Our first (of many) day trips away from Nerja saw us venture to Malaga. This would also be the first real test of our (very) basic Spanish...... so armed with the glossary of our Lonely Planet we queued at the bus stop and asked for "dos billetos a Malaga por favor".
We obviously asked for the right thing because an hour later we found ourselves getting dropped off (by what seemed to be the world's longest and most luxurious - it was more like a coach - public bus)in the centre of Malaga's tourist district.
After stopping at the tourist information office we headed out armed with a visitors map and a burning desire to walk our legs off! We saw a number of churches, including Malaga's main cathedral, all of which were quite ornate and home to a variety of artworks. We also took a tour of the birthplace of Picasso and saw how he grew up as a child. Following the tour map also took us through the labyrinth of back streets that exist in Malaga and past a variety of restaurants and tapas bars - time for lunch!!
After lunch we decided to climb the (very) steep hill in the centre of Malaga up to the Alcazabar and Palace. These two buildings were constructed by the Moors (Arabs) who occupied the area hundreds of years ago. The Palace was the home of the rulers and the Alcazabar was the fortress that protected the Palace. Both buildings are perched high up on a massive hill which overlooks the entire city and both have very impressive views. Both buildings are quite large and spectacular and were quite well designed with many rooms, landscaped gardens and outer protective walls. We noticed that a key feature of the design was water, with little water channels running down the paths in both buildings from higher ground to lower ground. These water channels were used to provide water for both water features and to keep the gardens well watered. All in all a very impressive sight!!
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