HOTEL BYBLOS
Andalusia, Costa del Sol
Spain

"Muy tranquillo" says my taxi driver when he hears I’m staying at Hotel Byblos. Shooting past southern Spain’s new toll road and thirty minutes west of Malaga, we turn north towards the Sierra Nevada. The Mediterranean is left behind as we weave between two golf courses. The spring bloom of orange trees sweetens our approach to Costa del Sol’s whitewashed, terracotta-tiled, palm-rimmed Hotel Byblos.

"Es correcto," I agree as I enter a world like a traditional Andalusia town with blue-and-gold-tiled pools, lush greenery, courtyards and fountains—inside and out. Romantic niches and private corners perch from Roman pillar to Moorish arch. There’s a pool to laze by, low Arab sofas to lounge on and the warmth of an open fire.

"Si, tranquillo," I think, sitting on my half-moon-shaped balcony and listening to the evening’s soft rock group—chirruping crickets, grumbling bullfrogs and distant barking dogs. Thirty years ago, the last time I was on the Costa del Sol, dogs were not part of this group, pets were a luxury.

The brick floors and rough yellow walls of my mini-suite are divided by a Romanesque faux-brick arch, decorated in traditional Spanish style with carved furniture and Moorish accents. Old lithographs washed in soft aqua and peach depict Spain’s history. There’s Seville’s Giralda, the Moorish minaret to which the Christians added a Gothic top for their cathedral’s bell tower. Another shows the Rock of Gibraltar the British took in 1704 and still won’t give back. A third brandishes arched silhouettes of slim, baroque matadors. Hotel Byblos takes its name from Mesopotamia’s main city about twelve centuries BCE and is a prime spot to start a history tour. A car is essential, but the driving is on the right and not difficult.

All through Andalusia, history lies about like the shrimp on a paella. Roman aqueducts and amphitheaters lie scattered among the olive and orange groves climbing geometrically up the dry limey soil to the base of the pueblos blancos. These white towns are made up of white-washed houses, narrow streets, Moorish palaces and church towers—Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance. The Moors ruled Andalusia from 711 till Castilians kicked them out in 1492 from their last stand, Granada. There the beautiful, magical Alhambra testifies to the exquisite design and calming effects of Moorish design. It’s about an hour and fifteen minutes from the Hotel Byblos.

After the Moors, exploration and inquisition made Spain fabulously wealthy and frantically Catholic. Then with the likes of Napoleon, corrupt Spanish monarchs, the Spanish Civil War and 35 years of Franco—Spain didn’t fare too well. Things started looking up when Juan Carlos restored democracy in 1975 and by the end of the twentieth century, European Union funds brought southern Spain firmly into the new millennium.

European royals "discovered" the Costa del Sol. After World War II, left with little more than their titles, they found it warm, sunny and cheap. The rich and the famous followed to Marbella—still more or less top drawer, but THE place to be seen has moved down the coast to Puerto Banús. The value of some of the yachts moored here exceeds the GNP of many a small country. Then there’s Torremolinos, high-rises full of beer-drinking package tourists. Shopping, commensurate with the presumed income of the target tourist, is prevalent. Fifty golf courses dot the landscape. Costa de Golf would be well-served with immediate and tough zoning.

When the touring, shopping and golfing overwhelm, the Byblos is there to sooth tired tootsies. If a drink at the Bar St. Tropez doesn’t do it, a thalassotherapy treatment might. Thalassotherapy, in case you’ve lost track, works on the premise that sea water contains many elements that tired bodies (and tootsies) don’t have and that the body can absorb these elements through the skin. These seaworthy therapies include pressure showers, underwater massage with water jets, and bubbling baths all with seawater at precisely body temperature.

La Andaluz Restaurant 
Hotel Byblos

Dining past nine, to avoid an empty restaurant, I nibble on pickled onions and olives and anticipate my paella, an Andalusian specialty. Paella is named after the low, flat pan in which it is baked. It’s a peasant dish, traditionally made by men, of rice and whatever else one has at hand—fresh vegetables, rabbit, chicken, sausage or if by the sea, fresh fish.

Doggedly, I have searched thirty years for a paella as sumptuous as the one my then love and I had in a tiny restaurant on a beach not far from here. Sitting beneath a grape arbor swarming with bees, we were served a paella from a pan the size of a sink by an old woman covered head-to-toe in black. All afternoon we ate, sipped vino tinto and pronounced on world affairs or local gossip. My benchmark for great paella was set that summer afternoon.

At Andaluz, with as much flourish as is possible when serving paella to one, the waiter pushes a trolley with the traditional paella pan to my table. I catch the first whiff of saffron and shrimp. Salty-sweet black mussels, tiny-tender clams, crimson shrimp, chicken legs and bright green peas commingle on saffron rice—the soft orangey color in a Mediterranean sunset. Does the paella at La Andaluz measure up? Can a mere mortal chef compete with thirty years of embellished memory? Of course not.

Continuing to "look for castles in Spain," I order crème brûlé for desert. Presented in a shallow soup bowl, there was more of the brittle caramelized-sugar crust to contrast with the smooth, creamy custard. The thin caramel crackles as my spoon slips into the cool, not cold custard unearthing just a hint of vanilla. Crackles and rich custard mingle and melt in my mouth. From the first taste, I knew Andalusia had set another benchmark, this time for crème brûlée.

LINKS WITH ATTITUDE

Hotel Byblos' web site is full of pics.

The Spain's Tourist Board is useful site.

Andalucia, as this area is called, has its own web site.