Monday 23rd May: Marbella visit day.
It was another beautiful morning here and so we headed out for our usual walk. It was our last full day in Malaga but we had ticked off most of the ‘must see’ items yesterday thanks to Luis’ tip about the free open on Sundays. Thus, with no real plan at hand,
we decided to visit the market, go shopping for another suitcase for all Mark’s new clothes and then head to Marbella for the afternoon. Marbella is a bit of a millionaires playground but I’d been keen to check it out if we had time given their interesting property market. It is about 45 kms further west along the Spanish coast so the drive might be pretty too..
The markets proved to be much like any other except for the cheap strawberries. I’ve struggled to find many restaurants that offer vegetables with their meals, or even as a side dish, yet there plenty on sale at the markets. A bit of a conundrum then as to why they’re so hard to source when eating out. The suitcase problem was solved with another visit to our new favourite store, El Corte Ingles so off to Marbella we headed.
The trip to Marbella took about an hour and we headed to the Old Town district for lack of any other key item to plug into the phone GPS. Like most places the historic Centre was located near a Plaza with a Church, or rather, converted Mosque. The lunch we had there was very average but, sadly, the shopping wasn’t. It was a small stroke of luck however that many of the shops were closed for Siesta or the damage done could have been much worse.
We left Marbella and tried to check out the beachfront on our way home but that wasn’t an easy task. I did manage to jump out of the car to snap a bit of windswept brown sand though. If only they could see Bondi Beach. Driving home we noticed quite a lot of housing developments packed in like sardines and, given this is a local dish here on the coast, perhaps that was rather appropriate. There were also quite a few abandoned apartment developments; obvious victims of the GFC.
The young German couple we had met in Cadiz, Marina and Marcel, were also in Malaga for the night and so we caught up with them for a final meal before they left to head home to Germany and we started to wind our way back to Australia. We had a rather ordinary Paella dinner but then went back to the Bodega we’d tried on Saturday for some more of their extraordinary yogurt and white chocolate dessert and some of the Malaga sweet Muscat wine. It was a lovely way to end our time in Spain and we parted with a firm commitment from them that they would visit us if ever they make it down to Australia.
