If you're going to do a short trip to the Costa there's really no need to go anywhere near the nasty 70's resorts. There are so many big hotels there that out of season they have some great offers, low rates to fill the empty rooms, but considering you'll only be paying 2 or 3 nights accommodation anyway, a tenner a night is neither here nor there.

We stayed at the Marriott resort, which is really nice, and got a ‘friends and family' rate because I know someone who works there. Rooms are allocated at this rate on a standby basis, basically you get what's left when you check in. The gods were obviously smiling on me that weekend because the only room left was a 3-bedroom apartment with indoor Jacuzzi on the top floor right on the beach!!! Hurrah!! We bounced on all the beds, had a glass of vino on the balcony overlooking the Med, strolled along the beach at sunset, frolicked in the Jacuzzi....everything I wouldn't normally have done on a Saturday afternoon!

That night we headed up to one of my fave spots on the Costa - a tiny white village called Ojen, perched on the mountainside overlooking Marbella. Most of it is pedestrianised as the streets are too narrow for a car to fit through. There's a wonderful aroma of orange blossom and jasmine as you stroll (actually, climb - it's on the side of a mountain, remember!) between the white cottages with terracotta rooftops. There's a local law that states all buildings must be whitewashed with red roofs, so even though the village has grown a bit in the past few years, the look is being maintained. It's great to stroll around the village in the warm evening air, seeing the widows dressed in black, sitting on their doorsteps chatting. They look like they could have been transported there through time. I'm a bit worried about the husbands - how come all the women are left behind?! Was there some sort of black-widow pact a few years back?

There's a tiny square in the heart of the village, with a fountain where the locals and tourists alike fill bottles with pure spring water, and a little old church. A handful of small bars and restaurants surround the square and I love eating there. A couple of them have wood fires in the kitchen, so I ordered my favourite pork sirloin with that wonderful smoky taste, roasted vegetables, and washed down with Rioja, of course!!

The next morning we went to a local market - I'd forgotten my sunglasses and was NOT going to fork out for new ones, so was checking out the fakes. There was some spectacular fashion in the market - not a natural fibre in sight!! Everything was sparkling in the sunshine - a smorgasbord of polyester.
Most of the sunnies were huge, about the size of Victoria Beckham's lollipop head, so wasn't too mad about them, but finally found a pair that would do. Supposedly "Armani", as soon as I took them out of their lovely plastic wrapper I realised that the Armani eagle wasn't screwed on tightly - in fact I could spin it, which was quite novel, and probably just what Giorgio himself was doing right at that moment - spinning in his grave! (if he had snuffed it of course...tho he does look like strangely like corspe with a great tan..hmmm)

The afternoon was spent driving along little tracks in the mountains, very often just dirt tracks, and marvelling at how green everything was and how stunning the scenery in Andalucia is - a shame that most people see its fairly mediocre beaches and never get to see its amazing mountains.
A nice long, boozy lunch overlooking a lake meant we needed to head straight to the airport after dessert, but we got stuck in a traffic jam! We were literally stopped on the motorway. I was counting down the kilometres and the minutes until the flight was due to close - no online check-in meant we needed to deal with a human being (I use the term loosely...). We finally got to the airport just minutes before the flight was due to leave and had to interrupt Maria and Juanita's mega-important girly chat at check-in.

With a scowl they sent us running to the other end of the terminal, to a closed desk, and we had to run back and interrupt them again. This time we were ushered through to a supervisor's office with an impatient ‘tsk'. Luckily a couple of other Paddys had just rushed up having also been stuck on the motorway, and the large lady wedged between the wall and her desk looked a bit panic-stricken at the sight of all our sunburnt foreheads, wrinkled with worry and begging her to let us "make a run for it!!".
She obviously thought the best solution was to get us out of the country ASAP, so she grabbed a radio, barked into it to the gate agents, and then told us to "Go, go, go queeekly!!", so we legged it as queeekly as we could through security, flinging old German tourists over our shoulders as went, in a flurry of Birkenstocks and white socks, and just made it to the gate where we were met by more ‘tsks' and scowling. Just enough time to compose myself on the airbridge, smooth my hair, touch up my lippy, rearrange my spinning Armani eagle, and arrive smiling onto the aircraft like a starlet, ready for home!