Malaga
Malaga
When I took piano lesson as a kid, I learned a piece called “La Playa de Malaga.*” And here I am.
After what felt like a very slow approach to the Malaga harbor, we are sailing down the middle of it, piers on both sides. Another lighthouse – this one is: flash – flash, beat, flash, wait a while, repeat. Both this one and the one in Cadiz seem to be back from the port a bit; it's certainly not out at the end. I suppose there's a story there. [UPDATE: The lighthouse was built in 1870; at the time, it was probably right on shore. Then the port was built way out into the bay.] [Second UPDATE: There's the lighthouse, extreme left in the picture at the bottom of the page].
The ship tracker says there's about a half dozen yachts further up into the port. Where's an orca when you need one?
This is a very dark port – very few lights anywhere. I assume they have enough light to tie up, but it looks like we're in the middle of nowhere; we've turned so that the lighthouse isn't out the window here in the Explorer's Lounge.
I forgot to mention yesterday – about a typical day in Spain. Guides have a lot to impart in a limited amount of time, so they tend to generalize - “In Spain, we....” So take this with a grain of salt. Here's what yesterday's guide said about the day: In the morning you have a coffee and maybe a pastry. Kids go to school from 9AM to 2PM and then go home – school is over. The main meal is eaten then, the family all together. Many shops close from 2PM to 5 or 5:30PM. Tea – maybe with cakes – is at 6:00, and dinner – lighter than the 2:00 meal - is later on, around 8PM. There's no doubt that there's a lot of variation in this – for instance, the shuttle bus from the ship to town today stopped running from 12:00 to 2:00. But in general, a Spaniard's day is probably a lot different from ours.
Anyway – the last shore excursion of the trip today. Out to the bus, and the bus drove us into town, past the yachts, which were right next to the lighthouse, built in 1870, which is on shore in the middle of a roundabout. Malaga is built at the foot of a steep hill, with mountains just behind it, and also stretches west along the shore where the land levels out. It's a cloudy day, and we brought the smaller umbrella.
Early settlement is beginning to be a familiar story. Phoenicians, check, looking for metals, around the 8th century; Carthaginians and Romans later, check, check. Then the Visigoths, and after them the Arabs (Moors), for seven hundred years, until the 15th century, when Ferdinand and Isabella drove them out of Malaga (they were out of Spain entirely by 1492). Check.
We drove one way on the main street, at the foot of the hill and along the waterfront, and then the other way. There is kind of
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| Where the beautiful people play. Yes, that's a bullring. Our ship in the background (the white one). |
Tourism employs about 20% of Malaga's workforce; there are 330 sunny days per year, and is the center of La Costa Del Sol (the sunny coast). It's a draw for the wealthy (yachts, multi-million dollar villas up in the hills with killer views) and the middle class (a favorite winter holiday spot for Germans and British). It really gives the impression of a very wealthy city. Antonio Banderas owns the whole top floor of a building near the Roman theater, and one third of a wine bar downstairs.
We drove by the Arboleda de Pinos Canarios (forest of Canary Island pines) which runs for about a half mile, a block wide, along the city's main street – it's a dense, dark forest with many kinds of mature trees which create a wild, natural environment right in the middle of everything. If we ever came back here, I'd like to spend a lot of time in that forest.
We headed up that hill right above town, got out of the bus and climbed to the top for a really outstanding view of the town and the harbor. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Sharing the top of the hill is the ruins of Castillo de Gibralfaro, a 13th century Moorish fort, and further down the hill are more ruins; these are the Alcazaba, a Sultan's palace and fortress from the 11th century. Our guide said it was a model for the Alhambra, which was built 200-300 years later. These guys, who lived in these fortresses, had a really, really good view.
One of the buildings we can see is the bullring – we could see right down into it. Special sand imported from somewhere (I've forgotten), sand that you don't slip on when it becomes wet. The legality of bullfighting depends on the municipality; whole regions have outlawed it (Catalonia, the Canary Islands), and most levels of municipal government seem to have the option on ruling on it. It's legal in Malaga, and popular. It was built in 1874, and holds about 9,000 people. It was used to house prisoners during the Spanish Civil War and WWII, but is now a national cultural site, and hosts cultural events in addition to killing bulls. 'Nuff said.
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Downhill again, and out of the bus for the walking tour. We spent our time in the older part of town, which, like the Cadiz old town, was eighteenth and nineteenth century, but unlike Cadiz, was more heterogeneous; you didn't get the sense of a unitary, organized, thought-out city, but more a jumble of old and new.
Like Cadiz, the Malaga old town was a pedestrian's paradise and, like Cadiz, it was entirely paved in stone and tile. I began taking pictures of the various styles and designs of the paving; a lot of variety. It was very pleasant to be there, but it didn't have that feeling of enveloping satisfaction that Cadiz had. The sun came out for much of the day – on and off – which helped.
A selection of the ubiquitous stone paving:
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And many more.
We went from highlight to highlight, without a lot of coherence; turn a corner and there's something very different and interesting. We found ourselves in the Plaza de la Merced, where a decorated obelisk memorialized forty eight Malagans who organized a revolt against Ferdinand VII - “a bad king,” says our guide – but were unsuccessful, were executed on a beach west of town, and are memorialized by, and buried under, this obelisk. The revolutionarys' names are inscribed on the memorial. They were executed on December 11 of 1831. December 11 happens to be... today. There was a brass band gathering on the square that will be part of the memorial celebration later on.
I've been reading a lot of Spanish history to get a background to this part of the trip, and man! This stuff has been happening all the time in Spain. Tumultuous, characterized by revolt, tyranny, periods of calm, constitutional reform, back to monarchical tyranny, on and on. Most recently, of course, Francisco Franco's fascist government held sway for almost forty years – I'm not sure I can imagine that, but I'm getting an idea of what it might have been like by reading the news from back home each day. By the way – our guide told us that Malaga was a hotbed of opposition to Franco from beginning to end, and so Franco abandoned Malaga – didn't invest anything in the region for 40 years– and so Malaga had a lot of catching up to do after Franco died.
Anyway, at one corner of the same square is the birthplace of Pablo Picasso, who lived there for his first ten years before moving to Galicia and then Barcelona. There's a library and offices there now. We stopped briefly at a number of churches, one which – The Church of the Holy Martyrs – was built in the 13th century and was startlingly... startling inside. Not what I expected; very grand and almost mysterious. And the home of a number of bizarrely hyperbolic figures, each of which is the centerpiece for a different monstrance, when the time comes. [Abbey: I understood that these clothed, larger than life figures, are taken out and used as part of the many religious parades (Monstrance).] Later, we turned a corner and were surprised by a big, new sandstone church with lacy spires, in front of which a modern building had been erected, so the church was mostly hidden. “Don't know how they got the license to build that,” says our guide.
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Remember the Processional Monstrance of Corpus Christi in Cadiz? Well, there are, if I remember correctly, 33 processional holy days that are celebrated with processions in Malaga, and each one has at least one fabulously ornate monstrance, some requiring 250 men to carry (no wheels) through the streets, followed by penitents dressed like members of the Ku Klux Klan (our guide's comparison, not mine). We went into a storage space for two of them, which were just as big and ornate as the one in Cadiz. That space also had the most detailed, diverse, and realistic Nativity scenes I've ever seen – all handmade. Incredible. Special doors are built into the building to get them in and out.
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I am struck by the religious fervor present in this part of the world – Catholic and Islamic – incomprehensibly huge and ornate cathedrals; public prayer five times a day; joining thousands of fellow penitents following hyperbolic religious icons many times a year, building a mosque with a laser pointing to Mecca, intensely idiosyncratic rituals and fasting and religious schools with uniforms and their own rituals, and histories of fanatical religious wars that killed millions. Penitential pilgrimages spanning thousands of miles. Catholicism seems just a little more bizarre to me, perhaps because it is an incomprehensible version of my own faith – which is as simple as I can make it – but both are way past where I live.
Lots and lots of orange trees lining the streets, between the curb and the sidewalk. The trees are heavily laden with ripe oranges which, we are told, are bitter oranges, good for making marmalade, along with quince, which also grows here. Who harvests them? Turns out it the city workers. That must be something to see. Not all are used for marmalade - some are just composted.
The Spanish have been through a lot, politically, as described in excruciating detail above, and in the previous post. But in December of 1978, soon after Franco died. I'll let Google's AI summary tell it:
After Franco's death in 1975, Spain underwent a remarkable transition to democracy, guided by King Juan Carlos I and Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez, peacefully dismantling the dictatorship to establish a constitutional monarchy through legal reforms, free elections (1977), and a new constitution (1978), fostering consensus, civil liberties, and integration into Europe, despite underlying tensions from the past.
"Underlying tensions from the past." I'll bet there were! But the Spanish weathered it, and since then, they've had a king, a constitution and a democracy. In Malaga, the front pages of the city's major newspapers the day after the successful vote on the Constitution are etched on to metal plates and embedded in the stone underfoot in the Plaza de la Constitucion.
We also saw the Roman theater that had been buried and lost until 1950, when they were taking down the library to rebuild it.
Mostly we walked around the old city, down narrow streets and wide ones, all paved in stone, all busy with pedestrians. Much of the architecture was similar to what we saw in Cadiz, but much was new. [Abbey - We found out that there are no public bathrooms in Malaga, and had to buy something at a cafe or bar (not a liquor bar!). At the bar I went in, the salesclerk stood at the doorway lest we tourists try to sneak out. As I stood at a cooler, she kept trying to get me to buy a bottled water, and I kept trying to tell her I already had one. Clearly she knew only a few words of English, and I pulled from the depths of my brain my high school Spanish, “tengo aqui” - 'I have it (water) here.' She got it and sold me something else. I was very proud of myself!]
The Cathedral's also not done – it's missing a tower, and from both the hill viewpoint earlier in the day, and our ship later in the day, we could see the roof trusses on the unfinished roof. It's also only got one tower – locals apparently call it “La Manquita,” the One-Armed Lady. Construction started in the 16th century, but, according to Wikipedia, the people of Malaga kept using the money raised for the Cathedral for other things, among them, support for a revolution by a bunch of British colonies in America. I'm not making that up.
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| World's Largest Columns |
[Abbey - In an attempt at getting more from our guide besides history and buildings, I asked what Malagans (?) like to eat, and he immediately said, “fried eggplant with molasses poured on top or maybe honey.” Has anyone tried it?] Or was he pulling our leg? See "Madrid" for the answer.
On the bus, to the ship, long passageways through the terminal, and we had to pass through the duty free shop to get back. We had to go through a security checkpoint where no one spoke English, so we didn't know what we had to pull out and put on the trays. I kept forgetting things, finally using three different trays plus my cane. I forgot to collect one of the trays, which held the laptop mouse which has gotten separated for some reason, and the attendant yelled, “Hola! El ratto!”
Then a very long, leisurely lunch outside, with the whole vista of Malaga and the mountains behind it to look at. And a freighter unloading some sort of dusty cargo over on the other side of the harbor. There are sightseeing boats from three different companies doing a brisk business - Mundamarino, City Sightseeing Malaga, and Fly Blue (?). They've been coming back and forth past our ship since we got back.
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| Pablo Picasso |
We did the laundry, assuming that the launderette will be popular tomorrow. Laundry is free and pretty easy on this ship – four washing machines on this side of Deck 6; put your clothes in, push all sorts of buttons, and start. Then go around by the door and push and hold the button for your machine, and detergent is automatically added. Four driers that really work pretty well, and you're done. Four round trips to the launderette from our room equals one half mile (I counted paces).
Dinner at the Chef's Table – British cuisine tonight. Scotch eggs; fish and chips; a gin and tonic palate cleanser that was sorbet that honest to gosh really tasted like a gin and tonic (it had, according to the waiter, real gin in it); beef and Yorkshire pudding, and trifle for dessert.
The first three courses (and the paired wines) were really good. But we've been spoiled by Aunt Muriel.
My mother's younger sister, Aunt Muriel, was the fantastic cook in the family, and we would anticipate Christmas dinner at her house for months beforehand. She made vegetables taste good, and there was never just one main course. When I was growing up, we would often go over to her house for Sunday dinner. My favorite was roast beef and batter pudding. I'm not sure any of us had heard of Yorkshire pudding, but Aunt Muriel made her batter pudding from the roast drippings, and it was unbelievably good.
Tonight, the fish and chips were excellent – they were very subtly crisp, and very tasty inside. That was great. But roast beef and batter (Yorkshire) pudding is a rich, hearty dish that pulls no punches. At the Chef's Table, they tried to make it as subtle and elegant as the fish and chips, and it was – but it wasn't Aunt Muriel's roast beef and batter pudding – it was a faint replica, at best.
Aunt Muriel also made trifle, in a really big dish/bowl that is only used to make trifle. It is also uncompromisingly robust – sweet and fruity and sponge-cakey and sweet and bursting with flavor and stuff that's bad for you. Nothing subtle about her trifle, and that's the way it should be. Tonight, we had an elegant little dessert that wasn't trifle.
Our table for two was right next to a table for two occupied by one elderly lady, who Abbey struck up a conversation with eventually. She's from Texas – a lot of passengers seem to be from Texas or North Carolina – and was on her tenth or so Viking cruise. She is alone on this one, and has been alone on all the rest. She felt it was necessary to assure us that she is happily married, but her husband doesn't like to travel – apparently, he traveled a lot, and stayed in hotels a lot, during his career, and would much rather stay home and drive his grandchildren – four of nine of which live across the street – to soccer practice. She's been all over the world, and is going to Easter Island and the fjords of Chile next. Easter Island ! After the Northwest Passage, I'd love to go there next – just about the middlest of nowhere you can get to, a dot in the Pacific, surrounded by Moai and people who want to live there!
Tomorrow is a sea day, which means, among other things, that we can linger over breakfast for a change. Will it be warm enough to eat outside? Stay tuned.
* - Holy mackerel! The sheet music is available on Amazon!
More French Colonial architecture:
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Malaga odds n' ends
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