I've just returned from a lovely relaxing week at our apartment. It occurs to me that it would be useful to have a thread for making recommendations to each other, as Jenny did about the Roman baths. So here goes:
Eating:
Venta La Choza, on N340 at entrance to Dona Julia Golf (recommended to us by Jenny and Gary originally) - you wouldn't give it the time of day from the outside but it's like an opulent tardis on the inside and the most delicious food.
Venta Garcia: 2nd Venta on left as you go up to Casares Village - delicious food, lovely Spanish waiter, very good vfm. Need to book Sunday lunch and weekend evenings.
Chiringuito on Duquesa Beach (Cubanga Beach Club?) - quite expensive but lovely food and great location before / after an afternoon on the beach.
Things to do:
Dolphin watching with Dolphin Safari based in Gib - Only 12 people on the boat, we saw stacks of Dolphins, but would like to do it again when it's not raining so hard it's dripping off our noses!!
Upper Rock of Gibraltar: Done this twice now and still not had time to see everything. If you're daring or stupid, drive up, rather than take the cable car or a taxi bus. Beware of serious clutch burn though, take it slowly, don't panic! There's a magnificent cave; the apes, of course (don't try and get anything out of your bag and don't let them see any carrier bags in the car, one cheeky ape stole our carrier bag of rubbish out of the back of the car!!), underground siege tunnels' a moorish castle; an underground "city" and fantastic views. Take a picnic, there's a poor cafe at the caves, but all that hill walking makes one very hungry! the border queue into Gib can be tedious and unpredictable - sailed through with no queue on Monday, queued for 40 mins on Wednesday. Queued to get out Monday, quick exit Wendesday. I think it depends who is on duty and whether they feel like looking at the passports. (Don't forget to take Sterling, the echange rate isn't very good!)
Casares Village, again lots of steep hill walking, but fascinating village and wonderful views.
Things we still haven't had time to do but would like to do: train trip to Ronda from Algeciras, day trip to Sierra Nevada, Flamenco show, actually there's too much to list, I'll mention them after we've been, those are my top 3!
Over-rated in my opinion: Puerto Banus (except El Corte Ingles and Hipericor, where you could easily lose yourself for a day!). Monte Selwo Aventura - animals are not in natural habitats, felt very sorry for them. Sotogrande - really boring unless you like boats, the beach is excellent for shell-collecting, but our car was broken into here on our first trip in February.
We flew to Jerez this time, nice quiet little airport, but the car journey (90 minutes) was a bit tedious. I wouldn't go with Ryan Air again if I can avoid it either!
Emma