Saturday 21st May: arrival day in Malaga:

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/a gpmg-ac-hotel-malaga–palacio/

We fitted in a final walk and even some more shopping before leaving the Granada apartment at about 11 am. The trip to Malaga was only 90 minutes and check in to our hotel wasn’t until 3 pm so we stopped off at the seaside town of Verja for lunch. The place was full of Britts and we were hoping Malaga wasn’t going to be like this.

The trip south from Granada was through spectacular terrain and I suspect we were catching some part of the Sierra Nevada range. The roads here are great and continue to amaze us. Our route seemed to be on a highway that looked fairly new and it was most impressive with lots of spectacular via-duct scenery to entertain us.

We found the hotel easily enough using Marks phone GPS as our TomTom seems to have gone on a holiday somewhere on its own. The Hotel is on the port side of the Old Town and so we have spectacular views from our 11th floor room out over the Mediterranean. After settling in we headed up to check out the roof-top bar, restaurant, and pool. The view was spectacular and we scored a balcony front seat so we sat down and ordered a drink so as to soak up the view.

I had hoped to visit the Cathedral today but the 5 pm close meant we just missed out on fitting this in. Thus, with tourist map in hand, we set out to explore the Old Town area. Our hotel is right beside the Malaga Cathedral and this is yet another former Mosque that was converted to a Cathedral during the Christian Re-Conquest. The best find of the afternoon though, from Marks point of view at least, was that of a Craft Beer Cafe called ArteSana Craft Beer. We called in so that Mark could sample some of the brews but, I have to say, I’ve never seen such a variety of craft beer in one space in my life! The whole side wall of the cafe was a glass-fronted cabinet stacked with single bottles of all the different craft beers that the young guy stocks. Mark was like a kid in a Lolly Shop with trying to decide which couple of beers to try out of all the gazillion that were in stock. Anyway, two beers later he had forgotten about the TomTom and was in a better mood.

We strolled around through the very busy and bustling Old Town before settling at a small restaurant just as the FA Cup Final got underway. All patrons were glued to Crystal Palace vs Manchester United but I was glued to the menu. We enjoyed our dinner there but we were rather tired and so headed back to our hotel room for a relatively early night.

However, once we got back to the room we realised how much of the day was still left and so we headed back up to the rooftop bar for a drink before going in search of a particular bottle shop, Bodega, that apparently sold a Malaga wine we’d had at the Flamenco show. Success on all fronts plus a yummy yogurt and white chocolate dessert to boot.