Final Destination - Malaga, Spain

We had talked a lot about where to go after Australia, it was probably going to be our last destination of the trip so it had to be somewhere good. I had 1 priority - sun! Russell only really cared that it was somewhere new. With it now being June, Asia was in monsoon season so that was a no go really so we thought about Europe. After looking at lots of flights and weather websites I came up with the idea of Malaga in Spain. We both love Spain & have never been to Malaga. The thing that really swung it was that Russell's cousin Steve & his fiance Ursula & son Tristan were in Malaga until the end of June as Ursula is from Malaga, perfect. 


The flight from Melbourne to Malaga was far from easy, from first getting to the airport in Melbourne we would be travelling for 34 hours, the flight was Melbourne - Shanghai - Paris - Malaga. Wow! It was a lot easier than expected thanks to good in flight entertainment & some left over magic sleeping pills from Cambodia. We managed to sleep about 8 hours between Shanghai & Paris. Good job as Steve & Ursula were waiting for us at the airport and before we even found our hostel we were sat outside a bar drinking Cruzcampo & eating tapas.

Instead of having an afternoon nap we bought some cava from the shop over the road & waited for Steve & Ursula to come back for us at 10pm & show us a night out in Malaga. Thanks to Ursula's cheekiness we got free shots in every bar & were out until about 5am, how we did that after that journey I'll never know but we didn't wake up until 5pm!

One day we were invited to a bbq Ursula's friend Marina was having for her Mum's birthday. This wasn't in Malaga it was about an hours drive away in the middle of nowhere. It was a lovely little house with great views & a small swimming pool. Marina even provided vegetarian food for Russell which is saying a lot in Spain. We had a huge feast and cold beers to wash it down. It was a really nice day.

The beach in Malaga isn't the best, the sand is really dark which gives the impression that it's dirty (which it's not) and the sea was freezing! Even so we really loved spending time on a beach again, it had been 3 weeks for god's sake. We would buy 30p beer from the supermarket to cool down and I managed to get in the sea properly a few times. I was desperate to top up my tan because I knew it was going to start fading as soon as we got back to England.

Before we arrived in Malaga Ursula had turned 40 & her parents had bought her 2 nights in an all inclusive hotel in Torremolinos, for her & Steve and they would look after Tristan. We decided to gate crash & booked to go there too, we decided it would be nice to have a couple of nights in a nice hotel with our own bathroom before going home. It was really good, we ate & drank more than I thought possible but we had to get our moneys worth. We even got loads of all inclusive drinks & played beer pong on the ping pong table, much more fun than dancing to Macarena in the hotel bar. Our room had a really nice view from the balcony too.

Back in Malaga we decided to finish off by being real tourists so we climbed up Gibralfo which is a huge hill with a castle on top. It was a lot easier than the climb in Kotor, Montengro. This was child's play compared to that. The views were excellent, I especially liked seeing the Plaza del Toros.

 

We also visited the Picasso museum but no photos were allowed in the museum, it was a nice little museum, not too long and not too short. Russell's flip flops are really noisy. And he decided rather than squeaking with every step he would take them off and walk around this beautiful museum bare foot. I obviously told him not to do this as it was really weird. Ignoring me but soon to be confronted by the museum guard & abruptly told to put his shoes back on. He said to the guard "you are worse than her" pointing at me, cheeky! We were staying near a square the locals call Picasso square as it was so near to the museum so this is the closest we got to a Picasso photo.

One of our favourite things in Malaga was the food & drink. I have never been a fan of tapas as I always thought it was a bit fishy but Steve & Ursula were ordering things that I would have never ordered & I got to taste them and realise they were really nice. We loved ordering a little bit then a bit more if we were still hungry. The price of beer was very reasonable too, a small glass (cana) was only 1 euro. One day while eating mussells & drinking sangria we caught a show - a couple flamenco dancing. We both said we would love to live here one day.

Unfortunately our final night had arrived. It had coincided with the England vs Italy World Cup match. Steve had already found a good bar for us to watch it & after watching Spain get battered a few days before we were hoping we could do better. Ursula's friends came out that night & before the match we went for tapas, we were sat at the bar with loads of food & drink, all sharing, half of our group couldn't speak English. I was thinking, this is really cool, what a great way to end our trip. So, England didn't win but it was a good match & the bar even had Strongbow so even though England lost, I won. We went out afterwards to a few clubs & had a really good last night.

So that was the end of our trip, 339 days, 20 countries, over 45,000 miles, 122 blog posts, over 12,000 blog views, 2 broken bones, countless scabs and a million happy memories. Now to work out how to do it again :)