Malaga, Spain

We visited the town of Malaga, a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Having a rental car meant we could drive into the downtown area and not wait on mass transit. The drawback was finding parking. We came across an underground parking garage right beneath the old town area, for which we were grateful. Coming up, we saw a park decorated for Christmas.

Just imagine the tree that ornament came from!

The streets had lots of Christmas decorations too, though mostly they were lights that were not so impressive at 10 in the morning. Still, it looked like it would be fun to wander through them at night.

Romantically rain-soaked streets

Some of the decor was of a more permanent if not more obvious nature. Like this statue, in front of which J was happy to pose.

A bit of modern art, maybe we should have looked at it from a different angle

Walking around we saw lots of cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating, but this one took the cake. We thought about dining there but the outdoor furniture was too posh for us. I'm sure the kids would make a mess of those nice couches!

What do they do when it rains?

One of the claims to fame of Malaga is that it is Picasso's home town. His birth home is a museum. Another museum is dedicated to his art, but it was not open on New Year's Eve. Though the real problem was New Year's Eve falling on a Monday, when all the local museums were closed.

Rather nondescript Picasso Museum

In the 1950s the Teatro Romano was discovered by chance at the base of the old Moorish fort. The theatre was built during the reign of Caesar Augustus. This theater also is not open on Mondays but we could see inside from the sidewalk. It looks pretty good after 2000 or so years.

Theatre seating

You can see a bit of the fort on the hill

Where the stage and backstage were

We had tapas at a local cafe and headed back to the car. Unfortunately, getting the car out of the parking garage was a little tricky. First there was finding the right entrance again, which was the little part of the trickiness. Much more tricky was driving a stick-shift diesel up a very steep ramp into a traffic light. Enough cars were at the light that I waited on the steepest part of the ramp. Getting into first gear from a dead stop at a 45 degree angle took several tries. Eventually, it worked out, though not without a lot of heart-pounding. We made it back safely to our hotel for another afternoon of swimming, so all was well.