Two Weeks in Andalucia: Why We Rented an Apartment Instead of Booking a Cruise
Quick Verdict: Should You Base Yourself in One Place?
Yes, if the region you are visiting has more than a few things worth seeing and they are spread out. We spent two weeks in July in one apartment just outside Estepona with a rental car, and it was the first time in more than 20 years of traveling that we set up shop in a single place and tried to live somewhere instead of visiting it.
Best for:
- Families who want a real kitchen, laundry, and separate bedrooms
- Trips of ten days or longer, where the pace of a cruise or a multi-city tour starts to wear
- Regions like Andalucia, where the good stuff is spread across an hour or two of driving
- Anyone who works remotely and wants to keep one foot in the day job
Not ideal for:
- Travelers who do not want to drive in a foreign country
- Short trips where the setup cost eats the benefit
- Anyone who wants a different port every morning without repacking
The honest take: this trip changed what we plan to do with our own vacation time. We are not giving up cruising, but the annual family cruise is likely to become an extended stay somewhere instead.
We flew into Malaga, picked up the rental car first thing, and drove about 45 minutes down the coast to an apartment at Sunset Golf, in the La Resina area just outside Estepona. Four of us, sort of: me, Ashley, our 11-year-old Abby, and our friend Jordan, who joined for the last five days.
The apartment was a two-bedroom, two-bathroom duplex with multiple terraces, a community pool, and wifi fast enough that Ashley and I could both work remote days without thinking about it. That last part matters more than it sounds, and I will come back to it.
We broke our own rule to do this
For two decades our default was a cruise. Unpack once, wake up somewhere new, let somebody else handle the logistics. It works, and we still love it. But we had started to notice two things. The Caribbean was feeling repetitive to us, and European cruises meant a lot of ports where the ship docks an hour from the town you actually came to see, so you spend the day on a bus.
So we tried the opposite. One address for two weeks. A car in the parking space. Nobody handling the logistics but us.
Booking it through Havens, the same platform we book villa and home stays through for clients, was deliberate. I wanted to go through the process the way a client does before I kept putting people into it. That is the same reason we sleep in the cabin categories we recommend rather than reading a deck plan and guessing.
What actually changed
You stop rushing
This is the part I did not expect. On a cruise or a multi-city itinerary, every day is the only day you will ever have in that place, so you push. You see the cathedral even though everyone is done. You skip the long lunch because the ship leaves at five.
With two weeks in one place, that pressure disappears. If Mijas was hot and we were tired, we could leave. There was always another day. We ended up doing fewer things per day and enjoying them more, which is the opposite of how our trips usually go.
Rest days become part of the plan, not a failure
We started calling them reset days. No drive, no town, no plan. The pool downstairs or the beach ten minutes away, and that was the whole itinerary.
On a seven-night cruise a day like that feels like waste. Here it was the thing that made the next day good. In July, in Andalucia, with an 11-year-old, it is also just realistic. This is a hot region and a vertical one, and I will have more to say about that in the posts on Ronda and Gibraltar.
You get to go back
Estepona became ours in a way a port stop never does. We ate at the chiringuitos on the sand more times than I can count, walked the same beach path, and finished basically every dinner at a gelateria. You do not build a routine on a cruise. It is the routine that made it feel like living there.
And sometimes the timing is just luck
On July 19 we were in Spain when Spain won the World Cup, beating Argentina 1-0 on a Ferran Torres goal in extra time. Their second title, and their first since 2010.
We watched it in a plaza, at a 9pm local kickoff, surrounded by Spaniards. When the goal went in the whole square went up at once. It is one of those things you cannot plan, cannot book, and will never forget.
Abby wore an FC Barcelona shirt for it, one we bought in Barcelona on an earlier trip. She picked it out for the final on purpose. There is something about a kid choosing to dress for a country’s night that tells you she was not just present for it, she was in it.
Here is the part that still makes me laugh: the final was played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, about half an hour from our house. We flew 3,500 miles to watch a match happening in our own backyard, and I would make that trade again without thinking about it. Watching it at home would have been a game. Watching it in that plaza felt like a once in a lifetime experience.
There is a version of this that is a lesson rather than a story. When you stay somewhere for two weeks instead of passing through for six hours, you are exposed to whatever that place happens to be doing that week. Festivals, matches, fireworks off the rooftops on a random evening. A cruise itinerary cannot sell you that, because it does not know it is coming either.
Working from the trip is possible, and worth checking before you book
Ashley and I both had remote work days. Fast, reliable wifi is what made that a non-event, and it is the single amenity I would verify before booking any long stay. A property listing that says “wifi” is not the same as a property with wifi you can hold a video call on. Ask what the actual speed is.
What the apartment gave us that a hotel would not
- Two bathrooms. Four people, one bathroom, two weeks. No.
- A kitchen. Breakfast at home most days, which with a kid is the difference between a calm start and a production.
- Laundry. You pack for half the trip.
- Separate bedrooms. Abby could go to bed while the adults were still up.
- A pool downstairs. The reason a reset day costs nothing.
- Space to spread out. Multiple terraces meant that even with a friend staying, nobody was on top of anybody.
What we gave up: daily housekeeping, a front desk, and somebody else cooking breakfast. On a four-night trip I would take the hotel. On a fourteen-night trip it was not close.
How to judge a long-stay apartment before you book it
Having now done this as a guest rather than only as an advisor, here is what I would actually check before booking a two-week stay anywhere. Most listings will not volunteer these, and the difference between a good long stay and an irritating one is almost entirely in this list.
Wifi speed, stated as a number. I said it above and I will say it again because it is the one I would not compromise on. “Wifi included” tells you nothing. Ask what the actual speed is, and if anyone is working, ask whether it holds up on video calls.
How many bathrooms, not just how many bedrooms. Four people and one bathroom is fine for three nights and grim for fourteen.
Laundry in the unit. This is what lets you pack for half the trip, and it is the amenity that most changes how much luggage you drag through an airport.
Air conditioning, and in which rooms. In July in Andalucia this is not a nicety. Confirm the bedrooms have it, not just the living area.
Kitchen basics. A “full kitchen” can mean anything. If you plan to cook at all, it is worth knowing whether there is an oven, whether there is more than one pot, and whether coffee is a machine you understand.
Distance to a grocery store and to the town. The whole home-base model depends on being able to restock without it becoming an expedition.
Parking, and what kind. A dedicated space is worth a lot, especially after you have seen what Spanish garages do to rental cars.
Elevator, if there are stairs. Two weeks of luggage, groceries, and beach gear up three flights gets old.
Who to contact when something breaks. In a hotel it is the front desk. In an apartment you want to know before you need it.
None of that is exotic, and it is exactly the checklist I would run for a client. The reason I am writing it down is that I now know from the inside which items actually mattered over fourteen days, and it was not the ones I would have guessed.
Why we picked this stretch of coast
Estepona sits in a useful spot. Malaga airport is roughly 45 minutes to an hour east on the toll road, with the city center a little further. Gibraltar is about 45 minutes west. Marbella is 25 minutes. Ronda is inland and up. That put nearly everything we wanted inside a manageable drive, in both directions, which is exactly what a home base needs.
Estepona itself is quieter than Marbella and more lived-in. Paid parking in town ran us under $10 for a few hours, which after New Jersey rates felt like a rounding error. People were consistently warm to us. It is a real town that happens to have a beach, rather than a resort strip with a town attached.
If your must-see list leans toward Nerja and the caves, basing further east nearer Malaga makes more sense. Pick your side of the coast based on which day trips you actually care about.
When a home base is the wrong call
I have spent this whole post arguing for the model, so let me be straight about when I would tell a client not to do it.
On a short trip. There is a setup cost to a home base: grocery shopping, learning the roads, working out where things are. On four or five nights you spend a meaningful share of the trip paying that cost. A hotel absorbs it for you.
If nobody wants to drive. The car is not optional here, it is the thing that makes the model work. If driving abroad genuinely stresses you out, a home base without a car means you see one town and book tours for everything else, which is both more expensive and less flexible than it sounds.
If you want the trip handled. A cruise or a resort is somebody else handling logistics, cooking, and cleaning. A home base is you doing all three. We wanted that. Plenty of people, quite reasonably, do not, and there is nothing wrong with a vacation where the point is that nothing is your job.
If you want to see many places. Two weeks in Andalucia from one base is a lot of Andalucia and none of Madrid, Barcelona, or Portugal. A base trades breadth for depth. If your list is a country rather than a region, a moving itinerary or a cruise is the right shape.
With very young children, it can go either way. A kitchen and a washing machine are enormous with a toddler. Daily drives to hill towns are not. If we had been traveling with a three-year-old, we would have done the same base and half the day trips.
Would we do it again
Yes, and we are already planning the next one. Andalucia has more left than we saw, which is its own endorsement after two weeks.
The bigger shift is what this does to our calendar. We are not done cruising. But the annual family cruise is probably becoming an extended stay somewhere, because the thing we got here, time that was not spoken for, is not something a seven-night sailing can give you.
Next in this series: what nobody tells you about driving on the Costa del Sol, including the toll math, the garages, and the scrape I put down the side of our rental car.
Thinking about two weeks somewhere instead of seven nights at sea? That is exactly the kind of trip we plan, villa and apartment stays included, and we have now done this one ourselves. Email me at [email protected] or start with our private villas and rentals page.
