Marbella, Spain: Day 6

Today we woke up early to get to the airport for our 9am flight from Barcelona to Malaga, Spain.  The flight was only an hour and thirty minutes, but the plane was pretty hot and cramped; much smaller than a Southwest plane.  Clearly these weren't meant for fat Americans like us.  'Merica. 

After the short flight, we waited in a long line to get our rental cars and then off to the Marriott Vacation Club Resort in Marbella.  I did end up laying at the pool for a little while, but I'm pretty sure that I got more of a tan from waiting in line than I did at the pool.  We are all really looking forward to this leg of the trip as we will only be sightseeing for a day or two.  We plan to lay around the pool baking to a nice well done.   There is a Barcelona soccer game on Sunday that we plan to go to a near by sports bar to people watch.  ...I guess we'll watch the game too, but none of us are that interested in the sport.  

With eight people, we were able to trap Nick and Mom at the check in. 

We have the garden view from our terrace.  The sky is so blue and I didn't use any filters.  

After getting ourselves settled, we headed to lunch at one of the resort hotels where we got the salad bar and entree combo.  We have quickly realized that they place bread in front of you, but charge you for it.  At least the restaurants at home they hide the cost of the bread in the other fees.  They also don't really give you an option as to whether or not you want the bread or not.  I'm sure that we could tell them that we don't want it before they put it on the table, but we love bread.  

If we eat here again, I will just get the salad bar.  I was so hungry that I piled salad onto my plate and then was full after.  I still had a full entree coming. 

As we were waiting for our food, another family had preordered a pan of paella that was as big as a Costco-sized pizza. 

Nick and I both had the seafood pasta. 

Dennis got the pan fried Sea Bream. 

Sister got the penne arrabbiata. 

Sister hung out at the cabanas for a couple of hours while we were all taking naps. 

After sleeping for a while, Sister and I hung out at the adult pool for a while once the sun wasn't so strong.  There is a much larger pool near the beach, but it is quite noisy with vacationing families and children.  This particular pool is only for adults.  Right up my alley. 

There are a lot of stray cats in the area.  We think that they like the cats around the resort to keep unwanted pests.  This one would occasional take sips from the pool and lounge in the shade with us. 

Lighting at 8:20pm.

Lighting at 9:05pm

For dinner we went to an Italian place down the road called Rosmarino.  Most of the places that we were finding on TripAdvisor were pretty pricey as Marbella is a resort town.  It seems like the tourists flock to this small strip mall where there are a bunch of international cuisines and a small market. We ate here tonight because we didn't want to drive very far for dinner on a day that we had to travel.

  

Not so free bread, but it was really good.

Smoked salmon tartar with avocado.

Beef carpaccio

Beef tartar

Shrimp and crab croquettes. 

Den got the lobster tagliatelle.

I got the veal scallopini parmesan. 

Nick got a mushroom and truffle risotto. 

Mom and Jerng Jerng got the seafood spaghetti.

Dad and Ye Ma got the pan fried Sea Bream.

Sister got the calf's liver. 

Tiramisu 

It tickled me to see this little station outside of the super market for dogs to wait for their people.  Emmy would be beside herself if I left her on one of these, but I thought that the idea was really cute. 

Tomorrow we plan on waking up late and lounging around the pool all day. We have a nice balcony that is shaded for when the afternoon heat starts to really cook us, but it isn't as hot and sticky here as it was in Barcelona.  It's time for us to kick up our feet and relax.  Until tomorrow: Get some R&R.