Enjoyable Malaga

Malaga only got added to the itinerary because of Carnival. Unlike the more popular Carnival destination Cadiz, Malaga was on-the-way and still had rooms available. Carnival in Malaga was festive but underwhelming, especially for recent correfoc converts; however, compared to what we get at home, it's still three hundred percent more exciting. Again, as in Barcelona, what really fascinated both of is the level of community participation and dedication.

Old town Malaga has an endless number of winding pedestrian streets. The level of paseo and cafe-ing is the highest we have seen so far on this trip, the holiday weekend and nice weather certainly helped. It wasn't until after we left, that we realized how pleasant it was not constantly hearing and dodging cars all day thanks to the metro and underground parking.

Malaga has interesting museums and sites. We took advantage of the free Sunday entries, though we could not get in to half of them because of the long lines. The guidebooks had lead me to think that nobody in their right mind would bother with Malaga! No matter, I have feeling that we'll find ourselves back in Malaga again.

We found a vegetarian restaurant that served magis, a regional specialty of fried bread crumbs, olive oil and garlic.


Children's Carnival Float winners.


Children's Carnival Parade.


The main pedestrian shopping street.


And singing groups perform in the streets.


The drag queen contest drew a big crowd.


Malaga, like all of Spain, has great museums. The City Museum displays this Phoenician grave.


Plus regional artists.


Not to mention the Roman Theater.


An old market house is now the CAC Malaga Contemporary Art Center...


... with a current large exhibition of works by Mark Ryden.


For the regular Carnival night, many folks wore costumes.




And the Adult Float winners were amazing.






And the Battle of the Flowers er confetti.


View of the port from the Gibralfaro viewpoint.


We finally spot the blue-headed men.


The next to last Carnival parade passed directly below our hotel room balcony.






Happy Hour on the hotel terrace.


Wikipedia says Malaga'a Alcabaz (Citadel) is the best preserved in Spain.








The Picasso (born in Malaga) Museum is free after 16:00 on Sundays. The line to get in was very long; we passed...


...and instead went to the also free-on-Sunday-after-16:00 Centre Pompidou Málaga.




The final act of Carnival is to parade the Boqueron (Anchovy) down to the waterfront and burn it.










Our final Happy Hour on the hotel terrace.