Early alarm this morning ready for our flights to Spain. No, I mean a really early alarm – 3am! Why do we go for the early flight each time? We know it’s painful, being ripped from a sleepy happy place in the middle of the night, but still we persist! Gluttons for punishment, or what?

All good getting to the airport – no surprise that there is hardly any traffic on the road! Through to security for the first hiccup of the day. I generally bring some crafting supplies when coming to Spain and this time I thought I’d do some beading. Unfortunately, my little jewellery pliers showed up  clear and bright on the scanner and precipitated a complete search of my bag. The young man was very polite as he removed everything from my cabin luggage and informed me that the pliers wouldn’t be coming on the flight with me. I hadn’t even thought about them as a problem, but suppose after all the flights I’ve taken it should have crossed my mind! All my unpacked belongings were dumped in a tray for rescanning  and then returned to me for placing back in my bag. God knows what the security guy thought of my bag contents- king size sheets, coffee, embroidery  threads,  odd bits of clothing and a pair of sandals. Meanwhile, Chris is feeling quite unimpressed as he is sent in one direction to the body scanner whilst his valuables trundle down the conveyor belt the other side of the security station. My little situation just causes the odd raised eyebrow and a bit of harrumphing (that must be a word, ‘cos spell check recognises it!)

Great flight – Ryanair does  us proud again- and after landing we head to the station at the airport to take the train into Malaga and catch the bus up to Nerja. Oh no…..that’s not happening! Huge queues at the ticket machines so we join one of them. Finally we get within touching distance of the machine and it breaks down…aarrgghh!! No way are we joining the back of another queue so it’s either have a beer and wait a couple of hours  for the bus direct from the airport or fork out for a taxi. Taxi won and an hour later we are here in our apartment, changing into shorts ready to head out. Oh, and my purse is €100 lighter than when we landed! 😡😱   Annoying to think we’d decided against car hire on the basis that we generally just want to chill for a few days when we get here and if we had a car we’d feel the need to be out and about to get value from it. That €100 would have paid almost the first week’s car hire and even leaving it parked up we’d have been no worse off!

A glass of wine by the sea and a siesta and all is now well……🍷