Morgan had a week of vacation on the calendar for mid-November (he is only allowed to carry over a few days of vacation so he had to use up some days) and we were lucky to find some great deals on Ryan Air from our local airport to Spain (it was only 80 euros for both of our round trip tickets!). From FMO they fly to Barcelona and Málaga, however all the Barcelona flights were full for the time period we wanted to go… so Malaga it was; which turned out to be amazing. Málaga is on the southern cost of Spain (right on the Mediterranean) and it was a great starting/ending point for (what turned into) our road trip around Andalusia. At first we had thought about just staying in one spot, but after looking into the area I figured we had to see more than just Málaga. We were so lucky- the weather was beautiful while we were there. Other than one afternoon of rain the weather was perfect – sunny and mid 70’s during the day. It was a welcome break from cold/foggy/rainy Germany.
When we landed in Málaga we picked up our rental car and got on the road to Seville, which was about a 2 hour drive. The couple we were renting from had warned us that driving in the old part of Seville is a bad idea, so they recommended we should park at the train station. We drove around the train station, but all the lots were pretty expensive (30 euros a day) and they had said it would be free, so to avoid missing our meeting time with them we just drove over to the apartment. Esshh, it was sooo stressful! We were driving down these tiny roads that are barely wide enough for one car… several times I thought we were going to hit parked cars or buildings. We did find a garage just two blocks from our apartment and we decided to leave the car there for our entire stay. The free parking near the train station was street parking and we were worried about the rental car being bumped into (in Spain they use their bumpers – literally- when parking) so we thought the garage was safer.
We had a really cute little apartment in a 16th century theater near the Plaza de la Encarnación. The owners were really helpful and gave us lots of good restaurant suggestions. The bed was up in a loft area, which was the only thing I wasn’t really a fan of – poor Morgan and to army crawl to get into bed and I was constantly afraid we’d fall over the edge. After getting checked in we walked to one of the dinner spots they recommended – El Rinconcillo- which was a great local place (no English menus here!). We tried the Coquinas de la Casa (what we thought would be a sampler because it was 13 euros turned out to be a huge plate of mussels), the Espinacas con garbanzos (which was cooked spinach with chick peas, garlic, and butter), and the Tortillas de chorizo (what I thought would be chorizo in a tortilla like what we are used to in the US turned out to be a chorizo omelet… yep tortilla in Spanish means omelet – who knew?)- everything was delicious! On the walk back to our apartment we grabbed some helados (ice cream); which turned out to be a common theme while we were in Spain…the ice cream down there was amazing!
