Málaga

Thursday, April 17th

On the night of the 17th, Karin and I arrived in Málaga and our host, Juanito picked us up from the bus station. We walked back to his house, which took about an hour. It was kind of exhausting to be honest, but we got to see more processions, so we got a little break from walking.

Once we got to Juanito's apartment, we made dinner and Juanito played magic tricks on us, but I knew how he did it after a couple times through. After that, it was off to bed.

Friday, April 18th

Friday was our beach day and it was wonderful! We planned to go to the beach, because it was going to be the nicest day of the weekend. While we were walking to the beach though, we passed an old Roman theatre, so we took a look at that first. The Roman theatre was discovered by the Moors in the 700s and they used it as a quarry and used the stones to build their fortress that lies right above the ruins. Then, it was buried and rediscovered in 1951 when the city was building a cultural center, they continued building the center, but they also began excavations on the theatre. In 1995, they finally decided to tear down the cultural center that was covering a third of the theatre and continue the excavation/restoration process. The theatre dates back to the 1st century BC. After taking a quick stroll through the Roman theatre ruins, we made our way to the beach! It was a beautiful day! We laid at the beach for awhile and left briefly just to get lunch. Then, we went back to the beach to relax more, then we got ice cream and did some more walking. We walked up to a looking point where we could see part of the city and the harbour. It was such a nice and sunny day. I loved it! It was a nice relaxing day after many days of running around Morocco and Granada.

Málaga City Hall

The Boardwalk

At the beach :) 

Málaga Plaza de Toros

After seeing the lookout point, we started our walk back to Juanito's place. We, of course, ran into a procession so we watched it for a little bit.

Once we got home, we cleaned up and relaxed. We went back out for kebabs to eat and then we surprisingly spent the night talking about whether or not Michael Jackson was really dead or not. Ha. Juanito seemed like a firm believer in the conspiracies that Michael Jackson was still alive, so that was pretty interesting to hear him talk about, even though Karin and I are almost 100% skeptics. Ha. After all the Michael Jackson talk, we went to bed.

Saturday, April 19th

Alcazaba

On Saturday, Karin and I went to the Picasso's birthplace. It was the Picasso's house only for a few years until his family moved to the north of Spain. On the first floor, they had a small Picasso art exhibit and then on the second floor, it was set up how the house may have looked back when Picasso lived there. It was super interesting because they also had a census book in the house and it had the Picasso family in there, but the father had listed a brother of Pablo that never existed. After the museum, we ate lunch and while we were eating, we decided that we wanted to leave Málaga early and change our bus tickets. Partly because we were going to be able to see everything we wanted to on Saturday, partly because it was supposed to rain on Sunday, partly because we decided we wanted to go to the Easter Sunday service at the church in Madrid rather than finding a random Catholic church in Málaga, etc. A lot of factors went into the decision, but we decided that that's what we wanted to do, so we had to walk back to our hosts house and then to the bus station, which took a lot of time. Before heading there though, we tried stopping at a Semana Santa museum, which I was really interested in going to, but it was either under construction or closed because of Semana Santa and we couldn't get in. I was honestly kind of bummed because I still really don't know a lot about Semana Santa. I mean, I know about the processions and everything and I remember learning about that it's a sacrifice and an honor to be in the processions, but honestly it doesn't seem like that. I have now heard that the people that are in the procession are either involved with the church or they do it as a part of family tradition. Also, I saw a guy in the band texting during one of the processions..some sacrifice that is, huh? So, I wanted to learn more, but it was unfortunately closed, so we made our way to the bus station to switch tickets. We successfully did that and then we went to the Alcazaba (Moorish fort). The fort looked pretty similar in architecture to all of the other Moorish buildings that we've seen, but it wasn't in as good of condition as the other buildings. Most of the ornate decoration is all gone.

View of the Cathedral from the Alcazaba

After visiting the Alcazaba, we walked back to Juanito's and hung out for a little bit. Then, at night, we left to go to the bus station to catch our overnight bus back to Madrid, which brings me to my Easter Sunday post and the completion of blogging about Semana Santa and traveling. :D