Bienvenido Pat y Elina

On Tuesday (March 7), Karen and I went for a major hike – major by our wimpy standards anyway. It wasn’t entirely by design. We started with the idea of walking east along the beach, and just kept going. It was a lovely sunny day and the paved walkway goes on forever.

Near our apartment

It’s actually part of the Senda Litoral de Malaga, a coastal pathway that, when complete, will run along the entire coastline of Málaga province, from Nerha in the east to Manilva – 163 kilometers in total. It includes existing beach promenades, which is what we were walking on, but also new sections, built with provincial funding. It will supposedly be complete by 2019. Where we were walking, the path runs alongside the N340, the old coastal highway, still a very busy road.

We walked about 5 kilometers, as far as Pedregal, a one-time fishing village, now a suburb of Málaga city. Just before Pedregal, we came to El Balneario aka Baños del Carmen, a seaside spa and restaurant. The spa seems to have fallen on hard times, but the restaurant, and its lovely patio, with views back along the coast to the city, were doing a booming business. We thought of stopping there for some refreshment, but Karen for some reason didn’t like the feel of the place, so we walked on another half kilometer or so into Pedregal village.

The highway, and sidewalk, go through the commercial centre of the village, but we turned off, down to the seaside, which is a few blocks away, and found a little bar. It was right on the beach, with a patio out in the sun, where we sat. There were young people on the beach – in bathing suits, although I didn’t see anyone actually going in the water.

It was an interesting crowd on the patio. There was a young woman sitting by herself, reading an e-book. There were a couple of other tourists. After we’d been there awhile, business people started coming in – stopping by before returning to work for the post-siesta portion of the work day, perhaps.

And then there was a guy sitting on a park bench between the restaurant and the patio. He was dressed in jeans and a windbreaker, heavy boots, bearded. He looked a bit biker-ish, but not rough. I don’t think he was a street person, or a traveller; he slept indoors somewhere. He was talking and laughing to himself, occasionally calling out – evidently loony tunes. No one paid him any attention, until he walked over and started chatting to the young woman with the e-reader, leaning over her table. She didn’t seem upset by his advances, seemed to be responding politely. Nobody intervened on her behalf, not even the waiter. The guy finally ambled off withut further incident, I’m sure to everyone’s relief.

We walked home, and that was pretty much our day.

Spotted near the Roman theatre on the way home

The next day, the Wednesday, we didn’t get out of the house – other than for a Mercadona shop – until almost three. This was a shame since it was warm and sunny. We did a walk around town, planning to end up at the Museo de Málaga. This is the recently opened museum in the old customs “palace,” a massive 19th century pile that now houses the province’s art and archaeology collections. It’s advertised as being free all the time, but when we got there, it turned out it was only free for European Union citizens. We would have to pay €1.50 each. We decided we’d come back another day when we’d have more time to get our money’s worth.

We walked back to the Roman Theatre and sat in El Pimpi, a restaurant and winery established in 1928. Its patio bar is very popular with tourists. We thought it would probably be ridiculously expensive, given the type of place it was, but we’d do it just once. The waiters seemed inclined to ignore us, but I finally flagged the maître d’ and he eventually sent a server over.

In fact, the prices were exactly the same as they’d been at the unassuming little bar in Pedregal: €2.50 for a glass of wine. The wine was a Chardonay, which I wouldn’t have thought was very typical of Spain, and it wasn’t as good, to my taste, as the wine at the Pedregal bar. They didn’t give us as much of it either.

The people-watching wasn’t even all that great. It was mostly other tourists passing by. There was one party at a nearby table that attracted our attention, though. A tall, fifty-ish blonde woman in a startlingly short miniskirt came along to a table of men in business suits and started talking to them. Eventually she sat down. Karen was convinced she was a hooker. I don’t think so – wrong time of day, I would have thought. I reckoned she was one of their wives and had been off shopping in the city and met them there by arrangement for a drink. Karen said she wasn’t well enough coutured to be with any of these sharply-dressed business types. Maybe.

In the early evening, I went out on my own to buy oats from the health food store on Calle Carreteria, and to do a little photography. I ended up meandering through the streets between Carreteria and the Plaza de la Constitución. It was livelier than we had seen it – partly because we are rarely out at this time of day, which is when the Spanish come for the paseo, after their siesta and before dinner. It was also partly because it was International Women’s Day.

In one little side street, I came upon a group of young women marshalling for a demonstration. They were all dressed similarly in black tops and mini skirts or shorts over tights, and carrying placards and a big styrofoam sculpture of – cover your ears, children - a vagina. We were going the same way, it seemed. As they started to march alongside me, they chanted a slogan, which I couldn’t understand.

We came out at Plaza de la Constitución at the same time. There was a crowd scene there. A stage had been set up on one side. The square was packed with people, milling around, waiting for whatever was going to happen – speakers, I suppose. Then my girls came marching in with their banners and styrofoam vagina, chanting their slogan, whatever it was. Everyone turned to look, but the vagina girls were soon swallowed up in the crowd.

Meanwhile, along the outside of the square, bemused tourists sat in the outdoor cafes, wondering, I’m sure, what on earth was going on.

The next morning, sister Pat and her old school chum, Helen, were scheduled to arrive. They were flying from Toronto via Montreal to Málaga on AirTransat. It was a sunny day, so Karen and I went down and sat in the square across the street to wait for them.

We had known Helen slightly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Pat’s friend. When she got out of the cab, it was déjà vu. Some of us – Karen and I for sure – morph completely as we pass through different stages of life, and become unrecognizable to people who knew us once but hadn’t seen us in decades. Helen looked exactly the same to me, almost unmarked by time. With the same voice I remembered, the same mannerisms. So annoying. (Not Helen, just the fact that she’s hardly aged.) I said this and she tried to be nice and return the compliment, but we all knew she was lying through her teeth.

They both seemed chipper for having come off a red-eye flight. We gave them some tea and nibblies, and then hustled them out for an orientation walk. We went first to the Mercado Centrale, where we bought asparagus from a guy outside the building – which later proved to be not very nice – and some apples and strawberries (which were nice) from a fruit stall inside.

We worked our way from the market down through the historic centre, stopping in a church with an amazing frescoed ceiling. I have no idea now which church it was. 

Then we crossed Alameda Principal, and walked down through Soho – where we saw more of the street murals – to the harbour area.

They saw the Pompidou Centre and the beach, briefly. And then we took them home via the Alcazaba and Roman Theatre. A whirlwind tour of Málaga. We gave them a thrown-together dinner and some Cava, and packed them off to bed early. Pat’s regular bed time at home is about 9 p.m., I think. It was now three o’clock in the morning her time.