"Balls of Steel" Gazpacho

Well, we got back to Málaga without incident yesterday. Car travel is really pretty awesome, if you don't mind the expense -- which I do, at least enough not to do it regularly. But it's hard to beat in terms of convenience.

Before we left Granada, I took a walk up into the hilly neighborhood just below the Alhambra to photograph the street art there. Dave and I saw some amazing murals when we rode up by taxi the day before, and walking gave me a chance to stretch my legs and get some fresh air before getting in the car for the hour-and-a-half drive to Málaga. I stopped in a park and saw this guy:

That's a lot of dog! He was brushing their coats and as he'd work on one, the other two watched me intently, as if I were a gigantic dog treat.

The car ride was smooth and back in Málaga we checked in to the same hotel where we'd stayed earlier in the week, coincidentally on Calle Granada. Then we headed out to the Plaza Carbón for lunch.

The adjacent Plaza del Siglo

We found a table in the shade and I ordered an excellent sangria and some salmorejo, a cold blended tomato soup similar to gazpacho. It was all excellent until I got to the bottom of the salmorejo bowl and found these:

They looked like tiny ball bearings, the size of BBs. I've been warned in the past while eating birds like grouse or pheasant that they could contain birdshot, but there was no poultry in my gazpacho! We could only theorize that an immersion blender used to mix the soup had somehow self-destructed and thrown off these ball bearings. The servers were very apologetic and gave me the soup for free. Fortunately it was smooth enough that no chewing was required, and they were very easy to detect so I'm reasonably sure I didn't swallow any. (Will I set off the airport metal detectors?)

After lunch Dave went back to the room for a nap (you can see this is our pattern) and I wandered around Málaga. I wanted to get out of the tourist zone, so I headed west and north, winding my way through the streets roughly between the hotel, the river and the Plaza de Capuchinos. I walked past graffiti saying (in Spanish) things like, "there is no Covid-19," "the virus is the television," and "chemtrails: they are spraying us." So there are crazy people in every country.

I passed this fun mural by Sara Fratini on the Calle Padre Mondejar. I couldn't get the whole thing in a photo so I had to make a video, made more awkward by several streetlamps on the sidewalk that I had to step around!

Finally, last night Dave and I decided to head down to the beach. Málaga is known as a beach resort but I'd only barely seen the Mediterranean, and Dave hadn't seen it at all. So we walked to the Playa de la Malagueta, where we found a restaurant that seated us just at sunset. We had some good seafood tapas, followed (for me) by some fish stew and a strawberry dessert made with Inés Rosales cake ice cream. I knew about Inés Rosales cakes from Mitchell's blog, so I was glad to try it, albeit in ice cream form.

As we ate dinner, a group of about 20 teenagers on some kind of school trip -- we think they were American -- gathered on the walkway just outside the restaurant windows and ate pizza, which proved distracting. And then some little kids eating with a family in the restaurant ran out onto the beach to play on the Malagueta sign (above). It's hard to tell, but there are six of them in that picture. I don't think I would be an overprotective parent, but I'm not sure I'd have felt comfortable having my under-10 kids running around on a dark beach with no parent nearby! (The adults stayed seated indoors.)

Soon, we'll be off to the airport. Thank you, by the way, for slogging through my overly long Spain posts. I know I've been cramming a lot in here each day and I appreciate your indulgence. They will help me remember this trip in the future. Coming to you tomorrow from London!