Spain - Day 2 - The weird and wacky side of Malaga

Sunday 15th February 2009

Hola amigos.

We are currently in a cute little B & B on the seafront of Valencia. And boy are we stuffed. I think I have walked more in the last 3 days than I did for all of last year. And not just normal walking - up massive, monstrous, gigantic mountains. Okay, so they were just hills, but they were steep.

After enjoying our Pizza, cooked by Turks in Spain - Dan and I slept like babies. Well I did anyway, Dan spent most of the night up writing his blog. I think he was just scared in case he spelt something wrong (He made me proof read in the morning!)

Sunday morning we awoke fresh and decided to go explore Malaga. We headed for the Alcazaba and the Gibralfaro Castle, both set up high above the town. We took a nice little path that led up to the castle entrance. Wow, what a hike. It was probably about 2km's straight up. No wonder this thing served its purpose to defend. No one could be bothered climbing the darn thing. After stopping numerous times to take a breath we finally reached the top. The view was amazing. We could see straight down into the Bullfighting Arena, the beautiful harbor, and most of the touristy strip (Dan also thought he could see Africa). We paid our way in to have a bit of a look around. Just the usual castley insides, small museum, and some nice gardens. (Plus one not so friendly lady that didn't want to sell me some water because I only had a 50 Euro note). It was more about the view though. The photos we got wont do it any justice.

From here we headed back down the hill (That was just as hard as the walk up - I definitely know I have thigh muscles) and into the Alcazaba. I think this just a fancy word for a Muslim palace - Dan thinks its something to do with the fortification. Either way they were pretty cool. Fantastic gardens, courtyards, water features and lots of pretty things inside. Not to mention a lot of fruit trees. Dan and I took some silly photos of us drinking from the fountain, trying to be like the Prince of Persia, and I even attempted a Prince like manoeuvre of climbing up a wall. It crumbled in my hands a little, and I felt a bit bad for trying to climb a wall which is hundreds of years old.

After leaving the Alcazaba we headed off on a wander around the streets. Found the big Cathedral, and had a yummy lunch in a courtyard just off to the side of it. The 'Cheers' bar, also served a very traditional Spanish meal of hamburgers!! Ordering food in Spain is fun. We've been going to places with photo menus and just pointing at what we want. The girl who served us at cheers, turned out to be British, so that made it much easier! After lunch, more walking. We were attempting to find somewhere that sold road directories, so we didn't have the same issues as the day before when we headed to Granada. No such luck. As it was a Sunday, nothing was open. That didn't stop the hundreds of people, just doing as we were, walking.

It was not long into the day that I began to take count of the children who were dressed in silly costumes. There was some Buzz Lightyears, Pirates, Cowboys/girls, scary faced zombies, and countless Spiderman's and Princesses. We weren't entirely sure why. Later in the day we began to see some adults dressed up to. We saw a whole family of Ladybugs - mum dad and kids all in spots with antennas. Then mum and dad cowboys started appearing. The confusion grew. Maybe Sunday in Malaga is dress up day?

We continued walking and decided to go to the Picasso Museum, which was right in the middle of town. Malaga is the birthplace of Picasso apparently. We were walking through the gallery, trying to decipher his crazy art, when we saw a familiar face! Now I don't think Dan gave this woman enough credit in his blog, but this kind lady saved us from being, cold and lost the previous evening. It was the awesome woman who walked us all the way to our hostel when we couldn't find where we were going. She worked at the museum, and was most surprised to see us - as were we. When she was walking us up to our hostel, she gave us all kinds of cool tips - "This place sells awesome fruit, don't take flowers from gypsy ladies, try here for good burgers, bus number 1 comes up here" - she rocked. She told us all about the things we should go and see in Malaga.

After looking at weird art for an hour or so, we decided to check on the car and head up to our hostel for a little rest before embarking on another adventure of ordering dinner. On looking at the car we found a rather large pool of oil sitting underneath the Kia. Stupid rental cars.

After some rest and relaxation, we ventured out for dinner. During the day we had sussed out some nice places where we would go and eat. The main square had quite a few people (again - all dressed up in costumes) milling about. We had a bit of a look, but felt out of place - we were in civilian clothes of course - and kept walking. Walking through little alleyways to get to the restaurants and we couldn't belive the amount of people out and about at 8pm on a Sunday evening. It wasn't until the cop cars and first few floats that we realised we were standing with hundreds of others about to watch a Carnavale parade!! All sorts of fabulous, floats and bands, and dressed up people danced past us for the next hour or so. Spewing confetti and paper EVERYWHERE. All through our clothes, and the streets were all multicoloured. The highlights were some of the Bolivian drummers and dancers, these dudes in big weird inflatable suits, people with stick things that they twisted and shook, the guys dressed up as ladies, and the guys dressed up as babies. You name it, it was in this parade. We walked through the streets with the hundreds of other excited (and by this stage largely drunk) people. We found the café that we had originally planned to dine at, and enjoyed some food. I had squid and pasta, Dan had Pork with a well peppery sauce. I washed mine down with some awesome Sangria!

Again we were both worn out and slept like babies. (Although babies tend to not snore as loudly as Dan)!!!