Mary in London- 2019: Málaga, Spain- Apr 17-18

We arrived in Malaga, Spain a little after lunch time. The reason we were going to Malaga is because it is where our next trip departed from. We had to spend one more day than we wanted to because of how expensive things were due to holy week. In our ideal world, we would have added a day onto Madrid/do a day trip. Once we checked into our hostel Casa Al Terraza, we passed out into a long nap. That evening we walked into the downtown which was *packed* with people for the holy week processions. We ate dinner at delicious Italian spot called Mia Terra. That night we went to the rooftop bar at our hostel that was so cute and served delicious Sangria spiced with cinnamon.

The next morning, we went to the old town again. We liked it much more with less people. There was a beautiful cathedral. We also explored an Alcazaba of Malaga which was is an old Moorish Fortress with great views of the city. We ate lunch at a Mediterranean place and went to a rooftop bar that had awesome views of the city as well where we could see the Alcazaba we were just at. Afterwards we walked around the port. Then we went back to our new hostel, Lights Hostel, to relax. This hostel also had a rooftop and served free sangria and dinner! From the roof we saw the Maundy Thursday processions. I don't know the exact specifics but apparently Malaga is very well known for their holy week even within the Andalusia region of Spain. What we discovered this meant was that the entire city had chairs set up professionally for spectators and that everything closed down later that day. The parade started at about 7pm and did not stop (no exaggeration) until 5pm. About every 30 minutes there would be a particularly large float. It was evident while we were there that seeing all this is a bucket list item for people so it was cool to be a part of it even if it was slightly over our heads.

Overall, Malaga was nice but it seemed to be more of a port city than a vacation destination although it certainly had plenty of people there. It seems like its a big layover spot and where a lot of cruises depart. Supposedly, the real gem beach towns (which we later found out and went to one) are about an hour outside of Malaga.