Day 2: Gibrabtar & Espona

Alhamdulillah kami sampai dengan selamatnya di Apartment La Reserva tu. Two double rooms apartment (or penthouse since it have a place for BBQ or sun bathing at the roof) with patio. Big open plan living room with dining area, two bathrooms (very big!) and complete fitted kitchen. Memang best. We feel like home, Malaysia. Kami dapat apartment ni dari ebay. Owned by Phil & Carolyn from Kent. Mereka pos je kunci kat kami setelah  kami bayar refunded deposit. Kira ok lah kan. Booking direct dari mereka pun boleh at www.rentinspain.co.uk where are their reference is 1359. Derang ada gak apartment lain in Costa Blanca, reference 1597. You can click on these direct links http://www.rentinspain.co.uk/1359.html or http://www.rentinspain.co.uk/1597.html.

Apartment kami

Pemandangan dari tingkat atas rumah. Ada ruang besar untuk BBQ.

Ahli rombongan Cik Kiah ke Spain

Awal-awal pagi kami dah bangun untuk perjalanan pertama kami towards Gibraltar. Siap masak nasi and lauk rendang buat bekal lunch. Perjalanan ke sana ambil masa sejam setengah. Tapi yang peliknya asyik lah jumpa tol. Dok sibuk bayar tol pulak. Jalan raya, suasana memang jauh berbeza dari UK. Hubbyku bukan main suka lagi drive sebab dia kata rasa macam drive kat Malaysia pulak walaupun left hand drive. Perjalanan kami berbukit. Terowong tak yah cakaplah. Mula-mula bilang gak tapi bila dah lebih sepuluh, rasa malas lah pulak. Asyik-asyik terowong, asyik-asyik terowong. Dah lalu kawasan berbukit, so nampaklah lautan yang terbentang cantik. Cuma boleh tengok sebab nak berhenti jauh pastu hujan pulak. Yang pasti memang cantik.

                

Pemandangan biasa di sepanjang highway

Lagi 15 minit nak sampai, dari kejauhan dah nampak Bukit Gibraltar tu. Subhanallah cantiknya. Cerita pasal gibraltar takyah lah saya cerita. Hubbyku dah cerita dah di blog dia http://khubaib479.blogspot.com. Tapi yang tak best sebab tak dapat naik cable car. Angin kuat, so closed.

Gibraltar Rock dari kejauhan

Melintasi landasan kapal terbang. Dah namanya pulau kan..Tu yang kena buat 2-in-1. Kan best kalu kami sampai tu, waktu tu kapal terbang nak landing...Mesti menarik.

Hubbyku menarik nafas lega sebab cable car tutup...hehehe.

Kami di Gibraltar tidaklah lama sangat sebab tak tahu mana nak tuju dalam hujan. Sebabnya naik bus, tu yang  kena kira juga kudrat yang tinggal sebab berjalan kaki aje. Yang budak-budak ni memang dari awal minta balik cepat. Sebabnya dah gian sangat nak mandi swimming pool kat apartment tu. 

Masa perjalanan balik, kami tukar setting perjalanan to avoid toll. Agak kelakar juga perjalanannya. Sebabnya kami tetap lalu highway. Tapi bila ada toll kat depan, satnav tunjuk arah keluar highway and lalu jalan pekan or kampung, then naik highway balik. Tak kisahlah, yang penting save money. Saya juga sempatlah memandu. Bangga gak sebab dapat drive keta left-hand drive ni. Gabra takyah cakap lah kan. Roundabout bukan main banyak lagi. Sempatlah kena horn sebab masuk roundabout tak tengok kiri. Alhamdulillah tak accident. Fuh...

Ha... inilah yang derang tunggu-tunggukan. Sejuk sebenarnya. Gian punya pasal, derang redah jer..

Welcome to Spain!!!

Alhamdulillah we arrived Malaga Airport without any delay. My son, Abbas made a funny statement when we just about to take out our hand luggage from the baggage area. 'Mama, kita dah sampai Malaysia ke?' Ayo, anakku ini. Means he missed Malaysia very much. Kalau harga tiket ke Malaysia is same like to Spain, tiap2 tahun kita balik Malaysia Abbas, told me silently.

Without any custom check but of course with immigration control check, we started to look for Marbesol representative. We booked our car with them from www.doyouspain.com. I did compare with other companies and that is the cheapest one and the only website that we can booked without any deposit. Yang lain (within my searches...about 5 websites) need the credit card details.

Dah jumpa Marbesol representative, they brought us to their office about less than 5 mins from the airport. Tunggu punya tunggu (ada 2 customers lain) we got our car. Jep dapat Ford Focus 5 doors n we got Cordoba Seat saloon car. Yang best, masing-masing berdebar-debar to drive a left-hand drive car. My husband surrendered. Dia migrain (mabuk kapal terbang le..hehehe). So, Jep lead the way to our Apartment in Marbella.

Tu dia...dengan malam (around 10pm we started our journey), hujan lebat, kabus tebal and left-hand-drive-first-experience, masing-masing dah macam nak nangis. Aduh...co-pilot pun sama berdebar-debar. Alhamdulillah Tom-tom Jep berfungsi dengan baik. Our Garmin kalah. We just followed. So to others, please make sure your arrival time is before night. Otherwise you will face the same experiences.

Excited naik bus towards airport from Long-stay Parking

Duduk kat kepak daa...

Our starting point to Spain

Do you know that you can save a lot of money and your friend's time by park your car at long stay parking at Stansted Airport? We only need to pay £24 for 5 days (11am, 15 Feb until 11pm, 19 Feb). You can choose your own time and date and they will give the rate. But please add another half an hour to your two-hours-before-departure-time since the transfer time between parking area and the airport is about 15 mins. Thanks to Jap for his concern on all these remeh2 matters. He even read thoroughly all the T&Cs applied on the receipt and agreement. Sometime I’m good doing this but not at most of the time….hehehe.

Our departure time was 16:00 and arrived there at 13:40 after bus ride. Then we moved to the punggah memunggah area just to make sure the check in bag is below than 15 kg and also to make sure the hand luggage bag is within the permitted size. Otherwise you will gigit jari to pay more or need to sedekah the excess items to the bin like Areej did (betul kan Areej?).

We did online check-in one week earlier. So at counter, they only check either we provide the right document (passport la kan) or not and tally with our details on boarding pass. We also drop our check in bag there and alhamdulillah the weight is 15.0 kg precisely. The next step was entering the security check-in. Kat sini yang mendebarkan. At the first post, everything was ok. Beg tak nampak gemuk and besar means tak payah timbang. Then, it was a very long queue towards scan area. Any bulky steel items semua kena removed. Coat apatah lagilah. My first daughter sangkut kat scan including me. The security women did thoroughly check-up on Sumayyah and did twice on me. Hemm…kena raba pastu kena scan lagi with metal detector scanner. Dah lepas, then my husband’s hand luggage pulakyang sangkut. He forgot to remove his camera and laptop from the bag. Laptop pun kena scan lagi. Pening diode, cathode, transistor dalam tu. Asyik kena scan je.

Dalam masa yang ada, we moved to the gate stated on the screen. Not on our boarding pass ok...so kena more alert otherwise you will be late. Macam saya lah kan. I told others that we should wait because on screen stated like that. Sib baik ada Jep, dia yang push kita gi ke gate. Sampai sana orang dah start beratur. Alhamdulillah tak panjang mana. And again, they check our hand luggage. Everybody must bring only one bag in hand. So yang mana ada tersangkut-sangkut kiri kanan tangan, kenalah letak in one bag.

All of us sit in one place. Alhamdulillah taklah berpisah-pisah. Dapat kami share our foods. Then, bermulalah perjalanan kami towards Spain. Eh lupa...sebelum naik kapal terbang, pakatlah beli air kat cafe and letak dalam beg (jangan lak dok pamer la kan). If not you need to pay £2.50 only for a bottle of small bottle of mineral water!

Good bye UK...