Malaga; Saturday, 13 March, 2010

Having taken on and defeated the impressive breakfast that Ibis laid on, I headed out into the city.

Fist stop of the morning was the cathedral (having dodged the heather sellers). From there I walked the short distance to the remains of the Roman Theatre. These lay undiscovered at the foot of the Alcazaba until the start of the 20th century and have slowly been uncovered over the years. Unfortunately, when I visited, the site was being renovated with new walkways and a new museum being created, so all you could do was walk into the top part of the amphitheatre and look down onto the ruins.

As I was at the Alcazaba I went in there to have a look around next, taking in all the buildings and courtyards. Whilst nowhere near as spectacular as the Alhambra in Granada, it benefited from having very few visitors wandering around.

After taking in the Alcazaba my legs were aching quite a bit, there is a fair amount of steep slopes with uneven paths and the pigeon stepping you have to adopt to get around safely makes for hard work on the muscles, so I decided to take the weight off of my feet for a while by catching the open-top sightseeing bus.

By the time the bus got round to the top of the Gibralfaro my legs were feeling better so I got off and had a look around the ruins here. Inside of the site there is not much to see, but the views from the walkways that go around the top of the walls are spectacular. Having taken in all the sites I got back on the sightseeing bus and did a complete circuit to take in the tour. Arriving back at the Gibralfaro around 90 minutes later.

I had a bit of a wander around the outside of the Gibralfaro taking in a couple of the viewing platforms over the city, before walking back down the (very) steep path back into the city centre.

By the time I got back to the centre it was starting to get dark, so I wandered back to the hotel to drop by bag off, and then headed back out for dinner.