English Spain or Spanish England?

At the end of January there was a Bank Holiday weekend and, ready to do anything but stay in Melilla, Annalisa and I decided to accompany our Welsh friend over to the peninsula. He's been living in Melilla for four years and often goes to Malaga to do a spot of shopping, etc. This particular weekend he was going to pick up a friend that was coming to stay with him in Melilla for a week or so. We were lucky enough to leave the day before him as we didn't have to work and he did. We went to the port and bought our tickets all on our own like two very big, grown up girls (last time we needed the Spaniards to show us how to do it) and before we knew it we were on the boat heading to the Malaga for a spot of touristicy shiznick.

Now last time we had the luck of being blessed with bad weather and complementary cabins but this time we were in the dreaded 'butaca'. Basically a standard seat. Pft, don't go thinking it's not that bad - love to see you try and travel over night in a standard seat! We made a beeline direct for the seats before anybody else could nab the best ones, or families full of screaming kids settled next to us. So we were settled down for the night with cheekily three seats between the two of us, loading up one seat with our bags so it would be oh, just such a nightmare for us to unload that seat for someone in the middle of the night when they foolishly decided to settle down at a stupid hour. Yes... We had one up on the Spaniards. England 1 - 0 Spain! We had taken blankets with us as we'd been warned that the boat gets cold at night. I took my computer so we could watch a few episodes of our beloved Salvatore brothers in The Vampire Diaries (Cronicas Vampiricas - we watch it in Spanish ;-)) before getting as much shut-eye as possible in order to visit Malaga to the max.

Had a film been made of us sleeping that night the soundtrack would be that of Benny Hill. We were shuffling and shifting all night, whilst the people behind us were shouting at the guy in front of us for making too much noise, drinking too much and disturbing those who stupidly thought they'd get any sleep. Needless to say we slept like hamsters at night time.

Once we arrived in Malaga we headed for the train station, not completely knowing how to get there. Luckily we'd bumped into one of our (few) friends from Melilla and got accompanied to the train station! We were heading for Torremolinos, where our hotel (that cost just €30 each for two nights), that had been recommended to us by our Welsh friend, was waiting for us. A 20 minute train journey later and we placed our feet on the tackiest, Spanish town I've ever seen. There were karaoke bars, Indian restaurants and typically English bars on every corner - a real invasion by the English. We checked in to our hotel that turned out to be perfect despite our doubts and crashed out for a few hours. When we woke up we wandered around this Spanish/English town, grabbed a korma whilst being pestered by the most awkward waiter known to man and headed back to our hotel ready to attack Malaga the next day.

We jumped the train to Malaga and walked straight onto a sightseeing tour bus outside the train station. We managed to see all the main sites of Malaga such as the Malagueta beach and the bull ring whilst passing several orange trees (oh, I do like an orange tree!)!

Still on the bus, we meandered through what seemed to be the posh part of town, just on the sea front with some pretty awesome Spanish architecture.

(I wanna get me one of those!)

But the most precious sight was when we were heading up the hill to the Castillo of Gibralfaro. Climbing up in the rickety rackety double decker bus (which really was struggling!) the trees gave way to a beautiful sight of the sea, with mountains in the peripheral and the buzz of the town amongst it all. Pretty, although I had a fight to take the pictures on a moving vehicle amongst trees so this is the best you've got!

We didn't get off but made a note that we would come back and visit the castle at a later point during the weekend. The area was preciously silent.

We were Alcazaba bound, a similar fortress to that which we saw in Granada (the Alhambra - also of Muslim origin hence the words being very similar and me probably confusing them! - I apologise in advance.). We found the ancient ruins in the centre of town, that faced out to sea and pushed our luck by trying to get in for students. We eventually just accepted the fact that we'd have to pay the full fee of €2.10 (or whatever it was!). You can take the Stacey away from the students but you can't take the student out of Stacey!

There were some gorgeous views across the town with the sun just setting and the gardens inside were gorgeous ( I felt like the girl in A Secret Garden). A photographers palace.

(This one reminds me of Tomb Raider - anyone else?!)

(That's the bull ring in the centre - I've become slightly obsessed with them courtesy of Annalisa's influence.)

We left the Alcazaba and wandered around town aimlessly, bumping into the cathedral and popping ourselves down for a cup of coffee in a quaint little square.

Post coffee we went back to our hotel in Torremolinos, got our glad rags and joined Jason and his friend to hit the biggest club in Malaga. Nothing extra special other than the half female/half male stripper/dancer things...

WTF?!

Not that interesting but thought you might care to know that I partied as hard as I visited Malaga!

The next day, pushing ourselves to the limits we got up early with averagely tame hangovers, went to the train station, checked our bags in a locker at Malaga station and hopped on the sightseeing bus again to visit the castle at the top of town.

The bus didn't show up for ages and whilst we were waiting outside the train station in the warm sun my nostrils filled with the ever-so-sweet stench of urine. The square opposite the train station seemed to be the home for a group of homeless people. Nothing much more to say on that, other than watching them passed the 60 minutes that it took for the bus to show up. (Am I going into too much detail?!)

We climbed up the treacherous hill (in the bus of course - gotta look after these pins!) through the much preferable aroma of pine needles. We jumped off at the top and walked to the entrance of the Castillo de Gibralfaro to find a flamenco guitarist. Lovely! We were in Spain!!! We sat at the entrance for a good twenty minutes just admiring the views and listening to the beautiful sound of the guitar with the birds chirping above the busy, yet silent from up there, town below.

We explored the ruins of the castle with the absolutely breath-taking views across Malaga before heading back into the town ready to meet Jason and his friend to board the boat. Yes, our weekend was almost over already.

We walked down a gentle (Yes, Annalisa - gentle!) slope back into town, passing by some more cactae (yay! - is it cactae or cactus?!) with Arabic graffiti - I thought it was pretty cool and it just goes to show that there Arabic culture still lives on in Spain despite the Christians becoming the majority (rather than Muslims) some several hundred years ago. (I really should read up on the history of Spain - I'm especially quite interested in the dictatorship of Franco but don't seem to find the time.)

On the way down a random Spaniard (this was exactly the type of being that I loathed and unfortunately anticipated before coming to Melilla) decided to talk to us just because we were English - Malaga's not that small a city so it's not rare to come by fellow Europeans. He wisely asked us if we knew where a place was. Computer says no, mate. "Ah.. Are you not from around here?" "No." Sleazy man proceeds: "Where are you from?" Stacey: "No." Sleazy man stupidly proceeds: "Are you English?" Stacey starts to get a bit fed up: "No." Sleazy man: "Do you want €250?" Stacey getting quite used to this game: "N.... Ur... WHAT?! No, mate. Leave us alone" Incredibly generous gentleman: "Why not? Most girls want €250." Freaked out Stacey picking up her pace: "No." Insistent pest: "Are you girls crazy? Most girls would accept." Stacey, pointing to the girls in front and gradually losing her manners: "'Go and ask them then." Crazy, stupid fool, emerging a thick wad of beautiful, shiny, fresh, probably stolen 50s from his pocket: "You don't want my money?" (Eh?!?!) Stacey: 'Look mate, we've tried to tell you nicely we're not interested.' You can imagine the next batch of words that came out of my mouth and he kindly went on his way, just as Annalisa started to tell me what we could have done with the dosh. Random - was I stupid?!

After our less than pleasant encounter, we met up with our buddies, grabbed a Dominoes and sat at the port waiting to be called through. We randomly got some funny looks whilst munching our pizza, sat on the floor in the queue from the Melillenses... I guess it wasn't the typical thing to do... Still gotta adjust to this whole culture thing - is it actually possible to know all the different norms within one country and appear as a native?!

After our trip over to Malaga on the ferry we discovered (upon awakening) that it's not rude, nor selfish, nor anti-social, nor inconsiderate(!) to take up three seats in order to lie down and get a quarter decent night's 'sleep' on the boat potentially leaving others to sleep on the floor. So... That's what we did - we both had work in the morning! It's a dog eat dog world. And that's about it... An eventful visit to Malaga. 

We're making our way slowly around Andalusia and will conquer it all before our time is up out here!