19 November 2024: Malaga, Andalusia, Spain—First and foremost, today we offer prayers for, and send our love to, Uncle Larry Truty. He is having major surgery this morning, and we are keeping him in ur thoughts and prayers. Malaga is one of the southern European cities that compose the Costa del Sol. Well, this morning, before around 10:30 A..M., it was not at all full of Sol, rather, it was cloudy and dreary outside. However, winds were calm, and the temp was mild. Around mid-morning, however, the sun came out, and the whole world smiled! The aquamarine color of the Mediterranean Sea beneath our ship turned even more vivid and lovely, moods rose, and warmth embraced all of us who would venture off ship to explore Malaga, one of Europe’s oldest cities reportedly dating back to the time of the Phoenicians! John and I decided to take the Hop On-Hop Off bus that somehow was allowed to pick up and drop off on port, right next to where our ship was docked. It was a lovely narrated ride around Malaga, pointing out some of the important sights. Sights included the Playa Manqueda, Plan San Andres, the Malaga Cathedral (La Manquita), the area where Pablo Picasso was born, the Main Street of Malaga, the Castillo de Gibralfaro and the Alcazaba nearby, the bull fighting rink and adjacent bull fighting museum (I understand that bullfighting in Spain—not in Barcelona, though—is legal and part of indigenous culture, and that the matador is a highly respected person), the SoHo District, the museums, including the car museum, the Fishing District where they catch one of the prize products of the Sea around Malaga: Sardines that then are somehow skewered and roasted, the wealthy district, the. Chimneys that suggest the city’s industrial past in the areas of concrete, and such, La Farola (the old white lighthouse near the cruise ship port, and so on. Of particular interest to me was the story surrounding La Manquita (the Malaga Cathedral that has only one of two completed towers). The story is that the reason the second tower was never built was that the city ran out of money. The reason they ran out of money was that it was donated to the U.S. for their War of Independence from England. Of course, there is also a counternarrative that suggests that they indeed ran out of money, but that the money was diverted to the building of a particular street….. Of interest to me was also the house where in Pablo Picasso was born. It is in a stately larger building on the corner of a large piazza today, a pizza lined with stores, bars, and so on. Next to Picasso’s birth house, there now is a Picasso museum. One of the packages offered by the Hop On-Hop Off Bus was attendance at a Flamenco Performance at the Museum of Interactive Music. I would have thought that this would have been a no-brainer for the ship to bring a Flamenco Troupe on board while docked at one of three Spanish stops to perform as a component of the overall entertainment program, or that the ship would have scheduled a local Flamenco expert to provide a presentation on the role of music and Flamenco dance within the context of Spanish culture. But…they did not. Thus, the opportunity to view a performance on our own in Malaga was also a no-brainer. It was interesting to say the least. There was no introduction to the art at all, and the dancer during the performance appeared angry, or sad. She used her hands, her feet and legs (their motion never affecting the posture of the upper body), castanets, clicking, clapping, body slapping to accompany her movements. She “danced” to another woman “singing”, sometimes loudly as if she were yelling or screaming. We were not prepared for that because we had never witnessed the vocal aspect of Flamenco dancing. The Spanish guitarist also accompanied the singer and dancer, and he was fantastic at his art. I, personally, am left with additional questions after having seen this performance. I would like to know more about Flamenco dancing, the role of music and dance as part of the popular repertoire of Spanish people, how and if gypsy culture interacts with Flamenco, and so on. The houses and buildings are lovely. They are often colorful, include mosaic trim, and sometimes compose an entire section of the city that is painted white, reminiscent of the white cities we have seen in Italy and Greece.There are plenty of grandiose multi-level buildings in Malaga, and there are lots of beautiful palm trees. In fact, we even saw what looked like dry palm fronds on the beach where the sea joins the shore. The main streets of town are lined with restaurants and stores that are noticeably multiethnic. I would understand that this is likely because of the many tourists who visit Malaga each year from all sorts of different parts of the world. The main streets are also in the process of being decorated for Christmas. Interestingly, the city of Malaga (and Cartagena) does not use Christmas lights in decorating the streets. Rather, they use trees, wreaths, and so on, composed of round reflective discs that blow about with the wind. Therefore, the”illuminations” are visible during daylight as well as nighttime. John and I were able to stop very briefly before the flamenco performance at a little restaurant near the Musiccal Interventions Theater: We enjoyed local sangria, this one with peach cubes inside, some locally grown green olives (very different taste from the brine or processing, unlike any other way I’ve tasted green olives elsewhere), John had Piripiri (tapas: havarti, tomato, mayonnaise, and roast pork mini-sandwich), and I had one of thee “Fine Tapas”: Fried potatoes with spicy sauce (the potatoes were crisp-fried and salted mildly, they were likely yelllow potatoes, and the spicy sauce, which I asked to be served on the side, had a mild kick to it but otherwise was reminiscent of Thousand Island dipping sauce). All in alll, this was another beautiful day on this cruise. One of my favorite things about cruises is that they sail all night while we are asleep, and the next morning, POOF! We have arrived at a different port! This is made even more exciting when we arrive at a port we’ve never seen before! Malaga, Spain, was one such port, and we are thrilled to have had the opportunity to begin to get to know it!
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