Marbella Day 9 - The Rain in Spain Stays .....

We were awakened early by flashes of light and loud thunder as a storm rolled through our area at about 6:00 am. In my early morning haze of trying to get back to sleep, there was a noise that didn't really sound like thunder but I disregarded it and tried to go back to sleep.

Well, when I finally got up and looked outside, I discovered that our lower patio sun cover had collected about 300 kg of water and pulled a couple of the support poles out of place. It was now held up by a severely compromised thread of a rope. I moved the glass table and chairs from beneath it and called the condo rental company.

About an hour lately, a maintenance guy showed up. He didn't speak much english but we finally figured out a strategy for cutting it free and releasing the water. I let him use my knife and he got totally soaked.

The rain continued for the rest of the morning so we got caught up on the laundry and other tasks.

Around 12:30, there were a few patches of blue sky so we hopped in the car and headed downtown.

We walked through the shopping areas of Puerto Banus and ended up a this large shopping centre that was a really different concept to what we have ever seen. It seemed about 50% bigger than a large Super Walmart with about 40% grocery store and the remainder appearing to be a flea market for the super rich. It looked like a department store until you realized that each high end brand of clothing, footwear, accessories, or fragrance had an allocated space and dedicated sales staff (and in the jewelry section armed security guards).

I sort of liked this pair of casual shoes... price 580.00 euro.

Quite an extensive booze section and pretty good prices!

The Spanish love their cured hams with lots to choose from.

Here is the carving station in the deli...

Here you can pick up your Nespresso pods...

From here we walked to the boardwalk heading west past several exclusive beach clubs. 

There are some nice beachfront condos along here.

There was no-one on the beach today and after a while, we headed back to the harbour but not before stopping to enjoy a bit of the sunshine.

The harbour front bars were not too busy today.

For supper, we walked to a restaurant at the nearby racquet club but it was not serving any food tonight, apparently they are only serving lunch during the "slow" season. We walked to our default local tapas restaurant and had supper at about 9:00 pm.

We are expecting more rain overnight but tomorrow is supposed to be just cloudy and 24C so hopefully we can get out a bit more tomorrow.