Malaga

I had heard that the city of Malaga was not worth much of a visit, but after spending an afternoon there, I felt differently. We drove 40 minutes north, to the largest city in the region and I immediately I knew that I was in a place that I liked. The harbor felt distinctly modern, but the skyline behind was lined with buildings, centuries old.

The Parque de Malaga runs through the city for at least a kilometer, full of plants from every continent. It gives the city a tropical feel. Fountains and playgrounds in the park are gathering spots for both tourists and locals.

The alleyways host cafes and up scale shops and the people bustling around are mainly Spaniards and North Africans.

We had planned a visit to the Picasso museum, since this was the birthplace of the famous artist, but when I stopped into the information center, they handed me an entire list of competing museums and historical sites, which I would have loved to have visited if we had the time. We found the Picasso Museum after winding through the old streets. My children love his cubism art, with bright colors and bold shapes and which is abstract enough that a little imagination is required, but not so strange that it is too hard to find meaning in the pieces.

Mosketeer with Sword

Jacquiline with a Straw Hat

Sophia and Ezra picked up a brochure of the museum with pictures from the collection. It was so fun to watch them search the galleries for the master pieces and hear their excitement when they found one.

Before coming to Malaga, we read a children's book that I brought about Picasso and the girl with the pony tail, Sylvette, who is the model in over 40 of his pictures. After visiting his boyhood house and taking personal photos with his life size statue which lounged on a bench in the square in front of his home, we felt like we knew Paublo.

We found a street cafe and ordered tapas and then picked up a cone of fried almonds from one of the stalls on the harbor.

We were sad to leave Malaga, but knew that we would have to hurry to make it to the small village of Mijas, tucked up in the mountains above. The only thing on our agenda here was a donkey ride. After sitting on the larger than life sized bronze statue near the information center, we found the corral of decorated burros not far away. Sophia and Annelise, the only two in our group who had not ridden on any member of the horse family yet, took a ride around the village. I was the lucky chaperone.

Afterward we found a little cafe and ordered churros and hot chocolate, a Spanish treat.

We ended our day at a huge outdoor shopping mall up the coast, where the kids ironically spent almost all of their time in the Nike store. Our day was a success.