Happy Monday! I’m writing today from the train on the way back to Madrid after a long weekend in Málaga. We have a number of long weekends (puentes – bridges) this year, celebrating various Saints and other Spanish holidays. For this first puente, I traveled with Paula to her dad’s home city Málaga on the southern coast of Spain. We took a train in the evening after work on Friday and arrived to the palm trees and beach breezes of the Andalucian coast.
Besides seeing some of Málaga, a big goal for me this weekend was to relax, catch up on some of my reading, and sleep! On Saturday morning, we took a short bus ride into town and had breakfast on a whim at what claimed to be an authentic American diner. It was all decorated for fall/Halloween, which was fun, but no home fries, so the authenticity only stretched so far. After that, we walked through Málaga’s historic center, saw the cathedral and the Alcazaba (fortress). Then we headed to the central park area and across to the waterfront. We walked up the newly renovated pier and saw huge ships and some old sailboats. We stopped at the Centre Pompidou, a modern art museum (see some photos), and headed back to Paula’s family’s apartment for some rest. I went for a run along the beach, which was beautiful! Then we set out on foot to get dinner at a beachside fish restaurant. They roast the fish over fires in grills made out of small row boats! We ate very well!
On Sunday (birthday!), we had a slower morning. Paula decorated for me, which was really sweet! Then we had some breakfast and spent much of the afternoon on the beach. It was a perfect beach day, and the water was quite warm! We headed back to the city center for a sunset Catamaran ride. Before getting on, we walked up the pier a bit and saw the largest rigged sailboat in the world (5 masts!). Our (much smaller) boat was pretty full, but we got there a little early to secure a prime spot up front on the nets between the pontoons. We met our new best friend, a businesswoman named Pilar from Valencia (see photo). We chatted about all of her business ventures, her son, and pretty much everything else! After the boat ride, we walked to the restaurant for dinner, which was delicious! We finished the night off with a slice of cake in the apartment and some TV (I fell asleep on the couch).
Today we went for a morning walk before packing up and heading to the train station. We had a snack before hopping on our high-speed train back to Madrid! Tonight I’ll get caught up on some laundry, meal prep, and planning for the week before we’re back to school tomorrow.
I luckily had a lot of time at the end of the week to get caught up on grading and planning for this week, so I’m happy to report I have not had any work to do this weekend! I finished reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (highly recommend – would love to talk more about it) and have returned to Solito by Javier Zamora (also great so far, but not that far into it!). And with that, I’ll leave you with some Málaga photos!
Abe Tolkoff 