Marbella - up-market Benidorm, or down-market Cannes?

These were the questions that exercised us as we made our way down from the bus stop towards Marbella's renowned beach. If you simply judged the place from the wall of 1970's medium rise apartment blocks and hotels that line the promenade, then comparison with Benidorm seems apt. But the bars are tad less cheesy, and the mobility scooters don't outnumber pedestrians quite to the same degree as in its Costa Blanca working class cousin.

One day people will flock to admire these 1970s blocks in the same way they regard Miami Beach's Art Decor.

OK, just because you can, doesn't mean you should...but usually the temptation is too much....

The old lighthouse, or a barber's shop with ideas above its station.

The main pedestrianised street from the beach is lined with Dali statues... 

Leading to a shady square with tiled seats.

If you then cross into the old town on the hill, then parallels with Cannes don't seem so daft. Its old streets have been restored to 'picture post card perfection' as our Lonely Planet guidebook observes.

In truth, neither comparison with Benidorm or Cannes hits the mark. The place is not tawdry like the former, nor self-consciously glitzy like the latter. It has its own charm, a kind of youthful vibrancy, stylish, but not to the point of lifelessness.

The tapas we had at Cafe Bar Ancha were superb, especially the fried aubergine with honey and the cold red pepper salad.

Great food, charming waitress,  nice house white (only 12 euros - for both of us!)

The shop down the road sold some very silly tee shirts - Gill's favourite caption "to err is human, to aar is pirate."  Very silly!

We finished our day in Marbella with a visit to the Plaza de los Naranjas - and a cortado in the central bar.

The Costa del Sol is not at all what I expected. The Lonely Planet guide observes that the Cabo de Gata's unspoiled coastline resembles the Costa del Sol before the 'bulldozers'.  But this area could never have resembled the bare arid landscape to the north of Almeria. With its umbrella pines and green hills, the Costa del Sol is reminiscent of the Riviera, or the Bay of Naples. Consequently, because the tourist developments nestle in the woods, the coast does not look entirely over-developed. It is a rather lovely place to see out the final days of February under blue skies and temperatures in the mid twenties.

Question: What have Pablo Picasso, the theme tune from the Godfather and cured Tuna fish have in common?

Answer: nothing whatsoever, apart from yesterday,  Wednesday, 25th February 2015, in Malaga, for two particular English visitors...

1. Pablo Picasso.

Picasso was born in Malaga in 1881, but only lived there until the age of 10, when his father, an art teacher, moved the family to La Coruna, where he had obtained a new position. Nevertheless, Malaga claims Picasso as its son, and the city boasts two museums dedicated solely to his work, a small place at his birthplace, and a more substantial collection on permanent loan from the Picasso family. It was this one  we visited, located in an ancient palace in the old quarter beside the cathedral.

For some reason our visits to art galleries never go well. Gill finds them prissy, the arty customers ridiculous, and she would much rather explore a real landscape than stare at a painted one. My issue is somewhat  different, I am very comfortable in art galleries, my degree is in History of Art, and I have spent forty odd years chasing down the rag-tag fragments of art history in the various places we have visit. Often it is said that we are in some kind of inexorable process of cultural decline where all people ever do is post their selfies on Instagram and tweet facile drivel. However, having visited art galleries over the decades sometimes the opposite seems true, for now they seems busier than ever, frequented by a wide range of people. This is great, a sure sign of the democratisation of what was once considered high culture. It does presents challenges though. Sometimes the galleries are so full of people that it becomes difficult to get to see the pictures. The sense you get of peaceful contemplation when places were half empty evaporates and you end up having to compete to see the paintings. This is exacerbated in the Picasso museum by the place itself. The building it is in is a beautifully remodelled Renaissance mansion, mujedar influenced, with a lovely central courtyard.

    

It is a very pretty house. The rooms, however, are quite small, with only a handful of works in each. This should give a certain intimacy to the experience, but if the place is busy, which it was, then the crowds get in the way of the pictures, which is a shame. Get there early, or go just before it closes would be my advice.

A couple of other things conspired to ruin the experience. School groups are an irritation, but they were well behaved, and the pupils so keen to get out of the place that they scooted through like Billy-whizz on speed. Not so the dozen or so American tourists with an expert guide in tow. She parked herself in front of the most beautiful and interesting works and proceeded to hold forth using full-on art expert gobbledygook; a 10 minute mini-lecture in front of each picture - loud, opinionated and inconsiderate.Despite this, I don't regret going. The collection itself features work from the artist's youth, through to his final works from the early 1970s when was aged over 90. These I enjoyed most. Like the late Rembrandt, it was as if the artist went beyond technique, and the vibrancy of his brushwork became a cipher for the creative process itself - vivid and vital - the shimmering shadow of the aged painter's gesture.

Picasso - 1972, the painter as magician!

2. Cured tuna fish

We escaped the museum and went in search of lunch. The medieval heart of Malaga is packed full of bars and cafes offering tapas, most with a friendly senorita outside keen to impress upon the browsing tourist the delights of their particular establishment. The result -, browsing is difficult, and combined with a chilly breeze blowing down tsome streets, finding that particular combination of sunny spot, yummy food and agreeable ambiance to some time. By the time we did it felt that we had wandered through every palm shaded square and shadowy alley in the old quarter of the city.

3. The theme from the Godfather

The cafe we found was sheltered from the wind and a bit of a suntrap. We ordered three tapas - tuna in olive oul with tomatoes, smoked tuna with cheese and patatas bravas. Gill had a red house wine, I had white. It was all very good. We had only just tucked-in when the first, inevitable street musician struck up. A saxophonist who must have felt a plaintive rendition of the theme tune from the Godfather would add romance to the scene. Instead, it just made the place feel somewhat sinister. I do wonder if it was this that prompted a passing French tourist to advise Gill to hide her day-sack from view, that the soundtrack made people feel nervous, rather than any real imminent threat of street-crime. 

After a while the Godfather wandered off to spook other diners elsewhere. He was replaced by a guitarist whose version of Concerto d'Aranthuez made up in its drama and enthusiasm for an utter lack of accuracy and any sense of musicality whatsoever. I was reminded of Eric Morecambe's comment to Mr Preview, that he was playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. That being said, you can't fault the man's appearance; quite clearly he looked authentic, so we gave him a euro, like kindly teachers, as a reward 'for effort'.

After lunch we wandered along the seafront. It has been remodelled. Spanish urban designers are really quite savvy. Although the promenade was not of the scale of Valencia's famous redevelopment, it was impressive, nevertheless, proving that old and new can complement each other, and create a humane, pleasant urban environment where it pleasurable to wander.

We walked as far as the bullring. It had modern sculptures outside in a style which could be described as Picasso-lite. Then we turned back and wandered through a park. Through the trees you could glimpse the docks on the left, and the old Moorish fort on a cliff to the right.

The park is home to a noisy flock of parakeets who serenaded us like  a host of squeaky trolleys  as we sat at the bus stop.

A mishap in Malaga

The thing is, this way of travelling courts the unexpected. Trip Advisor, Airb&b, Hotels.com, they all proffer a quality assured experience. Once you step outside of the guidebook, then you've just got to accept that the place you end up in may never grace the column inches of Guardian Travel.

Right now we are parked-up in Autocaravanas Malaga's secure  compound on the outskirts of the city. We're here partly to see if its secure parking facility would be a possible long term storage option for Maisy next Christmas - 50 euros a month, less than 4 kilometres from Malaga airport-  we might be interested. Otherwise, the place is the only secured area near Malaga that offers overnight parking for motorhomes. Situated picturesquely in a scrap of wasteland between two motorways, directly beneath the airport flight path, adjacent to a Lidl distribution centre, next to gaunt, rusting corrugated iron industrial ruins daubed with graffiti... I'm not selling it am I?  But I do like well executed graffiti, and the number 19 bus to Malaga city centre runs right past the place (well, if your dare take the 300 metre walk down a death trap of a slip road).

Parked up in a theme park dedicated to industrial decline..

with picturesqely positioned abandoned buildings....

graced with exciting graffiti

Yay! Captain America...

maybe the artist had just forgotten to take his happy pills that day...

 t

the grandeur of the abandoned

Malaga's undiscovered 'art space!

Anyway, back to the mishap. I have already explained the Luis Hamilton tendencies of Spanish bus drivers. We hopped on to the bus to town; as the no.19 accelerated down the straight someone opened a parked car right in front of it; the bus driver slammed on the brakes and slewed the bus to the right, deftly avoiding the hazard. All the passengers, apart from one, lurched forwards suddenly. The exception was the grey haired Englishman perched on one of the rear seats which, on Spanish buses, are raised above the rest on 9" high platform. The unwary tourist was catapulted off this stately dias and dumped in an unseemly heap at the feet of a row of surprised elderly Spanish women.

They all looked down at me with an expression of horror struck concern. Amazed that all of my limbs and sundry bits and pieces seemed to be fully functional, and, although I felt slightly bruised down my left side, I appeared to be otherwise uninjured. Well, apart from the fact I was bleeding slightly, but persistently from the lower lip. I guess I must have assumed a slightly opened mouthed, gormless expression as I sailed through the air, and bit my lip as I crash landed. No real harm done apart from the embarrassment of being the the point of conversation for the remainder of the trip. Having no Spanish whatsoever, I can only presume it went something like -

"The grey-haired English git in the back must be tougher than he looks."

"Maybe, but he's still bleeding from the mouth, that's the third tissue his wife has handed him."

"Well he looks Ok. But you never know with these things, perhaps he'll peg it later through delayed shock."

Much to their collective disappointment, I hopped off the bus at Plaza de la Marina, a sprightly figure limping down the palm fringed boulevard, dabbing his lip occasionally as he sauntered along.

I woke this morning to discover that Madonna suffered the same fate at the Brits. Maybe 25th February should be adopted as Interational Falling Over Day.

The charm of nowhere in particular.

Well, here we are camped in nowhere in particular, just across the road from a thin strip of greyish sand called Niza Playa. The road, N340 used to be the main route south connecting Valencia, Murcia and Alicante to the coastal cities of southern Andalucia. Most people now use the nearby autovia, so the old places on the original road have that slightly empty, half forgotten feel of by-passed communities. Well, at least the communities that still exist, most on the coast have been gobbled up by urbanisations and apartment block sprawl. However, a few miles to the east of Malaga, on the 'Costa del Sol Oriental', not everywhere is built up like Torremolinos and Fuengirola. Not that the coast is packed full of undiscovered picturesque fishing villages, it's more ordinary than that. Take the campsite we are staying on, next to the road, beside an underwhelming beach, in all likelihood you would drive straight past without a second look. But it is worth a second look. The place has unexpected delights. For a start, the tall palm trees at the entrance are home to a flock of bright green parakeets; that gives the place quite an exotic air for starters. The people who run the campsite are very welcoming and the place is really well looked after. Even at this time of year it has a lively mix of guests - young families, extended families with grandparents in tow, motor-bikers and cycle tourists in small tents, as well as the inevitable tribe of grey-haired winter refugees in their motorhomes.

We unloaded the bikes and went for a bit of an explore in the hills behind the site. A minor road just beyond the site leads up a small valley, through fruit farms and orchards. Beyond these the snow-capped peaks of Sierra de Tejeda glistened under the clear blue sky. The sun was strong, but an icy northern wind made it a day for 'doing' rather than 'lounging'. 

After climbing steeply for a few kilometres we reached the small village of Cajiz which tumbles down the valley side, an avalanche of white among the deep green orchards. We stopped briefly, but it was Sunday, and nowhere seemed to be open where we could have had a coffee.

One sure sign that Andalucia's short excuse for a winter is on the wane is the sudden appearance of lots of wild flowers by the roadside. We particularly liked these big daisy-like flowers, we have no idea what they are - so big daisies they will remain until we can find a reference book to look them up in.

On the road back we had a good view across to the mountains above Velez Malaga. The farms here are different to the industrial scale plasticulture you get to the north of here. There were farmers out in the fields checking the crops. I sensed that small growers still prevail. Each neat, well tended group of fields had a finca in its midst, kid's bikes parked at the back door, these were family farms. It was nice to see a working rural community.

Gill disappeared down the steep hill back to the camp site on coastal plain. I stopped to take a few photographs of the sea which was silvery and glittering in the distance. I'm experimenting with the still image function on my camcorder rather than lugging it and the bulky Canon SLR around. The manual claims that the camcorder still image function operates at 24m megapixels. It certainly is impressive; the picture of the pink buildings and the palm trees below was taken on maximum zoom, The group of houses must have been half a kilometer distant, yet the result is quite sharp, good enough for blogging anyway. Of course the downside is you can only use a landscape aspect ratio, I'll have to see how it goes.

Next morning we pedaled a couple of kilometers down the coast road to the nearby village of Benajarafe. It's still a working fishing village with small tourist developments and low rise hotels.I n a quiet understated way it was lovely. We stopped by a small beach-side cafe for a couple of cortados, then headed back to the campsite for lunch.

I had already decided that if the wind dropped and the temperature did remain around 21 degrees, I' d go for a swim later in the afternoon. So we packed the beach chairs, a couple of books and spent an hour or so wave watching. I donned my trisuit and jumped into the winter-cold sea. The beach had quite a shelf to it; 15 meters or so out, waves, about a meter and a half  high were breaking in an torrent of white foam. They curved across the bay like a taut bow. I swam on the cusp of the wave. looking down its length; the sea glittered towards the horizon, in the distance I could see blue mountains behind Malaga, As I swam along the crest of the wave I could see it breaking further along the beach; the white foam fizzed toward me like a fuse, then exploded over my head sweeping me shore-wards, and dumped me unceremoniously in the shallows. It was exhilarating.  After a few goes at this I was exhausted, but I felt great. I wandered back to where Gill was sitting reading. In homage to The Boss, the mighty Brooos, I yelled "IS THERE ANYONE ALIVE OUT THERE?" to the wind, sea and empty beach.

"Just a few fish, I would think." Gill observed.

man stares at sea...

then jumps in.