Planning a trip to Andalucia this May with our 22 yo and 19 yo sons. Older son is outgoing, adventurous plays guitar and LOVES performance cars. Younger son is loner, introvert and risk averse, but quite athletic.
As a family we like to meet locals and enjoy the local culture, as opposed to doing the high speed hit-the-tourist-sites trip. We would like to rent apartments so that we can move at our own pace and have a comfortable home base. Our thought is that we will stay in two to three places over a two week trip. We haven't booked our flight from Canada yet, but we will fly into either Madrid or Malaga.
Option 1: Madrid(or Malaga) - Seville - Cadiz. We would spend a couple of nights in Madrid, but most of our time based in Seville and Cadiz, with day-trips to Jerez, Granada, Tarifa and possibly Morocco.
Option 2: Malaga - Seville - Nerja (with day trip to Las Alpujarras). We would include a day trip to Granada.
The theme for both of these is Seville, the coast, (either Cadiz area or Nerja area) and Granada. Acitivities we would consider would be music performances (flamenco, guitar), attending a football game, local food (including tapas), some kind of water activity (fishing, boating and/or windsurfing), touring a couple of villages, hanging around the beach for a couple of days, and perhaps our sons will hit the nightclubs for a couple of nights. (our older son will have to drag our younger son!)
We don't speak Spanish...although we will come equipped with our best effort for phrases, etc. My husband loves food and drink so would be interested in beer, perhaps sherry bodegas, simple tapas and, definitely serrano ham! He would love an offbeat visit to a pig farm or an olive mill.
So, any suggestions? Are we better to base ourselves to the west (i.e. in Cadiz/Jerez)? or to the west towards Granda province (i.e Nerja/Las Apujarras). Is Nerja too boring and "old" for our sons? Would it be better to base ourselves in a university town? The key for our trip is to keep our sons entertained. and have activities that we old fogeys can enjoy too! Thanks!
Andalucia with 2 young adult sons
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Great post and you seem to have done a good bit research and planning into this already.
The west of Andalucía is great and Cadiz is good fun place to base yourselves and a day trip to Tarifa (watersports)and Jerez (sherry) very easily done from Cadiz.
However a day trip to Granada from Cadiz (5 hours away) or Sevilla (3 hours) a little bit longer.
If you are going to base yourself on the eastern side of Malaga, ie the Granada province I would suggest that it would be a lot more enjoyable for all concerned if you were to base yourself in Granada rather than Nerja. Particularly for your sons. In Granada you can enjoy, flamenco, tapas, great student nightlife and easy access to the Sierra Nevada and to the Alpujarras. While in Granada you might also be interested in checking out mountainbiking, horseriding, canyoning, hiking, there is a lot going on. It is also very easy access to the Alpujarras and about an hour to the coast. There is a lot more to Granada than just the Alhambra and for young adults it is definitly the livelist student town in Spain.
I'd say that Nerja might be a bit too old for your sons.
Tarifa is one of the world's hot spots for wind surfind (not necessarily for beginners, IMO), so you might even want to spend a night or two there. There are sights nearby, e.g. the Roman ruins on the sea in (I always forget the name), maybe 1/2 hrs towards Cadiz.
If they are somewhat interested in nightlife, they should go out in Madrid. But don't expect them back before 7am LOL
In Sevilla, flamenco breaths around every corner, especially in the Triana district. The flamenco dance genious, 26 year old malagueña Rocío Molina, premieres her new show at the elegant Lope de Vega theater on the 17th of May. Still some tickets left.
And don't settle for the "ordinary" serrano ham. Go for the Jamón Ibérico de Bellota, preferably from Jabugo in the Huelva region (not too far from Sevilla) or Guijuelo in Salamanca. Very expensive and worth every penny!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2001/09/09/AR2005041402505.html
O.K....sounds like Nerja isn't the place for us. Thanks GranadaInsider and Cowboy. (p.s. clearly I meant to say that Nerja was to the EAST of Malaga.)
But, Kime, you've just opened up a whole can of worms, what with the talk about iberico de bellota jamon! I can't possibly show this to my husband now because it would sidetrack our entire trip! (for the rest of the family that is!) I can see us now, trooping for hours on end through the fields with the free-range piggies, kicking the acorns as we go. Touring ham plants and sausage factories. Visiting nameless bars in small villages, looking for the iberico bellota hams that have been cured for at least 5 years. We would never make it to Sevilla or Granada. Let's just keep this our little secret, o.k.?
N.
He-he, you will find those "littele secret" jamones on offer in many, if not most, of the tapas bars in Sevilla, in fact in most of Spain. Ibérico de bellota is a sure bet, and there are two branches of the exclusive Jabugo based chain Mesón Cinco Jotas (meaning five star Jabugo ham) in Sevilla. http://www.mesoncincojotas.com/
Nerja is a charming place even though it's very populer with tourists. You just have to know where to go. But it wouldn't be my first choice as a twenty year old. You should come back here some time: http://www.nerjatoday.com/