Watch the sun set into the Mediterranean, and you’ll discover why Nerja out of season is one of the most romantic getaways on the Costa del Sol.

Perched on cliffs at the very eastern end of the Costa del Sol, the last sizeable coastal town before departing Malaga Province for Granada, Nerja was once at the extreme limit of the Spanish package holiday trail. From November through to Easter, Nerja’s old town is a lively place to visit, but the pace of life is much slower and the few coachloads of tourists tend to be mostly Spanish senior citizens from up-country taking a break on the mild south coast. The snow may be lying on the Sierra Nevada mountains, just an hour away in neighbouring Granada, and the Spanish may be wearing their winter jumpers, but most days the thermometer will be high enough for T-shirts on we Brits.

It’s easy to eat healthily on Spain’s southern costas with all the fresh fruit and fish that abounds, plus doing the tapas trail rather than sitting in a stuffy restaurant burns off calories much quicker, but when it comes to breakfast I have to confess that I have one big weakness. Ham and cheese croissants. Nerja is a working town, not merely a resort, so cafés and bakers abound, and it takes more willpower than I can summon to stroll down Calle Puerta del Mar and not be drawn in by the smells of breakfast as the shop and office workers charge up for the day’s toil. Given that one can also sit in the early morning sun on a balcony high above Playa Calahonda while washing that croissant down with café con leche, I can think of few better starts to the day.

Calle Puerta del Mar, the street door to the sea, leads onto Balcón de Europa, the wide promenade atop gun battery fortifications that have been the centrepiece of Nerja town for over five hundred years and under which are the foundations of a Ninth Century castle. King Alfonso XII is believed to have coined the Balcony of Europe tag when he visited the town in the Nineteenth Century, and indeed today there is even a statue of His Majesty on the spot, though locals claim the nickname was used long before.

Visitors looking out over the sea and the neighbouring beaches from this vantage point probably think the views are spectacular, but few venture down the narrow staircase on the west side to the café beneath, where one can lunch, or in low season just sip another coffee, and admire equally stunning vistas through a glass front reminiscent of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. At night, as the sun slowly dips in the west, there are few more romantic places to dine.

The beaches at this end of the Costa del Sol are coarse sand and shingle, which is not to everybody’s taste, but as a result they tend to be less crowded. Nerja town has no less than eight beaches, ranging from the long expanse of Playa Burriana in the extreme east to the rocky coves of Playa Calahonda and Playa el Salon below the promenade. In the low season the beach bars may be boarded up and the parasols taken down, but when the sun beats down on a virtually deserted shoreline this just gives the illusion of being in an even more exotic location.

If beaches aren’t your cup of coffee, there are always the traffic-free shopping streets, where high fashion jostles side by side with crafts and trinkets, plus both street cafés and ice cream parlours abound, giving one the opportunity to just sit back and watch the world go buy while soaking up the rays and the atmosphere.

Read the full article in our February 2009 issue.  

Words and pictures Bob Morrison