Random photos and thoughts.

A sculpture in the pedestrian area of Malaga. More than one face. 

A bench with a sense of humour. 

With close up. 

The menu of the local café-bar on our street. This is a Sunday menu because at the bottom it says "Chocolate and churros all afternoon". On weekdays they are only available until lunch time. And the note that says "Rabo Toro, supplement, 2€"? That's bull tail. 

One of the desserts (postre) available as part of the menu del dia. An ice cream cone (Drumstick to me) on a plate, with a napkin.

On the way to Fuengirola this Bull looms over a hillside. They once advertised Osborne brandy. When the Spanish outlawed outdoor ads like this, the howl of protest for the loss of the iconic bull meant that the signs were allowed to stay, minus the text.

A patio of a Mozarabic palace in Fuengirola. A combination of Moorish and Spanish architecture. 

Some of the gorgeous stucco work. 

And one of the windows on an exterior wall.

One of the menu del dia offerings - scrambled eggs with mushrooms and asparagus. It's a starter, not the main course. 

Here's a main course - Bacalao a la riojana, salt cod with a tomato sauce. And the ubiquitous patatas fritas. 

We are on our way to the campo here to visit friends at their finca. The two trains you see are part of the high speed rail line - they travel up to 300 km an hour. Not our train for this journey. 

Here's the interior of our train. Clean, well maintained, not graffitied and not covered with advertising. 

Here's the countryside from the train. We are heading to Cártama where Bertrand will pick us up for the drive to his finca (basically a large acreage in the countryside (campo),

A lemon tree on the property.

And a view from the main house. 

With gorgeous flowers in bloom. 

This is the guest cottage on the finca. An intense blue. 

Bertrand with Alek, me with Oscar.

A contemplative spot.

Bertrand and Alek. 

Alek cozied up. She is quite old and glad to rest. 

The buildings below are also on the property. They include another guest house, an African yoga tent and several small guest cottages. 

A man and his dog. 

And an al fresco meal. 

Now on to Benalmadena, which is a 20 minute walk from our apartment along the paseo. 

This is a bottle of Extra Virgin Olive oil from the Malaga area. We stopped in at a trade show with over 50 producers of the oil in Benalmadena. This one comes boxed with a poetry book. And a jar of olive oil caviar - bubbles of olive oil that pop on your tongue. 

Two of the producers displays. 

And no doubt this man is sharing the secrets of olive oil here. 

Another producer. 

The displays offered tastings - a small dish of oil, and pieces of bread for dipping. 

Some of the many products available - samples of most of the producers at the information counter. 

Mmmm, lunch at a beach Chiringuito. Sardines grilled over an open fire. Deliciosa!

And a little philosophy with your morning coffee. 

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous than to be totally boring". Marilyn Monroe. 

And... "Books cure the most dangerous of maladies - ignorance". Radko Tichavsky.

Malaga

We took our second trip to Málaga on Saturday. One of the goals was to visit Angela, the proprietor of the online yarn store there, because I had a need for yarn. This yarn. It's from Finland and 70% Merino wool, 30% silk. And needles since I didn't have the correct size. 

I'm making a shawl with a pattern given to me by Ted Myatt, who lives in Ontario. It will give me a break from this. The never ending table cloth. On my last trip to Málaga I bought the needle that is holding the 1200 or so stitches. Inside is the needle it was on until I bought the much longer needle from Angela. I was using a 60 cm/24 inch circular. Now it's on a 40 inch/ 120 cm needle.  I'm now over 1700 sts, and there's lots left to knit. 

Here is the preliminary work on the shawl - only 325 sts to cast on. The colour in this photo is more accurate than the bluer looking yarn above, although a little too dark. It's a steelier colour than this. 

Our first stop in Málaga was the Contemporary Art Museum, housed in a former public market. Free entrance too. It was a great venue since there was a great deal of wall space and open areas to display the works. I'm afraid I didn't do a good job of identifying artists so can't tell you who did this sculptural work. It was very large and hanging in a large alcove by itself. 

And this one, which contains a multiplicity of selfies.

This piece caught our eyes since it reminded us so much of the pictures we've been seeing on the Internet from family and friends in Newfoundland and the East Coast of North America. 

Love this one. I'm pretty sure it's a take off on a Spanish artist, the one who did Las Meninas, Valasquez. It's a large format photograph. 

I can identify the artist for this one. It's Adrian Grenie who is Romanian. There was quite a collection of his works, many of which played off other artists. Anyone recognize that this was inspired by Van Gogh's Sunflowers? 

After our museum visit we headed to the public market which I promised I would provide pictures of, having not done the job on our first visit. Here's the entrance - very Moorish. 

And the mural at the end from the inside. 

There was a large array of meats for sale at this butcher stall.

The place was packed with shoppers. Much more crowded than Granville Island Market in Vancouver which certainly gets busy. 

But so much for sale - not a handicraft in sight. Stalls selling only cockles. 

Beautifully arrayed vegetables of all kinds. Look at those gorgeous mushrooms at the bottom right. And the strawberries which are grown nearby. 

Olives of every variety. 

Vegetables arrayed in the colours of the Mexican and Italian flags. 

Gorgeous juice oranges - three kilos for 1 Euro! And those fava beans at €1.50 per kilo. 

Every stall seemed to take great pride in displaying their wares in careful arrangement. 

And here, a variety of mushrooms, lovingly laid out instead of tumbled in a heap at Safeway. 

Seafood too of course. Shellfish, sardines, octopus, squid, cockles. 

And more shellfish (Mariscos in Spanish). 

Look at the choice of cheeses. 

It made us hungry of course but we didn't have our lunch time meal right away. We stopped at a cafe where we had a very traditional breakfast of toasted bun on which we spread tomato pulp and drizzled with olive oil and of course a little salt. And a café con leche. 

In the window display were these sweet creations. The hooded figures represent groups who walk in the Easter procession as penitents. White...

And Chocolate. I love the fact that they come complete with candle alight. 

Inside a bar we saw this display of hams waiting their turn to be taken down, thinly shaved, and laid out on a plate to enjoy. Note the little plastic cones suspended from each one to catch the drips of fat as they ooze out. 

This building was in the area - Geordie decided an apartment here would be a perfect pied-á-terre.

Done with our snack and our visit to the market we stopped in at the cathedral to admire the interior. 

Large altars. 

 

So many saints and angels to venerate. 

The choir stall was a marvel of carving. Every chair has a different saint carved above it. At the back are the 12 apostles. It was unfortunate that we could not get closer. 

Here is quite a lovely Piéta or, in Spanish, Piedad. 

And the Angel Rafael. 

We couldn't help but note the rather unattractive Babe in the Manger in this Nativity scene. 

And on the way out we had to pass through the shop where we could have purchased this small carving of Santiago - St. James the Greater, and object of devotion at the end of the Camino de Santiago. Or a rather kitschy Virgin Mary. 

The exit from the cathedral brought us into this small orange grove.

With this rather odd character.

.

We found a narrow street and I sent Geordie down to its end so I could capture a moment in time. 

Finally lunch. We ate at one of the many café bars in the area - this poster was on the wall near our table. Bull fighting has been outlawed in several areas in Spain, but it's still done in the Málaga area. 

One of the dishes we ordered - croquetas de bacalao, codfish croquettes. Along with a few olives. 

And this dish, strips of eggplant dusted with flour, deep fried, served piping hot, drizzled with cane molasses. Sounds odd, tastes great. 

We also ordered huevos rotos (broken eggs). This version had two eggs fried in olive oil, topping French fries tossed with jamon bellota, the best ham in the world, from the black pigs of Extramadura, fed with acorns from the oak groves where they roam. The waiter brought the knife and indicated we had to break them ourselves. 

Finished we stepped outside and walked through this plaza with its sculpted Bird in the Hand. 

And on our way back to the bus stop, this mural on the side of an apartment building. Look closely to see what type of animal it is.

And back to Torremolinos. This was the scene just this morning of the rising sun breaking through cloud. The sun did make it out and gave us a beautiful day. 

I went for a walk in the afternoon to Benalmádena where I saw this Chinese junk coming in to the marina from a jaunt at sea.