Malaga Spain

She Said . . .

Malaga was our last stop on the mainland of Spain.  It is a charming little city.  Everything we wanted to see was centrally located.  Definitely a walking city.

Getting Into Town

We did not, again, do an excursion through the cruise line.  I had downloaded a book on my Kindle about doing day trips on foot to see the highlights of Malaga; something I had forgotten I had done about a month ago.  It was written by a British woman who now calls Malaga her home.  So I figured if we could get to town, we would be OK.

As luck would have it, the Celebrity Today information left in our room the night before told of a 10-minute bus ride for 5 euros apiece or a 40 minute walk into town.  Since we had walked I’d say nearly 20 miles put together in Rome, Barcelona, and Cartagena I was fairly keen on the bus option.  Fortunately, and perhaps sensing my sentiment, Blaise offered to buy the bus tickets.  I wa surprised this did not take some prodding on my part.  Even taking the bus, we did a great deal of walking, much uphill or stairs.

The bus ride into town did indeed take about 10 minutes but Blaise makes several comments on the bus ride in, there is no way that walk was 40 minutes.  I disagreed and still disagree.  I was sensing a future suggestion to walk back to the ship.

Our first order of business was to grab a map from the tourist information location quite near where the bus dumped us off because again, the map provided by the cruise ship was just flat useless.  With the new map in hand, we headed to the closest location - the Malaga Cathedral.

Malaga Cathedral

The cathedral, a less than 5 minute walk from Tourist Information building,  seemed rammed in the middle of a bunch of buildings.  While the outside was beautiful, it was impossible to get a picture of the entire building due to the close proximity of the buildings near it.  There was a charge to get into the church which we noted as annoying when we discussed it the night before visiting the site.  But as luck would have it, although the church was open, the ticket booth was not yet manned so we got in for free.  Somewhere in the middle of the building, mass was going on.  Many “chapels” were found around the inside perimeter of the building so we could take a looky loo without disturbing the worshipers.  It was beautiful!  I am not architecture or art enthusiast but it didn’t take that type of knowledge to see the Spanish influence everywhere.  Unlike other churches we have visited this one was quite quiet.  Very respectful of the purpose of the building.

We had learned reading the book we had on Malaga, that this cathedral was built at the location of a Muslim mosque after the Catholics ran the Muslims out of the area, something that happened in many places in this part of the world.

Picasso Museum

We decided what trip to the birthplace of Picasso would be complete without a visit to his museum, the day before his birthday (October 25).  So for two non-Picasso fans, we have spent a lot of time with his work the past few days.  I can say after listening to the audio guide with this museum visit, I understand his point of view even more than I did before.  I am still not a fan of most of it but I did see a few works in this museum I liked.  Now I say I understand his point of view but since my brain is not wired like that of an artist, I could never get from his point A to his point B.  But I can now see if you were an artist and thought like an artist, how you could get there.  Blaise is convinced his artistic style was a product of Picasso’s attempt to monetize his craft.  I disagree.

Alcazaba

We next headed to the Alcazaba.  What is the Alcazaba?  Best I could tell, it was palace/fortification built by the Muslims before they were run out of the area.  It was quite different than any other structure we have seen thus far with lots of outdoor garden areas and architectural details that look more middle eastern as I would describe them.  I am now wondering if, what I have always thought of as middle eastern architectural details, are more based in the Islamic religion as I do not think the Muslims who inhabited this area came from, specifically, the middle east.  It was gorgeous!  If not a bit trying on my asthma since it was on a hill.  It was not a palace housed in simply one building.  The structures had a wall around it, like a fortification but the inside was a series of buildings connected by lovely gardens and walkways. We will post the pictures later on Facebook when we have free WiFi and maybe someone could help out with my understanding the origins of the architectural details.

The Sangria Tour of Spain Continues

Next was my search for a place to sit, relax, and try some Sangria in Malaga.  After walking quite a bit, we found a place off the beaten path.  I had a “shrimp fritter” tapa and red sangria (since I had red in Barcelona and Cartagena, for comparison purposes, I had to stick with red here).  This sangria came with a straw and a spoon for all the green apples that were in the sangria.  It was tasty but so far my favorite is still in Barcelona.  Who knows, maybe the Canary Islands have the best sangria.

Back to the Boat

While drinking the sangria, Blaise hinted at walking back to the boat.  Not the first time he had during the day.  I really don’t mind the walking but we had walked a great deal since vacation started so I didn’t think taking a bus back to the boat was a bad thing, especially since we paid the 5 euros for the roundtrip bus ride.  On the walk back to the bus, Blaise finally said outright, “I’d rather walk to the boat.”  I was not interested.  Had the walk been entirely or even partially in the shade, I would have been OK, but the whole of the walk was in the sun.  Now it was only 72 outside but with that sun beating down on me for 40 whole minutes, the walk was not going to produce a happy wife.  We both hopped on the bus and headed back. No arguments or anything.

I don’t really talk much about our time on the boat because with 7 days at sea, I’ll have a great deal of uneventful time thus less to talk about thus more time to talk about the boat and life on the boat.

Such a lovely day with my husband!

Notable

The streets here were even fancier than in Cartagena - beautiful tiles.  People seemed to have no concern about people driving on these, what appear to me to be too-delicate-for-heavy-multi-ton vehicle, streets.

Dana’s Food Watch

Breakfast - buffet items with no inappropriate commentary from a stranger

Lunch - I had a chicken salad sandwich and one small piece of pizza.  I cannot remember what Blaise ate since we were at the lunch buffet.

Dinner - Our little single bite thing tonight was a puffy pastry with goat cheese on top.  Blaise is not necessarily a fan of goat cheese but he did comment how delicious this was.  For an appetizer, I had the octopus and Blaise had burrata with pistachios and crostini.  We both had the braised short rib for our entrees.  Blaise said his was delicious and fall-of-the-bone moist.  Mine was not.  It was chewy, confirmed by Blaise when he tried the part I left on my plate because I was tired of chewing.  To make matters worse for me, the short rib came on a bed of beans.  Blaise had the cheese plate for dessert and the Luminae redeemed itself with me with a delicious, creamy mascarpone cheesecake with berries.

Injury Watch

No injuries, not even a single trip.

Coming Up

Tomorrow is a day at sea and then our final stop on Thursday is in Tenerife, the Canary Islands.  For this stop, we actually purchased an excursion through the cruise ship to see the craters from the volcano, or something of that nature.

He Said . . .

Today’s stop is Malaga, a quaint little “city” at the southernmost point of Spain.  Originally I was extremely excited to be stopping here because I knew I would be close enough to Gibraltar to take a side trip there via an excursion, it’s only 2.5 hours by car, and originally there was an excursion scheduled for a visit; it was pulled from Celebrity’s website about June or Jul and I was extremely disappointed, I was so looking forward to it.  That being the case I had no real locations of interest that I was particularly looking forward to, must haves so to speak and we went about the creation of our “Malaga on your own” as we had done for the first two stops on this cruise.  

Having seen the Picasso museum in Barcelona we thought we owed it to ourselves, and all of the people who had so diligently invested in our upbringing and culture since birth that we would have to see the Malaga Picasso Museum as well; he was born here in Malaga and they have a beautiful museum of some twelve studio sized rooms that contain most of his later cubist works.  I say later, we’ll say post 1920 works, that for me is the travesty of the exhibit, I find a miniscule number of pieces after 1903 that I truly love, there are a few but not many.  I did listen to the audio for the exhibit (since we weren’t in a hurry) and I came across a morsel that helped me immensely, the guide said that in his early years he painted what the subject’s outward manifestation told him to paint and later (I’ll assume somewhere around 1903 and his run in with the avant garde in Paris) he painted what HE interpreted were HIS emotions of the subject.  Now that made some sense to me and it truly confirmed why I liked his earlier works so much more than his later works.  Now armed with that bit of knowledge I felt complete in being able to defend my stance on his place in art history, Velazquez still has nothing to worry about, and Prof. Dilson would be proud of my growth, had it only occurred 20+ years ago in the class…

On to the Roman ruins, nothing to grand and not nearly as well developed as the Cartagena ruins but always an interesting glimpse into how early man progressed; fortunately this was next door to the Alcazaba fort and ruins.  It was extensive and we traipsed all over the site, Ami didn’t want to walk the massive hill to get to the pinnacle of the fort so we went back down without seeing all of it; I didn’t want to either but I would have soldiered on had she been all that interested.  I was grateful she wasn’t!!  We did manage to see the working bullfighting ring from the top and did not feel the need to go see it at ground level; I’m not certain how I feel about the sport, I’ve never given it much thought, on it’s surface it seems barbaric and cruel to the animal but there are times when the bull gores the matador to death; I wonder if he is put out to pasture or does he go back into the line to be used in the next bull fight?  Nonetheless it is very much a part of Spanish culture and I wouldn’t want to judge it too harshly without requisite knowledge and research, I’ll have to give this some thought; where to fall on the matter, outlaw or embrace?

Last stop for the day was at a lovely side street cafe where Ami could compare and contrast the Sangria in each of the Spanish ports we had visited, Barcelona was her favorite, I personally liked the Cartagena version best; don’t be misled, they were all fantastic, they reminded me of Long Island Ice Tea, you have know idea they aren’t tea until you stand up to go to the restroom, these were just like that, can’t taste a bit of the alcohol, you know it’s gonna be bad.  Ami had a shrimp tapa and I had a welcome glass of water in a beautiful cobalt blue decanter, I thought why don’t they make cars this color, they’d fly off the assembly line!!  We enjoyed the down time and held hands while talking about the Catalan issues in Barcelona, whether or not Brandon was missing us (he’s in Florida working catastrophe duty from Irma and hopefully making a lot of money), and the stock market run up while we were out of country!!  

We walked down the main pedestrian walk and commented on how much these city’s spend on their streets, the walks are all made of marble stones, it must cost a fortune, but is beautiful to look at and quite nice under foot.  From there it was back to the bus and back to our home away from home for the day, perhaps tomorrow I’ll cover our stateroom attendants, Rene and Ian, both good guys that work extremely hard.  Until then…

P.S.  Since I heard there is a food watch as well as an injury watch I thought I would add a couple of my own…

Casino Watch:

Blaise Up $1.67 thus far

Ami Down $20 after a windfall to make up for the $40 she was down from the previous night.

Prune watch will begin in earnest if things don’t change radically and soon…