On May 9, Alyssa and I began our 11 day Spring Break Part Two journey. Our first destination on this trip was Spain. We got a taxi to the airport and had to go to the check in desk to get a Visa Check. The lady at the desk told us that we needed to already have our boarding passes printed and she wanted to charge us to print them. I explained to her that we have gotten Visa checks at several other airports and that they have all printed our boarding passes for us. She talked to a guy in the back office and the guy said to email him our boarding passes and that he would print them. This was nice of him to do this for us but was an annoying start to our journey. The plane ride to Malaga, Spain was 3.5 hours and I watched movies on Netflix for the entire flight. Upon arrival in the airport, I attempted to take cash out at an ATM but was denied three times. It turned out, that I did not update my country list for my debit card, just my credit card.

Thanks to instructions from our Airbnb host, we took the train from the airport to the city center. There was a 20 minute walk to get to the Airbnb. The weather was sunny and 80 degrees. This felt so nice after being in cold Scotland. Checking into our Airbnb was interesting, as the lady did not speak any English. Thankfully, Alyssa knew enough Spanish so that we could properly complete the check in. The Airbnb was very nice as well as the area around the apartment. After settling in, we headed out to look for groceries. We bought enough groceries for most of our meals for the four days that we would be in Spain. We put away the groceries and went back out to hunt down a restaurant for dinner. Finding a place to eat is always a challenge for us, as we are very indecisive when it comes to restaurants. We ended up at a Mexican restaurant where I ordered a chicken and cheese quesadilla and nachos. We spent the rest of the night just chilling in the Airbnb.

The next morning, I made breakfast (eggs, toast, and a banana) and walked 35 minutes to the train station where we met our tour group that would take us to Caminito Del Ray. Caminito Del Ray is considered to be the "world's most dangerous walkway." Caminito may have earned this title back in the day, but now Caminito is a major tourist attraction with safe and easy walkways. The old pathways are still visible and there is no way that I would have walked on them. The new pathways opened in 2015. We had to wear hardhats on the tour, which lasted about three hours and was 5km long. I was hoping for a more adventurous hike but the hike was very slow and actually quite level. There were more old people on this tour than young people. The scenery was quite beautiful and was something that I have never experienced before. I was confused as to why the water was green in some areas and then brown in others. We arrived back in Malaga around 3:00, went shopping around the mall in the train station, and then went to the apartment. We made pasta for dinner and chilled for the rest of the night, enjoying Spanish TV.

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Day three in Spain consisted of an early breakfast and a hike up to Gibralfaro Castle. The viewpoint from the Castle is wonderful, where one can have a great view of the famous bull ring, La Malagueta, as well as the rest of Malaga city. We walked through some of the gardens and they are absolutely beautiful. It was also nice to get in some shade. There are beautiful flowers and palm trees everywhere. We then walked down to the beach. The beach was more crowded than I had expected. We sat underneath a few palm trees on the beach and played Heads Up to pass the time. Leaving the beach, we went to check out a mall that had two of our favorite stores (Primark and Zara). I have never seen such disorganized stores in my life so we did not even bother looking through. Dinner that night consisted of frozen pizza made in the microwave. On the first day when we went grocery shopping, I though for some reason that our Airbnb had an oven so I thought why not buy frozen pizzas. It turns out that we had no oven. Surprisingly, the pizza made in the microwave was not that bad.

We had pretty much done everything in Malaga so we decided to make a trek a bit out of the city center on our last day to the Botanical Gardens- Botanico-Historico La Concepcion. The walk according to Google Maps was supposed to take an hour and 4 minutes but we completed the walk in 50. We spent about two hours at the gardens. They are quite beautiful. There are so many palm trees, orange and lemon trees, and cacti. There is a beautiful house with mosaics in the courtyard and even a barbie exhibit which illustrates the history of the botanical gardens. We ate lunch at the botanical gardens - a four cheese pizza, and went back to the apartment. Because it was a Sunday, the Picasso museum was free after 5:00. Picasso was born in Malaga so this museum is dedicated to him and displays over 300 of his works. There was a long line outside of the museum to get in. Honestly, half of his works look like a preschooler did them. I do not know how they are considered artworks. Other pieces are quite nice and beautiful. It was interesting to read how his history and his relationship with his wife Olga, and the their later son, Paul affected his artwork.

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Overall, I really enjoyed my time in Spain. Some of the cultural aspects of Malaga that I noticed were that they do not speak much English, they do not smoke as much as I thought they would, Sundays are still dead, and they travel by electric scooters everywhere. I had a wonderful first time in Spain and I would love to go back to Spain to see Barcelona, Madrid, and Seville.