Brompton Bike - perfect for city living in Malaga

When we were planning our move to Spain we made a decision that we would get bikes in order to get around the city quicker then walking. Cycling also means that we can go further afield and get to the beach in a matter of minutes every morning.

But the best decision we made was deciding that we should get Brompton fold up bikes rather than another type. They are brilliantly convenient for living in a city and we can fold them and take them up and down the lift in our apartment blocking while keeping them safe inside in our apartment when they are not being used.

Additionally when we pull up to cafes for a coffee we don't have to go to the hassle of locking them but can instead fold them up and park them in beside us. 

Brompton Bikes are a feat of engineering and they make me marvel at how clever they are everytime I cycle it! 

La Alcazaba & Roman Theatre - Sunday in Malaga

Sunday started with a swim in La Malagueta beach. Getting up early and having a swim in the sea really invigorates & energizes us and sets a great tone for the day.

On Sundays many museums and tourist attractions are free in after 5pm (and generally open until 7pm) so we have made  it a thing to visit an attraction every Sunday.  

Last Sunday it was a visit to the Alcazaba which is a citadel above Malaga city. Along with the Alcazaba you can also visit the Teatro Romano (Roman Theatre) which is just below the citadel. 

We got the lift up as we visited about 2pm and it was hot hot hot and we did not fancy s walk up a hill in the heat.

This is the sight that greeted us first when we got out of the lift. Simply incredible.

I preferred the Roman Theatre to the Alcazaba - however the views from the citadel were stunning.

Check out the view of the port!

Here you can see a view of the bullring.

The gardens were beautiful and a really nice place to wander around.

Palm trees can grow really really tall!! I never knew they grow this tall!

Back down at city level there are Roman ruins on view along with the amphitheatre.

We really enjoyed touring the Citadel. It's something to put on your "must do list" if you ever visit Malaga. 

Later that evening we headed to La Tranca for tapas. It's a very traditional bar that has a hipster feel to it. We enjoyed the ambiance and would return for a drink again.

It was a

Russian Salad - a new one on me!

While we are enjoying our new surroundings of Malaga and discovering new food and drinks (Hello Aperol Spritz), we seem very removed from the goings on in Ireland with things like Golfgate and BerlinD2 parties. And so while we are in Spain, with Covid numbers on the increase, my twin sister is in Florida anticipating the arrival of two tropical storms of which one might become a hurricane. 2020 is quite the year and along with Covid a double tropical storm hit could be disastrous for Florida. 

In some ways I am not surprised that numbers are increasing in Spain and, to my mind, it looks very much like a second wave is happening. On arrival a few weeks back I felt very safe and secure to see everyone wearing obligatory masks. However, the longer I am here I am beginning to see examples of very poor social distancing. Back home in Ireland, numbers were restricted in supermarkets while that does not seem to be the case here at this time. Additionally Irish people stood apart on 2 metre markings while queuing to go in to places. Here there seems to be no marked out spots for when queuing which leads me to wonder if the masks are giving everyone a false confidence and making them feel that social distancing is not necessary.  On the other hand, most restaurants have outdoor tables available which seems like a safer option than eating inside and many restaurants have extended their outside eating spaces and are taking up spaces in the public realm or in front of closed up shops, which allows for spacing out the tables. This seems sensible to me.

Speaking of restaurants and eating brings me on to the subject of this blog post.  Russian Salad!

Have you heard about it? It's a new one on me and I love it.

We were introduced to it by a French guy who Ciaran played padel with. He gave all of the players a container full of Russian Salad that was left over from a party that he had held. We enjoyed the salad with Iberian Ham that night and to say it was an instant hit is an understatement.

It's like a mixture of potato salad and tuna salad and from googling it seems to be a traditional Spanish staple.

Our favourite place to order Russian Salad is in Casa Lola where we have visited a few times (this place is our current no. 1 go to tapas spot in Malaga) and we now sit at the bar and order a few tapas with a glass of wine and beer.

Unfortunately I didn't take a pic of Russian Salad but here is a few pics of some other tapas that we have enjoyed in Casa Lolas.

Shopfronts of interest

There's always so much to see in Malaga. These vintage looking shop fronts really appeal to me.

This shop was established in 1957. I wonder when the shopfront design was created?!

This clothes shop seems to be for people of a certain vintage. It reminds me of old style draperies in Ireland. From my childhood, I remember Hands in Villa Park and Godleys in Blanchardstown.

This signage for the Farmacia is particularly cool with it being built in to the building. A lot of more modern farmacias have similar lit up signs with the same lettering. Perhaps there was a standard at one point that shops had to adhere to and this is an example with the modern shops following the form?

Not too sure about this one!

We had a little coffee here one morning (a cortado for me and a solo for Ciaran) - it seems to be a popular locals spot. The silver lettering on the signage seems very retro Italian to me.

Los Hidalgos - Desde 1968

This is on the street below Pigsy's studio. Churros & chocolate - it could be dangerous!!

Bakery and hat shop near where we live

Super Sunday in Malaga

 We had an awesome Sunday here in Malaga. We started our day off at the beach and then managed to sneak in an other visit in the late afternoon.

We had an easy going start to the day with firstly taking the dog for a walk while we went for a coffee. We had coffee in a nice little cafe that faced this farmacia. As we were leaving, I decided to take a photo of Bones in front of the doorway. Well......you know the way they say never work with animals or children - this was the perfect case in point.

It took us numerous attempts to get Bones to stand and stay in position for the photo. After numerous tries (and with two groups of people in the cafe looking over at us doing this) he eventually stood and we got the picture.  And that is when the fun started.  When we were done and we wanted to leave, we called Bones. He then decided that it was now time to stand for the picture and would not leave. Honestly that dog!!  

Well it gave us a good laugh and it also gave the two groups in the cafe who were surveying the whole scene a good laugh too!!

After dropping Bones back to the apartment we then got out on the bikes and headed to the beach. Ciaran was so hot from the cycle that he went straight in for a swim the minute we arrived!

And then later on we went for a visit to the Centre Pompidou Malaga. This was an excellent art museum and we had a great visit, which you can read all about over on Ciaran's website - click here.

It was after the Centre Pompidou visit that we then went back to the beach for a second time (on bikes again) where we enjoyed a drink in a little beach shack looking out on to the water. Bliss!

I had a 7pm date for a What's App video meetup with Amy & Alice so we left about 6.45pm to get back to the apartment for that. But thinking about it now, I probably could have done that from the beach too. 

It was so great to see my best friend and twin sister on video and we had a super catch up. Alice had given us some happy news about her son and we chatted about that and lots of other stuff. It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to the next virtual meetup.

And then the day continued when we headed out about 8.30pm for a few tapas and a glass of wine. We went to Cortijo de Pepe. It had a very traditional tapas bar inside but we sat outside because you generally can't do that in Ireland given the weather, so it probably will always be a novelty for us :-)

And afterwards it was home to sit on the terrace where I had my usual little mini slice of cheesecake and we talked about what a great day we had in Malaga!

High Time for Pie Time!

Well not quite Pie Time.....but Cheesecake Time!

Quite possibly my favourite time of the day is after dinner when I serve myself the teeniest slice of Spanish cheesecake.

I discovered this little mini baked cheesecake in my local mercado and it's really delicious. In total the whole cake is about the size of a saucer and it's very good value priced at €1.30.

I eek out a little slice every evening so it lasts about 5 days - now that's really good value!!

Deliveries!

 I'm a little obsessed with how deliveries are made in the areas of Malaga city that are pedestrianised.

Check out these different types of delivery vehicles that I saw over the past few days.

I particularly like the branded ice cream bike box combo!

La Taberna del Pintxo

We had a fun little lunch yesterday.  It was rather spontaneous as we had planned to just stop for our first coffee of the day.  We liked the look of this place below and sat outside and ordered our coffees.

I then went inside to look at the food as I had got a glimpse when I first sat down. Once inside I could see that is was similar to a place that Ciaran had visited on a trip he made to Spain back in December. Basically there is lots of little tapas with different cocktails sticks in each piece of food which delineates different prices for each tapas. I liked the look of the food so said to Ciaran he should head in for a look too.

And sure once Ciaran went inside - this happened!!

After our coffee I ordered a cava which went really well with the little bites. Check out these peppers - it was the first time I've ever had them but couldn't resist as the server went by and offered them to us.  As well as the cold tapas with the sticks in them there are also hot offerings that are walked through the restaurant by the servers. A fun concept and I think would work really well with a group of friends. We chilled over our lunch and drinks for probably 2 hours and the bill came to about 22 euro.

A shout out has to go to Bones who was incredibly well behaved for the whole time we were there. He just sat quietly and looked at all that was going on around him. Normally he gets bored after about 30 mins and begins to make motions that he wants to leave but on this occasion he was content to stay.  We had brought water in a bottle for him which he had a long drink from to keep cool.

It's worth noting that yesterday was considerably cooler that other days with temps reaching 28 degrees but also starting out cloudy at the beginning of the day. It was very pleasant!!

In Malaga: Market Monday & Tuesday

After a dip in the sea on Monday morning we headed to the Malaga food market. The selection of fruit, vegetables and meat is incredible and the sights and smells are great. I've been to bigger more impressive markets on my travels but I like this one as it is small and accessible and spotlessly clean. There is also a fish part of the market but this was closed on the Monday that we visited.

Check out the Moorish entrance in the pic at the top - it is so attractive looking. The market is definitely worth visiting and you can get tapas and a beer on little tables just outside.

Later in the day it was time to go to the Padel Courts where Ciaran had lined up a game. I'd like to say that the sun was going down and the heat was leaving the day but can't given that it had reached well over 30 degrees during the day. It was hot for me watching but I was able to get a cold Coke Zero from the Snack Bar - I can only imagine how hot it was playing! He brought plenty of water with him.

The Padel Court was up on the roof of a gym which is pretty cool in my book!

On Tuesday our monitors arrived. I was wondering how this would be done, given that we are living in a pedestrianised area of Malaga. I had seen couriers making deliveries on bikes stacked with parcels and also DHL pull carts by bike. Our delivery came by what I presume is a little electric car. So clean and efficient it came right up to our apartment. Malaga is such a smart and civilised city and this is certainly one of the ways that makes it so.

After visiting the new studio for PIGSY we sat in Constitution Square and cooled off with a drink. I had my first ever Aperol Spritz which was just perfect in the heat. I highly recommend them and am a fan for sure!

And we finished another great day in Malaga with dinner on our terrace - not so late this time, I think we were eating by 8pm or so. Dinner was again simple, I cooked some spicy chicken that we enjoyed with salad.

After dinner we listened to an episode of the BBC podcast of Anne Enright's book "The Actress" (thanks to Cousin Kasey for the suggestion).  We are really enjoying it and are just listening to an episode a night.  It's read by the author and we are very much enjoying it. Listening to talking books or podcasts is not something we regularly do but we have enjoyed at times in the past.  At this time we only have Spanish television so after watching the news (where we try to follow along given that we don't speak Spanish) this is something novel for us to do and as I said we are very much enjoying it!