The Holidays Part 3 - Málaga

After an action-packed week in London and Paris, we had a morning of sightseeing to do in Málaga before we headed home to Algeciras. (Well, home for me anyway.)
Málaga might seem like a strange place to spend the last day, but since our flight got into Málaga at midnight the night before, we were in the area anyway.

I had super low expectations about the tour to start. The guy who was advertising it looked like he had just woken up and was still half asleep (probably true). But once the tour started, he did a complete 180 and gave one of the best tours I've ever been on. We went on a 2 1/2 hour walking tour of the old part of Málaga, and he mixed in historical facts with funny/interesting/little known stories about its history.

For example, one of the churches in the old city houses a giant throne that is used in processions in Semana Santa. There was construction done on the church and somebody messed up the measurements for the door's height. So that year when they tried to bring the throne out for the processions, it wouldn't fit through the door!
What did they do? They just broke through the top of the door frame, saying they would fix it mañana* (tomorrow). They didn't.
The next year they tried to take it out and the same thing happened. So they broke through the frame again, saying they would fix it mañana.
They didn't.
Finally, almost 80 years later, instead of just fixing the short door, they constructed a completely new, excessively tall, side door for the throne to use instead.

-- *mañana, while it literally translates to 'tomorrow', is actually used as "sometime in the future". In this case, 80 years in the future...haha. --

Then after lunch Matt and I went for tapas with the guide and a guy from the Netherlands. It was a true intercultural experience! And to top that off, our waiter messed up our tab and charged us 7.25 instead of 13euro. Win!!

Here are some pictures from the walking tour.

New Years Day in sunny, southern Spain

Málaga is extremely proud of their ties to Pablo Picasso. All over the city you can find these little white and blue plaques talking about his life. They can be about important things, like where he went to school, or completely irrelevant things, like this one. "In this spot, Old Mamely Pharmacy, Picasso's father had a philosophical talk." Umm...what?

There are 4 churches in the city where the builders ran out of time to do the stone-work decoration. So they substituted and simply painted it on. Way to be creative!

The city ran out of money before this church was finished, and so now the residents of Málaga call it the "one-armed woman". When the city tried to finish building it a couple of years ago, the residents wouldn't let it, saying it was more special the way it was now.

Reflection pool.