The first view of the city was from the Mediterranean, and even from a distance it looked pretty nice. What first caught my eye was the impressive looking old fortress behind the city on a hill, and a closer inspection revealed other beautful buildings, many parks and fountains. The sity was clean, compared to Gibraltar and La Linea, where we just arrived from. The people also seemed to be a step above the ordinary Spaniard, as they were very well dressed and made me feel a bit plain at times.

As we arrived in Almeria by boat, we first encountered the port of Almeria. The port lies at the head of "Golfo de Almeria" and is protected by a main breakwater wall, which extends one mile to the southeast. The harbor entrance is dredged to a depth of 49 feet. A channel leads into the main harbor and another channel leads to the ore berth, which is no longer in use. The huge steel and wooden structure still remain in place, but now only small fishing boats are tied up to it. In the northeastern part of the harbor, Club de Mar marina is situated.The main port can accomodate large ships that carry cargo or fuel, and one part is constructed with high walkways for the ferries. The ferries leave for Morocco and other parts in the Mediterranean.

There are 280 berths in Club de Mar marina and most of them are for local boats, but they will also accomodate visitors. Maximum length for the boats in the marina is 49 feet, and the draft cannot exceed 9.5 feet. Electricity and water are available on the quay. A seperate building contains showers and toilets, and most of the time they work good. When we first arrived, the showers didn't work; no water! The marina people let us go over to the Yacht Club's showers, even though they were not happy about it. Since more transient boats have arrived here, they finally fixed the water problem, even though sometimes we still end up taking showers with cold water! The fuel dock we became acquainted with the very first day, and by now we have located all the shops for boat supply, hardware, groceries, fotoshops, Internet Cafe's, pharmacies and the laundy store. There are no laundrymats in Spain. Here in Almeria we can bring our dirty clothes to a dry cleaner shop, where they will wash, dry and fold our clothes. They measure the dirty clothes loosly in a big bucket, and if its not full or full, they charge 2000 pesetas for it. If we have more, there will be an additional charge, but 2000 pesetas, about $11.00 for a months laundry doesn't seem so bad. I tried washing by hand earlier, but that was too much wringing for my fingers and hands, so they got swollen after the first load. Even when Dan helped to wring out the heaviest clothes, my hands couldn't take it, so once a month we bring our dirty clothes to the store to have them cleaned.

Farther northeast of the marina and about 2 miles along the coast there are wonderful beaches with a wide and tiled walkway all along the coast. Benches are spaced out along the walkway, and here I see the Spanish people and tourists walk or sit in the afternoon sun. There are cafe's also along the walkway, so if you get hungry or thirsty after a brisk walk, you can refresh yourself while you rest! As most of the stores close down between 1400 and 1800 everyday, it tends to get a bit crowded on the walkway in the late afternoon. The Spanish people have eaten their dinner by then, so a bit of fresh air and a walk feels good, I guess! Sometimes when it's blowing strong westerly winds, big, huge rollers smash up against the shore and spew salt water high in the air. It is quite beautiful to see the waves roll in one higher than the other with white, foamy tops.

The oldest part of Almeria is below the fortress Alcazaba in the nortwestern part of the city, and there many old buildings are located. One day in January, Wendy, Duke and I were walking around the old city with our tourist map in our hand. We were looking for all the points of interest! Our first stop would be at the cathedral, and to get there we had to walk along very narrow streets that led us away from the coastline. The cathedral was built in the 17th century as a fortress like structure to serve two purposes; worship and defence against attacks on the city by Berber pirates. I had been inside the cathedral before Christmas, when the city had organized a concert by a Russian Symphony orchestra, and that time I had a chance to look around a bit. The orchestra played beautiful classical music and even though I didn't understand much about it, it sounded great inside the cathedral with just the natural acoustics. Dark wood carvings hung on the walls or adorned the end of the benches, but the placement of the benches was different from an ordinary church. These benches sat in a room with three sides, and the forth side was open to the altar. The benches were lined up on the floor in rows, and all along the walls were individual seats, with high backs, that made a row around the room. It didn't seem to me that too many people could fit, but for the concert there were additional regular chairs set up in front of this room, as well as on the sides.

Once we had taken pictures of the cathedral, we continued up to "Plaza de la Constitucion", The Old Square, where we rested on a bench in the sun for awhile. Christmas decorations still hung across the square next to tall palm trees, smaller trees, green bushes and some flowering plants. Eventually, we arrived at "Puerta Purchena", which by tradition is the heart of the city center. From there we followed "Paseo de Almeria" south by Champion grocery store, where we shop for food, and stopped to look at a "Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Mar", Basilica of Our Lady of the Sea, which is the patron saint of Almeria. More churches we passed by as well as the Cervantes Theatre and Mercantile Circle, and eventually we ended up by the port again. We had been gone quite e few hours, and we all were tired. Duke was in a hurry to get to his waterbowl for some cold water, but I just wanted to rest my legs.