An angle

We had previously written off Almería as a place to visit. Until a few years ago, we used to take the coast road to come down here, and Almería province was the busiest, ugliest part of it. As a major fruit and salad growing area, it's renowned for its mar de plástico (sea of plastic) which can be seen from space. Once we found the much more pleasant inland route via Ciudad Real, we happily abandoned it.

But someone told me recently that Almería the city is quite an attractive place. It's an easy hour-and-a-half bus ride from here, so off we went. The plastic is as tatty and ugly as ever, literally stretching as far as the eye can see from the sea to the foothills of the mountains.

Once in Almería, we took a taxi up to the Alcazaba, the Arabic fortress which dominates the town. If I haven't blipped it, it's because it was extremely boring, even for two ex-archaeologists. We were glad it was free to enter. It is quite extensive though, so it took us about an hour and a half to look around it. We then returned to the Moroccan restaurant where we'd had coffee earlier for lunch. Unusually for us, we ordered menus del día instead of sharing one starter and one main. This was a mistake -- the food was good, but the main courses of couscous and tagine were huge -- one between us would have been ample.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking off lunch, wandering round the old town. I was bored with postcard-style pictures, so I desperately tried a different angle on the cathedral. Almería does not have a lot to attract tourists -- we walked down many drab streets full of tumbledown buildings and bad graffiti. But it has some very handsome buildings too. Two extremes in extras. As it was a bank holiday (Día de Andalucía) everywhere except bars and restaurants was closed for the afternoon. We'd have liked to see the network of underground tunnels constructed to protect the population from bombs during the civil war, but it was not to be.

Verdict: not worth a special trip. But it was still a good idea to go somewhere new, as it's easy to slip into old habits and go back to the same places over and over. Home at 8 pm to a relieved and hungry cat, now glued to my lap.