Thursday - Malaga

 The weather forecast predicted a turn towards cooler weather with the possibility of rain and indeed, temperatures in the morning were down to 15degC with overcast skies and 10-15 mph winds.  The rain didn't appear though and by afternoon the sun was out and temperatures up to 19degC.  So, nothing we couldn't cope with.


Our itinerary for the day, was based around a bus trip to Malaga, more as a tester to see whether we might want to spend more time there in the future.  

This time our bus set off right on time, but it was soon obvious that the rest of the journey would not go so well, as we very soon began to get bogged down in traffic.  As we slowed to a complete standstill, and with the opposite carriageway ominously free of any traffic whatsoever, it became clear that a fairly major incident had occurred.  After 40 minutes of stop start motoring, we came across the cause, a refuse vehicle which appeared to have overturned spilling its contents all over the road.  It was just being loaded onto a rescue vehicle as we passed.  


Fortunately for us, the incident had taken place on the other side of the dual carriageway and the police had managed to get one of the two lanes on our side opened up again.  It looked like it would be some time before either lane could be opened up on the other side and with queues already over the 8km mark, delays running into a few hours looked inevitable.

Once we got passed the scene, the rest of the journey went ok, although we kept hearing a warning buzzer coming from the dashboard with a "STOP" symbol constantly appearing on the dashboard.  It didn't seem to phase the driver, though, who just tutted every now and then and kept turning the buzzer off.  

Malaga Cathedral

Roman Theatre

Malaga is larger than we thought.  In fact everything is on a much bigger scale.  The churches and municipal buildings are huge and the old town is full of traffic.  Still there are plenty of museums and things to see so a return visit is possible.

Outside

Inside

And yes, it does have it's share of apparently entirely pointless and very expensive looking structures like this one we found near the harbour, but at least the Spaniards seem to spread the EU funding about not just spend it all in one place like our government (I'm talking about the United Kingdom of London of course).

Bull Ring, Malaga

 Just before setting off back for the bus we popped across to have a look at the bull ring.  Not particularly exciting on the outside, but it did have this charming (Miro inspired?) sculpture out front.

 



 And further on, there was this section of wall with extremely intricate pointing.  Not that it really needed pointing as the blocks (not one the same) seemed to have been cut and laid with exceptional precision. 




And that was our Malaga taster. We got the Express bus back which uses the motorway instead of the local roads we'd arrived by, just in case they were still clearing up the rubbish from earlier in the day.