Malaga
If you mentioned Malaga to a Brit, certainly an older one, and the image that would come to mind is of other Brits, pissed, abroad, in the sun, on the Costa Del Sol, a getaway for many a retired criminal allegedly. The airport was the gateway to the holiday favourites of Torremolinos and Marbella.
In Mark Leigh & Mike Lepine’s very tongue in cheek, spoof predictions book called “The Naughty 90s” one chapter was taking about the predicted decline of educational quality, and exam questions being dumbed down. One such example was asking the teenager where they had been on holiday, which elicited the response “Malaga wiv me mates”. I read that book a lot of times and ‘wiv me mates’ is the first thing I think of now whenever I hear Malaga mentioned.
January isn’t really the package holiday season, but it would appear to be golfing season. The oversize luggage was the first off the plane, and being sad like that I stood and counted the number of golf bags making their way lazily around the carousel. Twenty-nine. That’s a lot of clubs, balls, and tees.
Once we had our own (non-golf) bags it was off to the centre of Malaga on the metro. We hadn’t flown in to go to Malaga. It was the nearest option available to us for us to get to Granada, where we would be spending three nights. But due to train schedules we had five hours to kill between the bag pick up and the train to Granada. So why not have a look around Malaga and a spot of lunch?
We did waste half an hour trying to find the left luggage. Which isn’t at the train station, not in the large shopping centre surrounding it, but it is out of the side across the road and in the bus station (where fascinatingly there was a coach heading for Bulgaria — now there’s a coach journey I never want to make). Of course, the lockers only take tokens, and the tokens are only available out of a machine, which only takes coins, which means having to buy stuff to get change. A bit painful, but with cases in a locker, we set off for the city centre.
It wasn’t obvious which way it was, but we found our way to where the harbour was and followed it round to where the old town started. And getting a bit of a sweat on. With thicker coats than needed in the Spanish sun.
Just walking alongside the water, and there are some traffic lights to the right, they are on red, and the cars have stopped. A man is crossing, but then stops, puts a metal stand down, and then proceeds to do various upside-down balancing acts on the stand in the middle of the road. Welcome to Malaga.
And having been up at four in the morning to get the plane it was now approaching lunchtime for us, and so the mission was to find the first tapas place we happened upon and plonk ourselves down.
Sat at the café is a bloke who is definitely in the full throes of a mid-life crisis. He has faded dyed blue hair, and is wearing blue lensed John Lennon style sunglasses, sat up on a high chair as if screaming ‘look at me’. But it is the watch that really catches my eye, it is one of those mahoosive things, the ones that are easily three inches across and wider than the man’s wrist. So big I can read the time on it from ten yards away, and my eyesight is shit. And it is on his right arm. And then he moves, and he’s got another watch in a different style, but the same enormous size, on his left arm. It’s all I can do not to get up and wander over and ask him the time.
On the table next to us a group of Spanish twenty-somethings sit down, and one asks for a gin and tonic. They don’t mess around with their measures. The waiter comes back with the glass, a bottle of tonic and the whole bottle of gin. No measuring is done, just straight pouring from the bottle half filling the glass (so much so the tonic didn’t all fit in afterwards). It’s enough to make some want to take up drinking again if they are the measures.
Refreshed we were off again, having sorted out a better clothing configuration, and busted the camera out. Only to get ten yards along the road and find tourist information, where we pick up a map, and I get some tat. Then it became snap happy time as we made our way up to the square in front of the cathedral.
Which is a magnificent edifice, but sadly closed (probably for the best seeing as it is a flying visit).
And so is the brightly painted, in the colours of the Spanish flag, municipal building to the side of the square.
We made our way around the side of the cathedral as a group of traditionally clothed performers accumulated outside the south gates of the cathedral grounds bringing quite an impromptu crowd with them, as if it was a flash mob.
They proceeded to play music, sing, and dance, getting the crowd involved. The only issue was the crowd was blocking a road (granted it didn’t look like a road), and after the horn didn’t disperse those watching, an impatient old gipper in a Mercedes (who’d have thought it would have been a posh German car), got fed up and pushed him car through, knocking one woman over and not so gently pushing a couple of others out of the way. And then the group dispersed off in all possible directions as quickly as they had arrived, and the crowd wandered off.
Passing the rest of the cathedral we were then into some narrow streets lined with old buildings before coming out into an open space with the Alcazaba looming over us up on a hill. A prelude to later in the trip perhaps, but no time to go all the way around to get into it.
Beneath its walls is the more recently uncovered Roman amphitheatre.
The little map we picked up has a route to follow on it, and we do to an extent, but our natural tendency to divert off into narrow streets and alleyways, or by getting distracted by interesting looking buildings kicked in.
(Or even interesting — to me anyway — signs.)
And so we meander around, sometimes accidentally coming back into contact with what was suggested on the map, but not driven by it. And the old town is lovely, and nothing like my narrow minded long held image of it thought it would be.
Of course, not all of that image could be washed away. You could hear louds groups of people, obviously drunk and ‘enjoying’ themselves. And yes, invariably they were Brits, doing their usual impeccable job of international relations. There are hen and stag parties all over the place, and we can only try not to look too English to be tarred with the same brush as we continued through the streets admiring the architecture and taking photographs.
Time flies, and being dressed for travelling meant the footwear choice hadn’t been optimised for a day of wandering around sightseeing, and so we jumped on a bus back to the bus station to reclaim the cases and head for the train. Stopping to take a last couple of shots, including an amusing shop name.
And then it was onto the train. It is interesting they have airport type scanners for passengers and bags for getting onto the trains. What was more interesting was getting to the train and being told we could sit anywhere. Which was a surprise, as when buying the tickets we had struggled to find two seats together. Yet on the train, we had a carriage to ourselves.
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