Day 14 Malaga, Spain

The seas calmed down over night and we woke to blue skies and the promise of a warm day.  You never know who you will be seated with at breakfast time and this morning it was a young Russian couple who live in Montenegro.  They spoke perfect English and so we had a very enjoyable chat.  They told of us of their experience last year, same ship but a different route, where the sea was so rough that the waves were crashing onto the 8^th deck and through the portholes on the sixth floor they could see fish swimming.  It sounds fairly hard to believe but they didn’t seem to be the sort of people to make such a joke. The other morning we sat with a couple from Istanbul and we tried but we had no way of communicating.  So both they and us just smiled and ate our breakfasts quietly.

We were soon off on the shuttle bus to the city centre of Malaga.  Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga.  It is also part of the ‘Costa del Sol’ coastline.  They are very proud of their beaches.  It had high rise apartments, some 12 floors high.  It was very similar to the Aust. Gold Coast but the sand, what there was of it, certainly wasn’t white.

We found a ‘hop-on-hop-off bus’ and hopped on.   It drove around the port area we had come from and then through the exclusive part of town.  The buildings were very ornamental and beautiful.  We went past the bull ring and then up some very narrow windy roads until we reached the Gibralfro Fortress. It was built in the 14^th century.  We walked around the walls of the fort.  Malaga is a mix of very old, and modern.  There are great views from the fort.  We hopped back on the next bus and went to the city centre.  It was ‘siesta’ time and so many of the shops were closed. It was interesting walking around the streets.  We then found our way back to the shuttle bus and back on board.