I´ve landed in Málaga and found an internet café near Plaza de la Merced, near where my couchsurfing host, Ara, lives. At 1€ an hour, I think I´ll be in here daily, at least!
Getting here yesterday was a breeze. Although, I got here quite a bit early … I wanted to get to Málaga before dark so I could find my way around easily and not have a repeat of Sevilla when I got there after dark and after all information type booths were closed. The train from Sevilla was quite nice, it was a Regional train, and cost about 17 €. Not so bad. It was a bit of a jiggly ride, compared to the other trains I´ve been on. One of the shortest trains too - only three cars. I did wake up later than expected yesterday morning and made it to the train station 10 minutes before the train was to leave. I bought my ticket and was sitting on the train with minutes to spare. That is what I like about the train. Get there right before it leaves - doesn´t matter! It doesn´t cost any more than if you booked it 2 months in advance.
Anyway, yesterday was pretty cool, even though it started out strangely when I realized I got here some 10 hours before I´d be able to meet up with Ara! I had hoped to ditch my backpack in a locker somewhere at the train station, but their lockers were broken. I left the train station and walked to the bus station next door to see if they had lockers. Nope. So, I´d just walk with my bags! Next item was a map of Malaga, as I didn´t have one. As I was standing there, pondering a map of Malaga on a sidewalk outside the bus station, a couple walked up behind me and started to look at the map too. They started talking to each other and I recognized it as English! I turned around and said something like “you speak English!” and then we started talking, both happy, I think, to have found someone who speaks English. Conor and Karen are from Charleston, South Carolina and are traveling around until some time in May! I thought I had it good … we talked briefly and then they set out into town and I went into the bus station to find a map at the information booth they directed me to. Unfortunately, the booth was closed for siesta, I guess, and I was out of luck. But, the map streetside gave me enough direction and I knew I had to head northeast of the train station anyhow. After that, though, I wished I had just walked with Conor and Karen as they had a map, but were long gone now.
I started walking down the main drag in front of me. Along the way, I found a few more of the streetside maps (very handy, indeed) and they kept me on course. Just before the bridge over the mostly dry river, I found a tourist information kiosk and procured a map. Bingo!
Malaga is quite a nice place, too. I had heard there´s not much to see and it´s nothing special. It´s nice though. The area I am in has some really nice streets to walk on, paved in marble. It´s similar to Sevilla, but has less narrow streets where I am.
I made my way to Plaza de la Merced, where I was to meet up with Ara, 9 hours later. The plaza is about what I imagined, a nice square plaza surrounded by apartments and bars/restaurants. There were a few people milling around, and I didn´t quite know what to do with myself. I wasn´t hungry, as I ate a good meal at the train station. I had my backpack, and didn´t feel like walking a lot. I found the internet cafe and plopped myself down for an hour. I found a hostel right on the next street. But, bastards, I went there after my internet time was up and they would not let me store my bags there. Picasso´s Corner - not very cool of you! And they call themselves a “backpacker´s hostel.” Phah!
So, I decided to go back to this Irish pub called O´Donnell´s I had passed while walking around earlier. They had a chalkboard advertising out front they were showing a football (soccer) match later on at 21:00. Of course, it was not quite 19:00, or maybe even 18:00, when I decided this. The place was empty, anyway, and I could nurse a pint of Guinness for an hour. They had a Spanish-dubbed movie playing with Dennis Quaid and some other people I can´t remember. There were two nice-looking, but not very talkative girls there tending bar. When I walked in I asked about the football, but they said it wasn´t until later. I said I was early … Long story short, I watched the movie a bit and sent a few text messages, and got in contact with my other couchsurfing host, Adrian. Thankfully, he was free and came to meet me at the bar! I was saved from 6 hours of boredom!
Adrian is very cool and I´m glad that we were able to meet up. I bought him a pint of Guinness and had another myself and we talked about all kinds of stuff. After a while I was getting hungry again and tired of waiting for the football match to come on. We actually ended up leaving right when the match started, but we both wanted food and O´Donnell´s didn´t seem to serve food. We walked up a street and passed a place serving stuffed roasted potatoes (it´s the best way I can describe them). They sell these rather large potatoes stuff with all kinds of stuff. We had the “normal” patata stuffed with tomato sauce, olives, diced ham and sour cream. It was very good, very filling and very cheap. We ate them while walking by some of the historic ruins and up the hill by the Alcazaba. We stopped about 1/2 way up the hill and finished our dinner.
It was getting close to when I was finally supposed to meet Ara. Adrian and I walked back to the Plaza de la Merced and found a bar there to have a beer in. We sat down, ordered, and had a few sips of our San Miguel when, to my surprise … from a table nearby, up walk Conor and Karen who I had met earlier that day! Such a coincidence. They joined us at the table and we all talked about traveling and Adrian and I educated them about couchsurfing. I sent a text message to Ara about the bar we were in, she met us there shortly there after and we all had another round. It was so great to be there, with people who were strangers that morning, now friends chatting over beers. I have never experienced the friendliness of people like I have so far while traveling. It makes things truly great and priceless!
I really don´t have a lot to say about Sevilla anymore. The title of the post is a bit mislead, after all. I think I need a nap and the experience over the last day is too fresh in my mind to go back and rehash the past. I may never get around to writing about my experience there, but I will say it was all very good and I met a lot of very cool people at the Oasis and will return there definitely. You have to see the sights for yourself to appreciate them anyway, so no sense in going into detail about those places. More and more I realize traveling, like any other time in our lives really, it´s all about the people you meet and spend time with. I think the kind of traveling I´m doing really opens me up to being social, as it would be impossible to travel this way and NOT be social because it would be a total drag. It requires a certain degree of extrovertedness (word?) that I know I have, I just need extreme situations to bring it out in me. I guess I need a reason to be like this, and being comfortable and cozy and safe in my daily life just doesn´t do it. It´s a totally different experience. Truly a broadening of horizons, both personal and physical.
(p.s. and again, I don´t have any capability to upload pictures … )