Visiting Malaga

Part 3 of my trip review. Part 1 was about holidaying via srprs.me and Part 2 was about holidaying solo. This one’s all about Malaga, and Part 4 is about travelling as a vegetarian.

Well, that was an eye-opener and a definite benefit of using srprs.me! I would never ever have a booked a holiday to Malaga. Never. It was always associated with the Costa del Sol and all the very worst aspects of Brits abroad. I thought of it as somewhere ‘young people’ (yeah, don’t count myself in that category anymore) go to club and get far too drunk. I thought of it as the place people fly to end up in all those Brit-overflowing sunny resorts. Not somewhere remotely appealing to me.

But, boy, was I wrong. (It’s quite possible all the above is still true, but I didn’t see a single iota of it, except perhaps in the queues for the planes, but even then most everyone I met was lovely – oh yes, apart from the two very well-dressed couples who were very rude, entitled and queue-jumpy; not sure what they were doing flying on a budget airline.)

Malaga is an amazing city!

It has a really beautiful historical area, with all the windy, narrow streets a girl could want (my top thing on any city break is wandering round old, narrow streets).

It has a very impressive beach, with lots of playgrounds and even some grown-up gym equipment alongside it (to be honest, I am not really a beach person, but I do love the sea and walking along next to it was gorgeous.

It has loads and loads of museums and galleries (I only managed to visit a handful of them).

And some beautiful architecture to admire.

It has some gorgeous parks (though I didn’t really find anywhere with patches of grass to sit on – just lots of benches).

It has lots and lots of bars and restaurants (though see my next post if you’re vegetarian).

It has some cool and quirky little shops, as well as a metric tonne of souvenir shops.

It has some quite impressive street art.

Oh, and ice cream. Didn’t take a picture of either of the ice creams I had, but they were delicious.

It’s a reasonably small city, so you can walk it without too much hassle (I walked everywhere, except for getting the bus from the airport and the train back to the airport), though there are buses and it looks like a small metro system, too.

I think it has good potential as somewhere to visit with children – spend the morning on the beach and then go museum or gallery browsing in the afternoon (in the cool of the air-conditioning) and then head into the centre for a pizza or paella or something in the evening. The centre was full of families – and lots of children eating out and hanging out with their family, even as late as 10pm (which is as late as I managed to stay out!).

I would happily go back again and there are some places I missed that I’d particularly like to visit – the Pompidou Centre (yes, related to the one in Paris), the Museum of Culture and Costumes (I think that’s what it was called – I walked passed it at night) and the market. But I’m sure there are lots more places of interest to visit, that I don’t know about.

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