Visiting Brad!

Hello!

This reading week went by so quickly! I wish I had another week off. I went to visit Brad for a few days! My flight left Thursday morning at 6:30 am from Stansted, and having learned since last time that I don't enjoy waking up at 3:00 to go to the airport, I decided that instead I would catch a bus there at night and stretch out on some chairs. I picked up an easybus at Baker Street at 11 pm for £2, whoo! There were only a couple other people taking the van, and none of them had big suitcases of any kind so we all fit quite comfortably. The other times I have always taken National Express to the airport and arrived in just over an hour. After an hour had passed, I started getting a panicky feeling that I was on the wrong van. We weren't on main roads anymore, and seemed to be dodging through little tiny villages towards signposts pointing towards "Stratford" and other random towns. I looked at my ticket and in bold at the bottom it said "Ask your driver before boarding to double check your destination. We run many services out of the same stop." Well crap. I had a really bad feeling that I was going to be dumped in a little podunk town somewhere at 1 am on a freezing night and no way back to London or an airport before 6 or 7 am. I was going to miss my flight!

Fortunately, we did eventually get to the airport after about 80 minutes. I bolted out of that van so fast that I think the other passengers thought I was odd. I ran up to the airport and noticed that everything was dark. No lights on in the whole place!

I was worried the doors wouldn't open for me, but whoosh, they slid open as I approached them. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I could see bodies everywhere, scattered by the sides of walls, grouped around pillars, and slumped over chairs. I made my way towards security to see if I could get into the main terminal, but security was closed. The departures and arrivals board showed that there were no flights until 6:00, so security wasn't opening until 4:00. I searched for some chairs but finally settled for a nice piece of ground by a car rental kiosk. I didn't sleep particularly well. A lot of people were prepared and had brought blankets or were sleeping on their coat bags, but I just had my coat and sweatshirt. The building was not heated very well at night either, so the stone/marble floor was really cold! After what seemed like a long time, security opened up. Nobody else went up to them because people had to get their boarding passes before checking in (but I had printed mine off ahead of time). I made it through security in record time -- they didn't even look at my passport, and then I found the first row of chairs and went to sleep. When I woke up, music was playing, and people were sitting all around me, haha. I wandered over to my plane and got on, and then slept for another hour or so on the way to Spain. When I woke up, the Mediterranean was out the window!


I hadn't realized how stressed out I had been in Germany and the Czech Republic about not being able to read signs, but I got a nice warm feeling when I realized I had no trouble at all figuring out how to get around and buy train tickets from the airport. All of the airport announcements were easily understandable, and even a few conversations that I overheard were pretty clear to me, so I was happy as a clam. I took the underground into Málaga and got my first look at the city!

Lunch was first and foremost on my mind. I nearly broke down and got McDonald's, but I made myself wander around for a while to get my bearings and find a cheap place to eat. Here is the cathedral!



Near the cathedral I found a little café, and knowing how ridiculous it seemed to Spaniards who are used to eating at around 1:30 or 2, I sat down at 11:30 to eat lunch. I was hoping to find my old favorite go-to meal, the bocadillo (sandwich), but the best I could do was a kebab place. Not complaining!

After lunch, I wandered around a bit more but my backpack was really heavy, so I found what looked to be the main plaza and camped out for a few hours reading a book. It was pleasant -- the sun was shining, birds were chirping, and the air was much warmer than in London!

This is the Plaza de la Mérced, where I read for a few hours:


After a while, I got up and tried to track down Brad's piso (apartment flat). I had written down directions for how to reach it from the river bed (I say that because there is no water in it, haha) that runs through the middle of the city, but I was too lazy to walk all the way back there so I tried from the plaza. I did ultimately find it with a bit of zig zagging back and forth, and then I settled on some benches to wait for Brad. Once he got off of work he met me there and gave me a short tour of the city!

This is looking back at Málaga from the pier:

The coastline:

We went to a pizza place for dinner and split a giant ole pizza and wandered around a bit more, but I was realllly tired after my night of very little airport sleep, so we went back to the piso and played some video games on Brad's computer before calling it a night. Brad's roommate was out of town but before she left she said that I could use her bed, so I threw a blanket over it and hunkered down for the night. Their apartment has no central heating, and this became a problem by around 3 or 4 in the morning when I woke up shivering!

The next morning, Brad discovered that a cough he had been fighting for a while had become worse, and I discovered that I had a head cold. No! We decided the best way to combat our illnesses was to eat a typical Spanish breakfast of Churros con Chocolate:
The breakfast of champions, my friends! And something that I miss very much about Spain. I can't figure out how they make chocolate like that. It's so thick and puddinglike, but you can actually drink it....perfect.

The first stop on our tour of Málaga was the Alcazaba -- the old 11th century fortress overlooking the town. At the base of it lies a Roman amphitheater. I captured them both in this photo:

Once we paid our couple euros to get in, they really didn't have anyone to say we couldn't climb on things. We figured there would be signs if they minded, so we scampered about on the ledges and walls:


At some point, we started getting tired of going up steps, but there seemed to be no end in sight! We pushed on, getting higher and higher up...

Momentarily, we were relieved by the sign of an "elevator," but obviously, they were joking.

Looking down at Málaga from the walls. You can see a bull fighting ring among other buildings.

No more stairs, for the moment! When we finished with the Alcazaba, we kept climbing the hill towards the Gibralfaro -- which if I understood the signs correctly was the Phoenician fortress from around 800 ce.

Our legs hurt, but the view was good!

To the castle!

Once we finally got up there, we looked around a cool museum that talked about the Gibralfaro and Alcazaba's roles throughout history. I was interested by the bits about WWI and WWII, actually, because you wouldn't think that thousand year old castles would have a big role, but at least according to that museum it was of strategic value for both sides.

We went up one of the guard posts to have a look around and Brad found his house! Here he is attempting to point it out:

It was cold! A rainstorm had come up that made the ramps and stones slick, so we had a heckuva time getting back down.

Brad is still afraid of heights and doesn't like to climb cool rocks.

We made it back down! At this point, we were really hungry, so we settled on a gyro type stand for lunch. My gosh, it was so good! It was easily the best falafel wrap that I've had in my life, haha. Here is a view of the Alcazaba from the main plaza:

I took a picture of these because I loved the ones growing at Grandma Pat's house, but unfortunately I believe all of the clippings I took have died out, although I kept them going for a few years.

Málaga was the birth place of Picasso, so we spent the afternoon wandering around museums, both free and fairly inexpensive (with a student card, whoo hoo!) looking at random Picasso stuff. We saw the building where he was born and stopped at a café to rest for a while during siesta. I had "hot chocolate," which is pretty much the same thick puddingy stuff that they have for churros, mmmmm. We also went to a museum of Folk Costumbres, which we weren't sure if it was going to end up being about costumes or about customs, but it turned out to be a random collection of wine presses, olive presses, saddles, farrier tools, bread making stuff, etc. The museum was inside an old stable / inn, and it reminded me very strongly of my old house in Toledo:

Earlier, we had decided that we would use a coupon Brad had for a movie theater about twenty minutes from his house. We grabbed dinner (at the same falafel place we'd gone earlier....IT WAS SO GOOD...and cheap, haha) and went to see "The Grey," with Liam Neeson. In Spanish the title was "Infierno Blanco," which can be translated to "White Hell." It was a super intense movie. I recommend it, if you like the feeling of hopeless fear and exhaustion, haha. It also was an entirely uncharacteristic portrayal of wolves and wolf behavior, but whatevs. I was kind of going with a "Ghost in the Darkness" man-eating animal type view and I liked the movie. It was a good pick, too, because it had very little dialogue besides swearing and one liners like, "No, los mataremos" (No, we will kill them). And if there is one thing I can do in Spanish, it's swearing! I made one of the Spaniards in the house blush the other day in a Spanish swear battle. My Toledo host-brothers taught me well. After the movie, we were a bit shaken up by the adrenaline that had gripped us for a few hours, and we went back to the centro to see how the Málaga Carnival was going.
The movie theater was not in the best part of town, you might say, so I went into my London Nighttime Survival Mode and distributed my credit cards and ID on different pockets of my coat, etc so that if something should happen to my purse I would still have most of the stuff that I need (even if just to get back to my house via bus). Once again, my mugging backup plan was completely unnecessary and we made it back to the main part of town in one piece.
We had seen decorations and a lot of people in costumes earlier in the day. We got there just as the parade was ending, which was a bummer, but there were a lot of people singing in the streets, face painting, costumes, instruments, etc.


A group of guys was dressed up like cockroaches singing songs, including one I recognized from the movie Birdcage!

This group was telling fairy tales in song form:

One of the parade floats being put into storage for the night.

We went back to Brad's piso absolutely shattered from the day of stair climbing and museum walking. I don't really even remember going to sleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night really cold again. I woke up in the morning pretty cold too, full of 'bogies' from the head cold, so I took a shower and got all packed. While Brad was occupied elsewhere I took the liberty of getting out my camera. This is the living room of their piso:

This is looking out of the laundry / random stuff room. As you can see, there is no glass, just some rows of bricks, so the apartment is open to the elements, although you can shut a door in the kitchen that blocks this room off. All in all, when you walk into the apartment, there is a kitchen attached to that laundry room thing which is quite narrow. To the other side are Brad's room, his roommate's room, and the landlord's room which is kept locked except when they are staying there also. There is a bathroom and a living room, and that's pretty much it. All of the apartments in the building surround a little courtyard with a few orange trees. I picked an orange and wanted to eat it, but Brad told me that they were gross and would make me sick. I had to wonder if he was right, since there were so many still on the trees all around town. When I scratched the bottom and smelled it I decided that he was probably right. It seemed very acrid or bitter or something to my nose.

We went to the grocery store about ten minutes from his piso to buy picnicking supplies! Originally, when the trip was in its planning stages, we were considering going to Sevilla or Cordoba or another place about three hours away, but that seemed complicated and expensive, so Brad suggested we go to Nerja, a coastal village about 50 minutes away. Our bus tickets were only a couple euros, which was nice. Sack lunch packed, we headed to Nerja. It was a really nice little town with a picturesque beach. It seemed like it couldn't decide if it wanted to be touristy or not -- there were no signs and the beach was difficult to reach, but there were a lot of touristy shops set up along the main few streets near the beach. We walked out onto the "Balcony of Spain" and were treated to a really great view of the Mediterranean.


When we finally found a route down to the beach, we tried out the water but it was a bit too cold. The air temperature was probably only about 55 or 60, but that seemed nice to me! Here's Brad, enjoying his PB&J:

As many beaches seem to be in Spain, this one was a topless beach, whoo.....
Also, while we were eating lunch a couple dogs went nuts! Barking barking barking. We looked to see what had gotten them so upset and we saw a terrified, domestic pig running around near the steep rocks at the back of the beach. Poor guy. The dogs were not being mean, they were just excited and ran back and forth with the pig while their owners tried to call them back. The pig finally found a path up and took to its heels. How interesting!

We spent the afternoon walking around on the beach, and finally begrudging went back up the steep stairs to the cliffs where the town was located. We are really out of shape. The Alcazaba pretty much ruined me and I still felt the burn today when I was going upstairs to my dorm room!

The view we had from a bench where we sat in the Mediterranean sun:


We got back to Málaga at around 5 or so and didn't have a lot else to do before I needed to head to the airport at 8. Brad needed to go grocery shopping for the week, so I went back with him. It turns out that he is starving himself in order to pay for trips to Rome, London, etc. He is living on only about 15 euros a week with a steady diet of lentils and noodles with oil. WTF? I convinced him to buy some chicken, but that was about as far as he would bend on the matter. I guess the good news is that my visit forced him to eat some real food on my behalf, haha. His mom is coming next week to visit him, and she will make sure he eats some meals as well, haha.

We went downtown and saw a bit more of the carnival as it was gearing up for the night. We ducked into a restaurant to grab something to eat and they were kind of scandalized. We would have dressed down the place, had there been any other customers, but since it was only 6:30 obviously nobody else was eating! Who eats dinner before 9 or 10? Sheesh! Poor wait staff. Then we didn't even have the courtesy of ordering our own meals, we ordered one and split it, haha. On the way to the train station, I snapped a few photos of the Alcazaba, Gibralfaro, and the cathedral at night:


And so ends my Málaga adventure! OR DOES IT?

In fact, my adventure extended far into the night. I was sitting next to two curmudgeonly English types that got very excited about my book (James Clavell) and chatted with me for a while about traveling in Europe. I felt like I was in a bad comedy skit though. I think one of them may have been a butler, because he was very droll and always addressed the other, older gentleman as "sir." Their sentences always started with phrases like, "Not to come across as soporific, but..."

I got through customs very quickly and followed the signs for the easybus pickup point. I got there with about ten minutes to spare on my ticket, but the bus never came! I finally checked my ticket more carefully and saw that this particular van went to the north terminal, not the south terminal! Rats! It was after midnight now and all of the other shuttle type services had shut down their kiosks for the night. It looked like I was going to be sleeping in an airport again. On a whim, I went to the north terminal and waited outside in the cold for about twenty minutes while I tried to decide what to do. Finally, another easybus van showed up! Hooray! He let me on with the stipulation that I would have to get back off if too many people showed up, but I ended up being the only one. The van driver was really nice and dropped me off right next to where the night bus runs at night. I could see the bus coming, so I hurriedly thanked him and hopped off. A second later, I realized that I had left my purse on the van, but it was too late and he was already around the corner. Some profanity ensued as I realized that I was stranded in London a couple miles away from my house at 4 am. Thankfully, I then realized that I still had my Oyster card (my London travel card) because I often keep it in my coat pocket rather than my purse for easy access. So I was able to get on the night bus, at least.

Then I realized dourly that my keys were in my purse, so I couldn't get into the house OR my room. More internal profanity until I remembered that I'd been stopped at security and they'd gone through my purse, so I had removed a bunch of stuff and stashed it in random places in my backpack while they were going through item by item. My keys were in my backpack, and so was my camera! Then I remembered that during Nighttime Survival Mode, I had put my ID and credit cards in my pockets! Aw crap, but my passport had been in the purse. After a moment of panic, I realized that in fact I had put that in my backpack while I was waiting to see if a van would come get me! So all I lost was my iPod. NOPE. I'd rolled it up in my headphones and stuffed it into my hoodie pocket. Wow. So the only thing I lost was a superb map of London, my wallet with insurance cards, library cards, etc. Phew! I can't believe my ridiculous luck and odd squirrel-like stashing behavior. At 3:40 I finally made it back to my dorm room and got to sleep!

Thus concludes my epic Spanish adventure! I contacted easybus and I hope to recover my purse, but if not at least I have everything that I still need! Overall, it was a really fun trip!