Time for another adventure!
One of the main reasons we chose to move to Portugal was so we could easily travel throughout Europe so we are always trying to find cool trips that we can take that are affordable. We had heard great things about Málaga so we, along with a couple of our friends, decided to take a road trip!
Málaga is a city in the Andalucia region of Spain. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe. I hadn’t heard much about it so I did some research and I found that there was so much to do and see. I was super excited to visit.
The drive to Málaga is less than 4 hours away from Tavira. That’s just like driving to San Diego or LA from Vegas, luckily there is nowhere near as much traffic! It was a pretty easy drive, the only exception being the busy area around Sevilla. Sevilla is hard to drive in, I’ve done it a handful of times but I really don’t enjoy it. Our friends rented a nice car so it was a really smooth trip. I love to drive so I drove the whole way.
We rented an apartment on booking.com. It was a perfect little spot, really close to the city center and a lot of the attractions that we would be visiting. It was clean and comfortable and had 2 bedrooms and 2 baths so there was plenty of space for all of us. The only negative was that we got in a bit of trouble for standing and talking on the balcony for 5 minutes after quiet hours. We weren’t very loud but apparently, quiet meant silent.
All the stuff we did
Málaga is most known for its beaches but there is so much more! There were so many cool things we wanted to do while we were visiting but unfortunately there wouldn’t be enough time for everything so we picked a few and we actually never even made it to the beach!
The food and drinks:
There were so many options for gluten-free on the Find Me Gluten Free app. I always check the app before I go anywhere and make a list of where I want to try. There were so many so I had to narrow it down. I will have a separate post with everywhere we ate because I always think the food deserves its own post. But as a sneak peak, I had tacos, sushi, ice cream, and gluten-free pastries, and plenty of drinks!
Sightseeing and Museums
Málaga has so many museums, 40 to be exact! It was hard to narrow it down. One of the most popular ones is the Picasso museum because he was born and raised in Málaga. (There are actually 2 Picasso Museums, one is at his birth home in the Plaza de Merced. There is a popular statue of him there as well.) As much as I wanted to go to one of them, it didn’t work out. We decided on the Wine museum, OXO- the Video Game museum, the Cathedral, and the Alcazaba.
All of these places were really cool so I’ll be doing a separate post for each.
Exploring the City
We also spent lots of time just walking around and exploring the city. Málaga has such a cool vibe. I loved walking around, doing nothing in particular, exploring the shops and streets. My soul absolutely loves being in larger cities and the energy just makes me so happy so I really enjoyed just exploring.The town was preparing for the Corpus Christi celebration so there was a parade going on one night and there was a cool craft market one day as well. I also loved all the street art. On my Instagram I have a reel that shows all the street art I saw.
There were some really cool shops in Málaga too.
A couple of my favorites were:
- Celyan Málaga– A store with traditional Flamenco fans and hair clips, and they also made custom hats
- La Botica de los Perfumes– A place where you can create your own custom perfume. There were hundreds of scents available and a bottle only cost about €12
- Druni Perfumerias– A huge makeup store but it had flowers and decor all over the ceiling, it was really beautiful
- Some really cool t-shirt stores
- A really large comic book store with a bunch of nerd stuff
Wrap-up
I really loved Málaga! I loved the energy of it. I loved how much stuff there was to do and all the great restaurants and bars. I would absolutely recommend a visit there if you are going to Spain and I would love to go back. We were there for 4 nights but easily could have stayed longer. It was a great place with so much to do and see but it also wasn’t a giant overwhelming city.
Thank you for reading! You can follow me on Instagram to see more about my trip to Málaga as well as my daily life as an expat living in Portugal. 💙
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