Persisting to Ronda

Up in the dark , the plan was an early breaky and then catch the bus to the AP with what we thought was plenty of time. Missed the bus by 1 minute and then had to wait another 20 for the next one. Stress levels rising as today includes a few transfers which are totally reliant on transport being right on time. Bad start if we can't even get our own act together. Forgetting to previously check in meant we had to join the checkin queue, which looked about an hour long. Good teamwork had us being directed to the late checkin counter and voila - we were through. So a bit of luck and first stuff up for the day avoided and we found ourselves on the plane to Malaga, on which we spotted a row of spare seats and took them over. Ahhh the luxury of being able to stretch the legs (even if only for an hour or so). Aussie seat hogs. From the air southern Spain appears to be baking in the long hot summer. For no rains falling in the plains the dams seem remarkably full.
And so dropped out of the clear blue sky's drifting over the always calm waters of the Mediterranean sea to land on the tarmac of Malaga AP.

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One sole purpose for being here is as a transit point to Ronda. A place obscurely mentioned as worth visiting and therefore placed on itinerary as one of the key stops of this trip. Barcelona was a means to this end. Gaudi (along with all his wierd eccentricities) was basically a fill in along the way. This blogger had spent a lot of time and effort in pre-booking train tickets to meet this outcome. Even expressing to many peeps (aka those polite enough to listen) that if this comes off it'll be a fabulous example of our modern day abilities to do anything on line and watch the subsequent reality unfold. There was extreme nervousness about switching trains 3 minutes apart in a high speed vs. low speed intersecting station somewhere in the middle of nowhere on a plain in Spain. The consequences of this stuffing up were significant.
So whilst we sat there waiting for the first leg of the supposedly reliable spanish train network representative to appear at the station. Lo and behold...it didn't. Instead all the peeps waiting around platform 7 started queuing up, having their tickets scanned and disappearing out a side door. In a nutshell they were not boarding the train  which the sign on the platform quite succinctly stated should have been there, which quite obviously wasn't. All the planning, hours of stress examining timetables, booking on line, espousing the virtues of the modern world (driven by AI engines) was all unraveling before this bloggers eye's as the stream of people slowly disappeared out a side entrance whils the platform itself remained peacefully unaware that there should have been a train fulfilling it's purpose.
There was a fair amount of panic going on around this time, stressed questions asked in English with responses in Spanish of either pointing to people who understood the language and/or the situation with the questionnaires running to and from one side of the tracks head  to the other (draging suitcases whilst doing so) in a seemingly dance of disarray. Possibly looked funny to the overlords watching the show on the ctvs. None of the locals on the floor could care less. They' knew the train had been replaced by busses. They could understand the overhead announcements. Their care factor about this blogger/non-blogger predicament was rating zero. Storming out of the station and into the information centre the picture finally revealed itself along with fact that all ensuing trains were full. However, if one wanted to get Ronda we could try the bus stop which is just out the front door and to the left.
Happened to also be around the corner  but we found it, eventually discovering that the counter that serviced this route was serviced by a sign on the service window saying book on line. Welcome to Sunday arvo in Malaga bus depot. Somehow this all worked extremely well. All you need these days in lieu of local dialog is friendly persistence and a smartphone with sms connections back home to appese the banks.
Malaga is an ancient city with a bustling vibrant atmosphere, an age old Mediterranean harbour and even a Roman amputheater worthy of a good look. We spent the whole day waiting in the train station for a train that didn't show and then the bus depot for a bus that did.
It was great ( the bus not the town). Sat up the front and watched the Spanish hills roll by as we wound our way via a few local stops to arrive in Ronda 45 mins ahead of schedule and wondering why we didn't choose this option all those months ago from the other side of the planet. Now we need to worry about all the other bookings made on that digital  platform  however in the meantime we have the next 3 days to explore this place.

Device apps had shown the walk to the hotel was possible, so we did that, checked in and enjoyed a well earned beverage overlooking the adjacent bull fighting ring with the majestic hills defining the horizon in the distance as the harsh sun beat down at 38 degrees (in the shade). Newly arrived and after an arduous journey of Planes, No Trains and Automobiles, we were not paying too much attention to the spiel from our porter when he guided us to the room. Subsequently we managed to find the rooftop bar & restaurant via the lift, however when trying to exit the hotel the lift refused to take us to the ground floor. Ok then, let's try the stairs. Made sure the room key would unlock the door to our floor before closing it and down we went. No signage (a bit strange).  See one long straight section that obviously headed out side, ignored that and found ourselves wandering around the service bowels of the hotel. It's here you can help yourself to unlimited beer & softdrinks whilst using the washing machines to launder the smelly underwear resulting from the stress of cancelled trains in unfamiliar countries that speak in strange tounges. Suspect though that eventually a staff member would come along and query your actions. So instead we backtracked and realised we'd need to climb all the way back up to our floor in order to escape the stairwell and try another method of escaping the hotel. At this time one of the staff did stumble across us and in broken english explained that we'd gone the wrong way, took us down the exit stairwell and we were ejected out into the sidestreet. 

Back around the hotel, in the front entrance, up the lift to our floor to realise it's entirely a different lift from the one we were trying. Oh how we laughed.

Went for a stroll up the main touisty plaza and was disappointed that Sunday arvo here all they tend to sell is ice cream. At the top of the strip we found a kiosk with a boisterous owner happy to serve us a couple of suitable bevvies ( with free olives) whilst we collected our thoughts and planned ahead.

A Tapas dinner back down  in the tourists area was fabulous. Great food and wine served by a local lass that knows english very well but goes the extreme efforts not to let on. Good on her.
Ronda - here we are.

Building Spanish Style

We chose this hotel as it's close to the airport and given our late arrival and early departure times it seemed an astute thing to do. Maybe so, however astuteness comes at an ambiance cost it seems. Our garden view doubles as a gardeners view as they ( and the entire stret incl. the offices across the road can easily peer in if they chose to). It's so dark and poorly lit it's almost done on purpose knowing peeps will leave stuff behind simply because they can't see anything clearly. Reasonably modern though. It's stuck in the middle of a huge industrial estate with an airport theme. E.g Next door is the place they load the food trucks for the planes. Across the road is huge Amazon distribution hub. New roads with 10 year old trees abound. It was all eerily quiet on the Saturday morning as we headed out on foot amongst it all in search of the local metro station, with the sun streaming down it was great to experience a nice warm environment for the first time in many months. Thanks to our devices and one of two esims functional we got ripped off at an atm to get some cash on the way to the subterranean metro where we were lucky enough to be guided by an attendant in the otherwise deserted station to get a ticket for both us for the day relatively cheaply.

The train into town took about an hour with an incredibly confusing change of lines half way, up and down a deep pit by escalators and then lifts, eventually sorting it out we found the church station line and got there well enough in time to muck around with confusing apps, associated tickets, headsets pairing and signposted directions. The place still has thousands of pilgrims daily forking out their dosh in order to fund the never ending works of the crazy dudes reaching for the gods.

The effort is extraordinarily complex, the design committee's must have a mantra..let's make this as hard as it can possibly be to do. "I don't care !" Screams the Project Lead as the engineers try to point out that placing mosaic tiles on an un-symmetrical grouping of bulbous balls positioned precariously on top of a thin stone pillar 100 meters above the ground carries risks. "Just do it, because thats what the Design Committee reckons Gaudi would've wanted, and by jingos therefore it will happen....and the open checkbook that is all those pilgrims streaming past the alter and dropping their euros into the collection hat (digital version) will pay for whatever "risk mitigation" you morons reckon you need. OK ? You're all good? Excellent. I'm off to pray now. I expect you'll have it done by next lent"
Building Spanish style.
These dudes are crazy. Just to prove it we took (aka paid more for the pleasure) the tour up one of towers. This was the "Passion" tower. Which one suspects was named as a subtle dig at a certain Project Lead, it has small lift up in which a delightful young guide explains to the crammed in pilgrims how to avoid falling to your death on the long way back down. Not that it would matter if you did because this is in the resurrection facade, so you know..not really a problem.
Anyway, the views from way up there were spectacular. The vertigo inducing ups and downs were enhances by the new knees and wobbly legs. Thin stairwells threading their way between slippery stone walls circling up and up, and then over stone bridges and then spiraling forever downwards felt like what the dwarfs had done tunneling into the depths of Moria.
The main chuch inside is pretty much completed now and it is truly spectacular.

The treelike stone pillars holding up all those towers reach up into the heavens in a cacophony of light and colours and there, right in the middle of the whole thing, is a dude being viciously tortured. Well not actually, just a depiction. Still very poignant though.
Stumbling out into the bright sunshine on the western side, we exited the complex glad we'd seen it and wishing we hadn't left the hand sanitizer in the hotel. To make matters worse non-blogger had a banana explode in the security bag, so it was all a bit messy.
Managing to rehydrate and eventually get the germs of thousands of pilgrims off our hands we wandered into town central with all the memories of last time flooding back. The six story high wide canyons haven't changed one bit. It was all extremely quiet on a Saturday siesta time, until we reached the Gaudi house/museum where the tourist hordes were milling around like bees to a honey pot. Literally as thats what the place looks like. We purchased gold tickets and wandered right on in, dealt with a dodgy electronic guide (in the process going through a few before finding one that worked - with the faulty ones going back into the distribution pile!) and toured the mansion that the artist/architect had unlimited funds from a local rich dude to express his wares.

It's hard to describe, and many attempts have been made with some of them expressed in the museum display to the extent that really clever people used many words to pull apart and reconstruct from various perspectives - even using microscopic views to show how smart they are when providing poetic analytical
verbiage to get their point across. It's a piece of carved rock mate, move on...
The curved lines, mosaic covered walls and ceilings, floral ceramics everywhere being lit by ingenious lighting along with subtle air flow systems was a sight to behold.

Eventually we ended up on the roof, where a bar had been studiously placed and we caught our breaths whilst enjoying the amazing warm ambiance created by mosaic gathered chimney stacks and a dragon lying on top of the facade. Enough Guadi for a lifetime. Decending down a more modern staircase we gave up on the last hurrah light show and stumbled out into the streets with the aim of having a progressive dinner on the way home.
Two tapas joints on the sidewalks was very enjoyable, living on the edge (litterally) at one with bikes whooshing past at a rate of knots. Batteries and motors have made the city a little more dangerous, and was somewhat disappointed no one tried to cool us down with water pistols. We left well before the city comes alive on a Sat night and metroed and walked ( almost being collected by the only vehicle moving in the area) back to the hotel in the middle of nowhere for wind down and get ready for the next day. The get ready bit was poorly done as check-in was forgotten and we almost paid the subsequent price.

Near West bound

Logic has it that we must be in the Near West given we flew in over the Far East, via the Middle East to arrive in the heart of Catelonia, home of the water pistol tottin' locals who have apparently taken up arms against the hordes of tourists besieging their wonderful city. This is price we have to pay for splashing cash around the place. Looking forward to it when we hit the sidewalks tomorrow.

It was a 3 hop trip to get here. A lift to the airport from Offspring no.1 accompanied by the two coat pooch was greatly appreciated whilst non-blogger being stripped of scissors and a knife going through security wasn't. The 9 hour overnight jaunt to Bangkok went ok, curiously interrupted by a fellow passenger asking how long will the Blogger be watching the movie as she wanted to go to sleep. This is why they hand out eye masks was the smart reply (not delivered as these smart replies are always thought of after the event). 
The airport in Bangkok is huge. Sprawling. Cavernous. It even has it's own in house train set. Fully autonomous as well. At home we can't even get one to the airport let alone one inside.

Here they even have autonomous floor polishers inocculously roaming around looking remarkably like R2D2. Life copying art. The 5 hour layover passed by relatively eventless. Mostly just sitting around drinking coffee and being awestruck as to how many shopping strips seem to go for kms in all directions, all busy due to the plethora of peeps who were on all their way to wherever they had deemed necessary to be.
Leg no.2 was a 10 hour stint to Istanbul AP. More food and drinks at the wrong time of the day, bloated and worn out it only seemed appropriate to crash out just after lunch. Forced jet lag. And then wake into a dreamscape, everything is twisted around, it should be mid afternoon and yet it's dark outside, the nighttime footy is on live from home and they're serving breakfast like it's 5 am. Body clock spinning in reverse. More coffee. The live feed of finals fails as we slip through the safe corridor amongst the warring countries of the middle east with Shpongle providing the acoustic backdrop.
It took a while to realize the windows were deliberately blacked out to make it feel like night, the only logical reason for doing this is to appease some desk bound psycologist who has shares in a smart window manufacturing company. Admittedly the music was this bloggers choice. The windows magically cleared as we decended through the clouds to glimpse a vast suburban sprawl dotted with temples adorned with the 5 layer spires that ensure all participants are constantly reminded of the power structures under which they are controlled by.

Unfortunately we can't tick Turkiea off as a visited country as we didn't leave the airport. The 4 hours spent there was basically people watching and not eating as we figured the next leg would fatten us up again. This AP is (apparently) the busiest in Europe. No internal trains, no Star Wars robots scurrying around. Bit disappointing actually.

Enough hairy people to possibly be Wookies but that's about it. Looks like they stole the roof design from Southern Cross station back home. Aussie architecture leading the world of design and engineering (yeah right).
The next leg to Barcelona started off badly with another huge long walk to the gate only to see a milling crowd not boarding. Something wrong somewhere. At least we know our luggage has magically traveled all the way with us and is in the hold.
Eventually taking off the 4 hour hop was straight forward as we crossed the Italian boot in the dark with storms raging over the Alps down below our level to the north. Love a good lightning show. A long wait for the bags to appear and a hotel shuttle bus in the wee small hours and voila! 47 hours after leaving home, we're here. Easy.