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Palace
The Royal Palace at night.We had planned to rent a car and drive to Valencia, when that fell through we decided to take a train, then the train was full, so we went to Malaga instead! In case you're totally lost, I'm talking about a couple of weekends ago, February 24 - 26.
I traveled with a friend of mine from K-State, Leshia, and two of the girls from her program, CEA. Lauren, one of the girls is a home ec major from CSU and Marie is a music major from Iowa. I had a blast with them. They're great traveling companions.
The train to Malaga was fun, I'd never ridden in a train before. We stopped at a lot of little tiny towns on the way there and we would let people off in the middle of nowhere just like in the movies. We got to the city and found a hostel for 12 Euro a night. We had two rooms with two beds each. Both rooms had sinks, but only one had a shower. So Marie and I shared a room and used the communal bathroom. The hostel was run by a group of old men. It was clean and cheap,
Decorations
The lights and decorations of Carnaval. so I was happy. It had a lot of character!
The first afternoon after stopping at the tourist information place, we headed to the Cathedral. It was really beautiful, much more colorful than the one here in Seville. The other girls also told me that each Cathedral has a door that is only opened for the Pope. I must have missed that information in all of our Spanish tours! The Cathedral displayed vestments from various priests and also had a museum with statues and religious relics.
From there we went to the Picasso Museum. The museum is new, with most of the pieces donated by Picasso's daughter-in-law. Picasso was born in Malaga. The museum was very professional, all white with a guard in each room wearing all black. I've never seen Piccasso's works in person and I was really impressed. He had so much talent, even as a child. He has never been my favorite artist, but I appreciate his work much more after seeing it with my own eyes!
After a siesta, we went to find the beach. Malaga is located right on the edge of the Mediterranean sea and I was thrilled with it. I
Red thing
This is the vaseline sculpture thing. So much more amazing in person, but there ya go. had brought bags to collect shells in and I did! I've always loved water and swimming, having been practically raised at various lakes in Kansas and finally seeing water meet the horizon was amazing. I also love the sounds of waves and watching the tides turn. The water was the most beautiful colors. Friday it was various shades of blue.
Friday night we partied a bit at Carnaval. Nearly every city in Andalusia has a Carnaval celebration at the end of February/beginning of March, due to el Dia de Andalucia, which was Tuesday the 28th. Carnaval is a big party in the streets. There are vendors selling cotton candy, little toys, other foods/snacks. There are stages set up for musical performances. Everyone dresses up in costume. It is quite fun. Cadiz is famous for it's Carnaval, which is so much fun it's actually quite dangerous to be there.
Saturday we got up and went to the Museum of Contemporary Art. I LOVED it. First of all, admission was free, but after seeing the collection, I would have definitely paid for it. I'm including pictures with this entry, so look at those. The first room was a collection of
Eat and Play
Part dining room table part...whatever that game is called. I forget. Foosball? sculpture type pieces from an artist from India. He used Vaseline dyed a deep, deep red and made all sorts of crazy things with it. The largest piece was a huge pile of Vaseline (we thought it was wax) with an arm in the middle and a block attached the arm that moved in a circle through the vaseline. Hard to explain, so look at the photo. The arm makes one revolution per hour, and the whole piece is a metaphor for time, life, etc. Very cool.
Some of the work had obvious anti-American sentiments. One of the most interesting parts of this trip has been looking at our country from the eyes of an outsider. The opinions of our country vary, of course. There was a painting of the Oval Office in the museum, and it was titled "Un Mundo Pequeno" A Small World. Through the windows of the office you could see the Capitol building burning. On the walls of the office were pictures of Hiroshima, and UFOs there were a lot of other symbols too. It really makes you want to talk to the artist.
Another piece I really loved was the 3-D letters "OK."
Alcazaba
Part of the fortress The front face of the letters was shattered mirrors, obviously implying that when someone says OK, things really are not OK. Very interesting. Also interesting that the artist (a Spaniard) chose the English phrase rather than "Vale" the Spanish equivalent to "Ok." We took some cool pictures of ourselves in the mirrors.
After a siesta we went to the Alcazaba, which was the fortress of the city. We were like kids again, climbing all over the walls and the different levels of the fortress. It was so much fun. It started to rain, so we whipped out our umbrellas and got some great pictures of the city with the dark clouds over it. We went out to dinner and split pizza and paella (a rice dish famous in Andalucia) and then went to another cafe for postre (dessert). Very yummy.
We intended to get up on Sunday morning to watch the Sunrise on the beach, so after dinner we headed back to our hostel and played cards then went to bed. We got up at 5:00 a.m. Sunday morning and it was raining, so we went back to bed, got up and left for the beach around 8:30
Alcazaba
Looking out over the City of Malaga with our umbrellas. Guess which one I am?? instead. It was still so cloudy, but that didn't stop Leshia and I from rolling up the legs of our jeans and playing in the waves. It was SOOO cold. My feet turned bluish. It was totally worth it. The water on Sunday was grayish, then the sun came out and it turned sparkling blue. Beautiful.
After freezing our feet we went back to the hostel, showered and packed our stuff. We left our bags at the hostel and took a bus to Nerja, a nearby town, to visit some caves. The caves turned out to be a total disappointment. It was 7 Euro to get in then they kicked us out for Siesta! Silly Spaniards. The cave was totally dry, which was weird and warm. It was only one room, not impressive at all. But Marie and Lauren had never been to a cave before, so it was fun for them.
The best part of that day was the bus. Our bus was parked facing one of the museums of the cave, leaving about 8 feet between the two. We walked between them to get to some stairs to go to the gardens that were near the
Sea!
Water. Cold. Freezing. Toes. Totally. Worth. It. Leshia and I. cave and we heard this huge crack. We turn around just in time to see the bus crashing into the museum building! We were flabbergasted. We couldn't even react and it hit the building. It was hilarious. I think the emergency brake must have broken. It wasn't until later that I realized how close we were to being squashed! The funniest part of the whole thing was that absolutely no one did anything. It was 20 minutes before the bus driver came out of the restaurant to take care of the problem. You don't interrupt Spaniards when they're eating/sleeping! Luckily no one was on the bus and no one was hurt. The drive to the caves and back was along the sea and I stared at it the whole trip. Mesmerizing..
We left Malaga and got back to Seville around 11:00 p.m. For a totally unplanned spontaneous trip, it was a lot of fun.
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Anna
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I envy you. I totally envy you. The pictures are awesome. I hope you are having a blast.