Our Spain Trip

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Our travel of Spain starts from Ma Lajia, from south to north, via Sevilla and Madrid , to Barcelona . We flied to Spain from England at Friday evening and spent the first two nights in a tranquil block behind the Alameda Principal Avenue in downtown of Malaga.
Day 1: Malaga
Our first day of schedule is in urban district of Malaga. Malaga is a port city located in Andalusia, a province in south Spain and Mediterranean Sea sun seacoast. About ten centuries ago, the Phoenician established Malaka, it is said this name maybe origin from the Phoenicia language "salt", because fish nearby this harbor is all quite salty. After 7 centuries, Roman Empire conquered the Europe continent including Malaga. Starts from the A.D. 5 century, western Goth set Malaga under the rule. In A.D. 8 century, Moor conquered Spain. Malaga has been becoming an important trade center relying on its superior position as a seashore harbor.
Now, for the majority of tourists, Malaga is not famous for its trade, but the costa del sol . and the talent artist Picasso. At the end of the 19th century, Picasso was born here. He once said, person who had not experienced the sunshine of Malaga could not create the Cubism drawing art. So people in Malaga are all feel proud for the sunshine and sand beach. We took a map in the hotel and marked three recommendations routes on the map:
(Northwest) green line Malaga Traditional - Spain old style residential area construction and cathedral
(Middle) blue line Monumental Basic - Malaga imperial palace, castle ruins and so on
(Southeast) purple line - seashore
Our hotel is located at the end point of green line and we take it as our starting spot. Opposite the street, our first stop is the Central Atarazanas Market which has several hundred years’ history. The market is full of variety of fruits, melons, vegetables, fish and shrimp seafood. Walking along the green line on the narrow curving street in Ma Lajia, appreciating the fine balcony or the window on both sides, passing the cathedral, we arrives the Picasso museum. The museum looks just like a common residence. We may even not pay any attention on it in slack seasons when passing. Some Picasso works of different time are collected in the museum. We can see Picasso's unusual thought, such as person or animal with horns blows the loudspeaker, strange faces have two eyes in one side, the distorted faces, portrait wears various types mask, big geometric figure, and exaggerating color. Some pictures probably are taken the Picasso’s girlfriend or the wife as the prototypes. But some pictures are only guessed Picasso's intention. They acknowledged Picasso's thought frequently beyond expectation, jumps. The new works discovered one after another often revise the experts’ thoughts of understanding of Picasso. But their understanding is too heavy for me. For layman who has not studies Picasso, just like me, looked lively is enough. The management of the museum is quite stern. Camera needs to check, each room of the exhibition hall is guarded. It’s impossible for guys like me to photograph surreptitiously. No photographing is reasonable, but what makes me feel inconvenient is that the illustrations nearby each picture are all in Spanish. Coming out from the museum, we are in the sunshine again and the sunshine increases our interest greatly. About 11 o'clock, we finished the green line and start the blue line. Few minutes later, we saw an ancient Rome amphitheater built at the A.D. 1 century. After the repair, open-air concert are hold here the every summer. Above the theater are the imperial palace ruins. In the imperial palace only the city wall, the garden and some repaired house are retained. The flowers, plants, fountain and the basin the garden in the garden brought several minute bright flowing. The imperial palace was built by Moors who comes from North Africa. They value water so much that even if today imperial palace is only little left, fountain and basin still everywhere obviously. Moorish style constructions are also clearly discernible between the surviving several houses. Leaving the imperial palace, we climb up Castillo de Gibralfaro Hill from the side road. We planted many big cacti along the way. Along with the high rising, we gets a panoramic view of the hill scenery - the deep blue bay, the orange bullring, the houses alternates with red and yellow... ... The bullrings around bullring have already developed into real estate. The high buildings have encircled the bullring solidly. It’s should be so wonderful to watch bullfight through window, while drinking the coffee home.
The high point of the hill is an ancient castle. The castle occupies a commanding position which easy to defend and difficult to attack. There is an “official road” from the imperial palace to the castle. When enemy attack, the aristocrats may escape in the shortest time to the castle through the road. The road has been already abandoned now, but can still find the residual trace. There are many ancient buildings, like palace, city hall, university, customs building aside Avda de Cervantes at the foot of the hill. Not far along the road is the bullring. Watching in the ground was really inferior to watching on the mountain.
Enters the purple line, we arrived the seashore sand beach. Stepping on in the warm fine sand, taking a broad view looks of the blue sea and sky, and people lying in the sand beach who was not fearing tans, we really want to enjoy this genial sunlight well. The purple line terminus returns to nearby the hotel at the MARINA square. After a short rest in hotel, we went to the station to buy train tickets to Sevilla for second day. When we returned the MARINA square, the flag tells us, the 2006 sailing ships Challenge was holding in Malaga. We hurried to the competition place at the square. The tournament was just ended. The swarthy solid crews are washing the ship and inspecting components. The sailing ships character dispels, is matching the blue sky dark cloud, ha ha, pretty good!

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