the evening. So it kind of balances out.

Stuff is really cheap there, whether it's clothes or food or beer. It's all much cheaper than in Ireland but I'm trying to set this aside and to factor in the micro-economic context to explain the reasons for what is a really steep price differential between southern Spain and Dublin.

So, back at home now and have just been up to the attic(loft) to fetch the winter duvet(quilt) and our 4 year-old is already thinking about Hallowe'en. The year is passing quickly.

All in all, a wonderful trip. Batteries fully recharged and ready for the Dublin winter.