You may recall that I’ve been heavily researching for an upcoming cruise that includes Rome, France and Spain. The ship ends the trip in this little place along the Spanish coast called Malaga. I perused many a Spain guide and found little to nothing helpful. Oh sure, the main guides listed Malaga along with a place or two for eating and sleeping, but details were pretty scant. Since the cruise ends in Malaga, I wanted to spend a couple of days there so that dad had a better chance to experience Spain (one side of his family came from Spain long, long ago.) There are bigger cities we could travel to with much better known monuments, museums and sights, but there’s really nothing like being able to settle in one place and explore.

Enter:
Footsteps Guides: Footsteps Through the City of Malaga

Wow, what a nice little guide. It’s full color, coated paper with plenty of pictures. It covers not just the main highlights, but little gardens, smaller museums and some interesting local history. There’s nice instructions for walking through what sounds like a delightful and quaint city. No, it doesn’t tell you the five best places to stay or eat–rather it gives you enough information to help you decide how long you might be happy exploring the city, what there is to see and how to go about seeing it. It’s not a huge guide (60 brochure style pages), but it seems to cover the territory well. There’s a nice section towards the end that discusses a local cemetery, a 1900 shipwreck and some info on famous people of the Malaga area.

This is exactly the type of guide I love. It allows me to explore the city before I arrive so that I can decide what I want to see. It ensures that I know where to go when I want a quiet hour or so at a park or garden. And with a guide like this, I won’t feel that I missed anything!

Because restaurants and hotels are ever changing, the publisher opted to let other guides cover that. I cheated though. I wrote to the email address at the website and got some very helpful hints! Maybe in the future, Footsteps will consider having a forum where people can talk about restaurants or hotels that worked out well.

I’ll update this post or post again after the trip to let you know how the guide worked out with actual use in the city. I have high expectations.

The guide is also available at: Bookdespository.com

My thoughts on my latest trip will be a bit disorganized and random over the next month or so. I’ll probably start at the back of the trip, Malaga, Spain, rather than the front, Rome. There’s really no rhyme or reason for it, other than the latter part is fresher in my mind. I’ll start first by complaining about flying overseas, but I’ll try to keep it short.

I used to like flying. That faded in the last ten years to preferring it for speed. After my last couple of trips, I’d have to say it’s squeezed down to “only when absolutely necessary.” The seats are smaller and closer together (I actually checked. Newer planes took out a bathroom and squeezed seats closer so that there are now two extra rows of seats). The service is far, far worse. The delays, the lines, the security…all of it adds up to a nightmare.

On the way back from Malaga, Spain, we had to go through security in three different airports–every time we made a connection. Our connection times were short, usually around an hour to an hour and a half. If mom hadn’t been in a wheelchair and received priority consideration, we would not have made any of our connections.

I’m sure you’re wondering WHY we had to go through three times. I was wondering the same thing. Well, here’s the drill, as I understand it. You go through at your normal check-in spot. Then, if you fly a regional airline, such as SpanAir, to a major airport, you leave the regional area and go to the international area. This requires not only checking in at the larger international hub (in our case with Delta), it also requires going back through security. With a bit of a language barrier and unfamiliarity with the Barcelona airport…I think we’d still be in Barcelona if not for mom and her wheelchair guide. Nightmare doesn’t quite capture the size of the airport, the flashing lights, the different language, the LINES, the sheer confusion.

Just as a side piece of info, SpanAir does not serve any kind of free drink or snack. Sodas/coffee start at about 2 euros ($3.00 or so US). But don’t take water on the plane unless you can find a place to dump it–because the next security checkpoint will have a fit if you have a water bottle.

On to the next connection. When you land in the US, this is considered your entry port. It requires leaving the plane and going through customs. Then you must collect your checked luggage (regardless of your final destination. This is your port of entry so you collect your luggage, go through immigration and recheck your luggage). Immigration is really customs, but a different name and a different line. Once you have completed the immigration check and rechecked your luggage, you have scant minutes to catch your connecting flight. You get to security…where there are many lines merging, chaos, and the usual screaming.

If you make it through that, you’re allowed to hunt down your connecting flight. If you make your flight, you’ll scamper on the plane…and if you’re flying Delta, you’ll probably find out that the flight is delayed. You get to sit on the tarmac for a while. In my case, it was only half an hour. In the case of my parents, they were delayed closer to two hours.

That, my friends, is what it is like to fly internationally. The actual flying was boring, just the way it should be. It was also incredibly long (10 hours) but we did bring our own food so we didn’t starve. I may never leave my arm chair again.