It was time for us to visit Spain again and this time we came to Malaga on the famous Costa del Sol coast line. We have been to Northern Spain/Catalonia before, but we’ve have never been in the Southern parts before. Ulrika had a rough couple of weeks in Athens, being pregnant and vomiting, so warmer weather was high priority for her and cheap flight tickets made us go to Malaga. It turned out that we had arrived to Pablo Picasso’s birthplace.


Det var dags för oss att besöka Spanien igen och den här gången kom vi till Malaga på den kända Costa del Sol-kustlinjen. Vi har varit i norra Spanien/Katalonien innan, men vi har aldrig varit i södra delarna tidigare. Ulrika hade ett antal tuffa veckor i Aten, med graviditet och kräkningar, så varmare väder var hög prioritet för henne och billiga flygbiljetter gjorde att vi tog oss till Malaga. Väl där så visade det sig att vi hade kommit till Pablo Picassos födelsestad.

The weather was the major reason why we came to Southern Spain. There was almost down to 0 degrees Celsius during the nights in Athens, so adding 10 degrees to our environment was exactly what Ulrika needed.

We really loved the infrastructure in Costa del Sol. We lived in Torremolinos, a small town south of Malaga, and it took 25 minutes to get in to the city center. The train passed the airport so it was super easy to get from the airport cheaply and it went down all the way to Fuengirola.

We wanted to see Malaga so we used the train to get in to the city center.

Malaga is green and smells lovely from all the flowers in the parks and from the flower shops we passed on our way to our first mission of the day.

Pablo Picasso was born on 25th of October 1881 in Malaga, so that is why you can find a Picasso museum here today. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, but we took one sneak picture.

And it was on the only paintings we liked. We did enjoy Picasso’s early work , like the paintings in the picture, and his lithographs, but the rest, his cubism period and sculptures were rubbish. If it was an exhibition created by a five-year old we would have been impressed, now when it was a full-grown man’s paintings on display, a man who had proven he could paint, it was ridiculous. We felt that we where walking around in the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Andersen, because we can’t understand how people not can see how bad it is.

The Cathedral of Málaga, built between 1528 and 1782, was our next visit. We do enjoy walking around in religious buildings to look at the architecture and paintings inside, but we avoid being inside them if there is some kind of ceremony going on. Lucky for us, there was nothing going on here while we were around.

The inside of the Malaga Cathedral was beautiful.

We found interesting sculptures as well.

The Cathedral’s organ was very impressive.

We continued walking and found another church that reminded us of a similar church built in Antigua in Guatemala.

It was also in Antigua where we took Spanish private lessons, so we find it easy to be in Spain, because we understand what people say, we can read most of the signs and we can make ourselves understood when speaking Spanish, even though we lack the grammar skills.  Our adventures in Antigua can be read about here, here and here.

Mount Gibralfaro, a 130 meter high foothill, was our afternoon adventure. We got a great view over Malaga and there is a castle on top of the hill that we wanted to visit.

The view over Malaga! You could see from Malaga’s town hall all the way to to airport, which is near the mountains in the distance.

We also got a good look on Plaza de toros de La Malagueta, where they hold bullfights in September every year.

Gibralfaro has been the site of fortification since 770 BC and the whole top of the hill is closed off by a big wall. Normally, there is an entrance fee to get in, but if you come after 2 pm on a Sunday it is free to just walk in and explore the grounds.

We took the way down the hill with a lot of gardens planted around the pathway, it was beautiful even though we walked here in the middle of the winter.

We walked back to our train following the harbor promenade.

At this time in the pregnancy Ulrika always got nauseous later during the day, so we had to get back to our place before it got so bad that she had to vomit.

The nausea got better here in Spain, so Ulrika could actually eat food during the day. One of the first full lunches she could enjoy after a few weeks of feeling crappy.

Torremolinos was where we were hanging out most of our days.

We started to take long walks up and down the promenade. It was awesome to be able to activate my body again.

No swimming for us here though.

Our favorite place was La Batería Park, where we would take our morning runs to.

There is an observation tower standing in the corner of the park and we got a great view over Torremolinos from there.

Beautiful view of the park and the Sierra de Mijas mountain range.

The skyline of Torremolinos from the observation tower.

A Cañon Schneider stands next to the observation tower.

Then it was time to go North to meet up family, and the Journey from Malaga to Alicante took us really close to two National parks, the Sierra de Huétor Natural Park was on our North side.

An the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which is covered with snow right now. It was a strange, but familiar sight, before coming back to the Spanish coast and 20 degrees Celsius.