Kiwi Roaming

Our train from Córdoba was a quick high speed one but we didn’t manage to escape the rain which was really heavy when we arrived. Luckily the train station in Málaga has a massive mall attached so we were able to grab lunch and listen to the storm outside. The other lucky thing, there is Uber here too! so we managed to stay undercover until drop-off which kept us pretty dry. Our apartment is in suburbia in a 5 story building with about 6 apartments on each floor and surrounded by other similar height buildings all around. We dropped our bags and headed straight out to the local Dia supermarket before the thunderstorm started, after dithering around trying to decide what we wanted to eat for dinner we went back to find a Midsummer Murders marathon in English on the tele so settled in while watching the weather outside.

When we first started planning this trip we thought we would stay a week in Málaga, then kept whittling it down to the 4 nights we are here. Our plan for the next 3 days are to look around the city and visit the Picasso Museum, go on a tour to Ronda and Setenil, and the main reason we came here – to walk the Caminito del Rey.

Málaga is a decently sized city and feels like a city, the 6th largest in Spain with a population of roughly 600,000 people. One of the oldest continuously occupied places in Europe it was reportedly first settled in 770 BC. The city has a Roman amphitheatre, an Alcazaba, a Cathedral, Basilica, Fortress and remnants of old city walls. The old town is very clean with wall to wall pubs, food places and retail stores with lots of tat shops on the ground floor of the low rise buildings. The port is large and has a whole segment with super yachts and cruise ships with a massive retail and restaurant complex there too. There is a beach close to the port so we walked around to that and enjoyed the experience, it was warm today 24C and there is a great promenade.

Food – being back beside the Med it is lovely to have seafood again. The food scene here is lively, there are loads of fab rooftop bars too. I haven’t had a paella since the Camino so we found a beachside restaurant that reviewed well and makes the paella from scratch. You order for 2 people here and it comes in a large pan, we ordered mixed so there was meat for Steve and lots of yummy seafood for me. This restaurant, like all of the others on the beachfront in Spain has a wee BBQ shack outside where they cook the fish, primarily sardines. Cool to watch and keeps the smells outside. Not a cheap meal but yum. Steve decided to try a local drink at one of the rooftop bars – Tinto de Verano – which is essentially chilled red wine mixed with lemon soda and fruit with ice, his report, it tasted like red wine mixed with lemonade.

Picasso Museum – Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga and they have converted an old palace into a museum which essentially gives you a view of his art works – paintings and sculptures – through his life. He was a prolific artist creating over 200 pieces in the last 3 years of his life alone. He lived in France – Paris and Nice – for most of his life and you can see the influence of the depression, the Spanish civil war and WWII on his artwork. There are none of his famous paintings here but they’ve created a lovely experience inside a wonderful building.

We’ve enjoyed Málaga, a lovely port city. It does get busy once the cruise ship folks arrive in town but otherwise the old town is worth a visit. I do love the coloured stone streets, they are probably slippery when it rains, but look beautiful. We didn’t go to the main sites here but could see the queues of people so know they are popular. Málaga has been a great base for us to visit other places as well.