"To travel is to live" -Hans Christian Andersen
Leaving Munich in the early morning, with sub zero temperatures, and arriving a couple of hours later in warm sunny Málaga was something of a shock to the system, albeit a pleasant one. Neither Rob nor I have ever visited Spain, it had always slipped under our radar being somewhat out the way, but I was keen to tack a visit to Andalucía onto the very end of our odyssey as a taste of something new and different.
And spectacularly different it was from the other places we have visited, it seemed as though we had left Europe entirely for somewhere new and intriguing. It was as if we had arrived in the Middle East and this prompted me to do a lot of reading into the history of Andalucía, or Al-Andalus as it was known to the Muslim rulers of the Iberian Peninsula for a period of nearly eight hundred years.
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Our plan was to arrive in Málaga and make our way immediately to Granada for a few days, to see the amazing Alhambra, before heading on to Seville. I had come up with this plan a few months earlier, with lots of help from my favourite travel site (slowtalk.com) and I had even corresponded with an apartment there I liked the look of. It therefore came as quite a shock, especially as I had already booked train tickets, that with a few days to go I remembered that I was supposed to book pre-book Alhambra tickets and they were completely sold out. I understand that you can buy tickets on the day but at New Year could just miss out and as I had also not booked the accommodation we were obviously not supposed to be visiting Granada this time around.
I say this time around as Spain now rates very highly on our where to go next time list. Apart from the delightful weather, around 16 degrees and sunny every day, the food was sensational, the people friendly, the sights fascinating and the atmosphere relaxing. A perfect holiday location for the end of our European odyssey. Luckily our train tickets, though booked well in advance, were refundable with only a small penalty, and so we had a day and a half to explore Málaga and I am so pleased that we did.
We had some mild drama that morning in Munich that had me on edge throughout the flight. It wasn't lengthy delays so that they could spray the plane with anti-freeze on the runway before take off on a -11 degree morning, that had me worried. Instead it was a stupid mistake that I had made whilst juggling the ever increasing quantity of luggage we had. We had caught a train out to the airport, which is someway from Munich itself, and due to a unscheduled stop in the middle of nowhere we were pushed for time when we arrived. So I just slid my Ipad, with every bit of important detail about our travel plans and more, inside a zipper section on the back of my suitcase (where the backpack straps are stored) just to be safe for a few minutes until I could retrieve it. Of course I didn't remember the need to retrieve until it was checked in. The lovely girl from Norwegian Airlines couldn't have been nicer but there was not much that could be done but to cross our fingers. So to cut a long story short someone must have been looking after us, as I had no idea even of the name of the hotel we were staying at that night, and miraculously I retrieved it undamaged.
After all the excitement we decided to splurge on a taxi, which is not a bad idea in Spain where we discovered everything is much cheaper. The beginning of our ride was through the uninspiring areas of the city that you find around most airports and it didn't take too long to arrive at our hotel near Maria Zambrano train station. The kids loved the hotel (Silken Puerta Malaga booked through Hotwire) as a family room turned out to be adjoining rooms so quite a lot of the afternoon was taken up with necessary holiday fun, like choosing whose room was whose and jumping on the chosen bed.
We finally convinced the troops that it was time to head out when tummies were beginning to rumble. Having relaxed for most of the afternoon there was time to research dinner options and we combined sightseeing and a search for marvellous tapas by choosing Restaurante Toro Muelle Uno, a short taxi drive away in the newly developed Muelle Uno, translating to Quay One port redevelopment at the Málaga port.
It was not a budget option but for about seventy euro we had amazing tapas, that arrived over two course followed by desert and for Rob and I we decided to try our first Sangria and they were so delicious that they were not to be our last. Tapas is a brilliant option with kids as they can try a little of everything but not be stuck with a large something that they dislike. We are really lucky that the kids love food and trying new things and we all really enjoyed the meat and cheese platters, scrambled eggs with potatoes prawns and gulas, flamenquins and particularly the grilled vegetables with Romesco sauce. Of course the dish the kids remember the best was of course the icecream.
We had wonderful views over to the Alcazaba, an 11th century fortified palace built by the regions Muslim leaders and it is said to the be the best preserved alcazaba in Spain. We were very excited to visit the next morning.
Our full day in Málaga was full indeed and we headed straight for the Alcazaba, where we spent close to three hours exploring.
It also gave us the opportunity to begin our home schooling discussion of how during the dark ages in Europe the knowledge of the Roman Empire, while lost in Europe, was preserved in the Middle East in places of learning such as Bagdad and Damascus.
We spoke of the great figures of the Enlightenment, such as Leonardo DaVinci, who rediscovered the work of the great philosophers such as Aristotle through the work of Islamic scholars such Averroes who was born centuries earlier in nearby Cordoba. We learnt that Spain, like the Middle East, represented a arc of learning, where knowledge was preserved while the rest of western Europe wallowed in the middle ages.
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At the base of the hill that is home to the Alcazaba we found a Roman amphitheatre from the 1st century BC, where running around was frowned upon so our visit was fairly brief.
We planned a walking route next that would lead us past the Málaga cathedral, where I wandered at it not being particularly old, with the earliest stage of construction beginning in 1528. It has suddenly dawned upon me that as a Muslim city until the Reconquista by Isabella and Ferdinand in 1487 there was little need of a Christian cathedral. The kids were keen for a visit, though Rob, bless him, has had enough of churches and opted to sit in the sun amongst the orange trees whilst we took a peek.
We were particularly impressed by the trampolines stretched out high up to catch the falling masonry and so we decided a short visit and then to go in search of tapas for lunch was a good idea, though it was a beautiful cathedral with a lovely nativity.
If you are travelling in Spain with children it is a good idea to plan meal times carefully or you may miss out. Dinner generally starts at 8 o'clock, which is bedtime in our family, which is no problem as we have gotten used to our main meal at lunch at 2ish to overcome this problem, and to have had time to walk of breakfast and built up an appetite. So it was a real disappointment to discover that our long walk to lunch ended with a closed restaurant.
Luckily the areas we had walked through were lined with tapas bars aimed to tourists and we were able to fill up on delightful dishes such as potato omelettes or meatballs for only two euro a plate.
We have long learned that a morning of sightseeing must be followed by an afternoon in the park, which was very easy request to fulfil as we had noticed Paso del Parque near Muelle Uno the evening before. Our walk there took us past many market stalls selling fireworks, which got me very excited until Rob reminded me that our luggage would be x-rayed before catching the train to Seville the next day, which was to be New Years Eve.
After a short play in the park Julian remembered that he had seen a huge bouncy castle at Muelle Uno and Emma joined in the begging to "please please" go back there. And so the kids bounced on the bouncy castle, for about an hour as it appeared that there was no time limit, whilst Rob and I enjoyed chatting with the parents of some children the kids were playing with. Shamefully our Spanish in non existent, apart from the polite basics, so luckily it was an expat English family we were befriended by and learnt about life as an expat in Spain, a marvellous life it seems.
We hopped on a bus back to the train station and opted for the food hall there for dinner, which was typical takeaway choices and nothing to get excited over, though I had to laugh at a poster at the McDonalds, back at home they offer 50c ice creams here in Spain at McDonalds it was 50c beers.
