Malaga was the beginning of a multi-week long experience in southern Spain. I would travel through the mountains of Andalucia and see the highlights of region. My friend A, from New York, was studying Spanish in Malaga. We decided to meet up there and explore the area around Malaga together. It was really lovely to meet up with Alan at this point in the trip because since meeting Maria in Barcelona, I had unfortunately not made any new friends or acquaintances in Valencia or Cuenca. I was starting to get worried that there was something wrong with the way I spoke Spanish or if I was just consistently encountering locals who were not really interested in getting to know me. Besides Taiwan, this was the first country on my trip where I had not had much small talk.

I met A at the train station in Malaga and he showed me around the centro historico. There is a small canal that separates the train station neighborhood from the touristic area and if you don’t know your way around, you’ll end up seeing a more brutalist architectural side of Malaga. Malaga is known as a seaside resort town. The cheapest hotel rooms are 170 EUR per night. There is definitely a side of Malaga they do not expect tourists to see.

We walked through the vibrant streets and made note of the large amount of people and great energy! The weather was hot and sunny and people were feeling good. We stopped at a local cafe to order smoothies and we had a weird incident. The restaurant was a typical bar/cafe. We saw there were tables to sit and there were no waiters and no host that we could see. There was both a bakery/deli counter with sandwiches and a line of people queued up to order. There was also a bar with bar stools. While we originally queued up at the sandwich counter, when we ordered smoothies, the worker told us we need to order that at the bar. We proceed to the bar, ordered and that’s where things started going downhill. I found a table to sit at while A waited for the smoothies to be ready. He was going to bring them over. First, they made the wrong smoothie for him, which he realized when he brought the two back to our table. He re-ordered and got a new one and returned. Mind you, this entire time we had not been visited by a waiter.

Suddenly, a waiter appears. He’s not happy. He says to us in English that this is not Burger King and you cannot order at a counter and take your food to a table. If you want to sit at a table, you have to order from a waiter. This did not seem like the right way to speak to guests at a restaurant. Clearly we had made a mistake but I was not about to be made to feel bad. I’ve been to Europe before and I’ve been to Spain. This particular restaurant had multiple places where you could order food and no visible wait staff. In the time it took us to order two rounds of smoothies, we still had not realized our mistake on our own. I decided to engage the waiter. I started with an apology. Then I told him there was no host and at most seated restaurants, there is a host, and that is why we were confused. Besides, we wanted to order sandwiches anyway. We were going to go up to the sandwich counter after the smoothie to get them but now we don’t have to! A was smiling and very okay with all of this. I was less so. I had already spent more than a week in Spain. A thought he was joking. I told him I didn’t think so because the waiter was not smiling or laughing. Regardless, everything worked out in the waiter’s favor: we ordered food from him and tipped him accordingly. I just wish he had approached us assuming good intentions from the start. A handles things like this differently and probably better than I do.

Our first AirBnb was in the seaside town of Rincon de la Victoria. A had Spanish classes in Malaga so I wanted to pick a town with bus access for him. I found a beautiful cottage hosted by a hybrid Spanish-Scottish couple who had a fascination with Sephardic Jews. When we arrived, we were greeted very warmly. Our hosts wanted to hear about us and gave us a cold glass of water. They seemed genuinely interested in us. Early in the conversation, religion came up and they said they knew we were Jewish. Of course, I got incredibly nervous. It was that nervous feeling before the anxiety boom because you are nervous about the amount of anxiety you are about to have. The hostess said she knew because when I greeted them at the door, I said “Shalom”. A and I looked at each other with that “what the hell are they talking about”-face. We had to pretend like it was true. Maybe I was having a wacky moment and I did that thing where I say hi in all of the languages I speak? I don’t think this was one of those times though but who knows.

(Maybe this is a good opportunity to briefly discuss a common misconception about Jewish ethnic groups. The Jews of Spain have their own name: the Sephardics. However, oftentimes Jewish people from the Middle East are mistakenly called Sephardic merely because they are not Ashkenazi European. This group of people are called Mizrachis (like the fashion design Isaac Mizrachi). It is literally the Hebrew word for “eastern person”.)

We had a lovely time in this town and had a fried seafood dinners. We could not seem to escape fried seafood. The real icing on the cake for us was our weekend in Alora. Similarly to Rincon de la Victoria, I wanted to pick a place with easy public transit so that after the weekend, A could get back to Malaga with ease. He wanted to spend time with me and I felt the same. At the same time, I had been traveling 9 months at that point. A’s entire trip would be one month. I wanted to be sensitive to him being able to make the most of his time in Malaga. Through the love of Google and relentless Airbnb searches, I found the perfect match: a spare room with a swimming pool in mountain town accessible from the suburban train line directly from Malaga. The town is called Alora. The description sounded almost too good to be true: accessible hiking in walking distance (no need for a car), giant swimming pool, mountain views, and its all within walking distance to the center.

I’ll be quite personal here: I was incredibly nervous about this plan. I had to look on the Malaga public transit system web site for maps to verify that this town really did have a train stop way up in the mountains. I could not believe that this house on top of a hill had an accessible path to a grocery store. It was all for naught. The description was accurate. The only problem with the house was that the shower head was broken and the hostess recommended that we use the outdoor shower, with a direct view of the valley below. It was probably one of the best Plan B’s I’ve experienced in my travels.

A and I spent a few days hiking back and forth on the private path from the house to the town, going out for dinner, taking in the views and talking about everything. We learned a lot about Spanish culture in a mountain town. For one thing: it’s not considered odd for the one good restaurant in town to open up at 9pm. Regarding groceries: even way up in the mountains, if you just keep walking past all of the small dusty old mini-groceries, you’ll eventually get to a big supermarket and it will fill all of your wishes and desires. We were so excited to find the supermarket. It was such a relief. We bought food to make breakfast and lunch sandwiches for our big desert hike the next day.

They don’t do iced coffee in Spain. Locals appreciate a hot espresso even in desert temperatures. A was able to enjoy a hot morning coffee as well but I could only watch him do it. Hot foods in hot weather conditions make me feel ill. Luckily in the supermarket, they had branded cold coffee in little cups and I think I bought five of them. A and I did a little dance where there were a few moments where I was looking for cold coffee (in excitement when we would pass a gas station) and he was looking for hot coffee (on Sunday during the big hike when most stores were closed).

On our walk back from the supermarket, I noticed that Alora also had a piscina municipal but it was boarded shut and the pool was empty of water. I wondered if this was the result of the decline of small Spanish towns and the lack of tax income. It was September, perhaps after the official summer season, but it was a desert town in the south of Spain and I was surprised to see the pool closed. I felt badly for the children of the town for there was no place for them to cool off.

We planned the big hike for Sunday knowing that everything in town would be closed. I was imagining the big jump in the pool upon our return from the very beginning. Our hike took us to the other side of town which is more historical and up the steep path into the mountains. Eventually we were on a hiking trail that took us through a few valleys with sweeping views of the town below. We reached a peak where we sat on a pile of rocks, overlooked the landscape, found our house and ate lunch. We were both sweating profusely. We were well-prepared. It was a rewarding experience. On our way back down, we’d pass by the alcazar, Alora’s biggest tourist attraction. It was closed but we did not care much as its thick wall provided us with some much-needed shade.

A and I took the train back to Malaga together. The plan worked. My nine months of travel had given me enough confidence and experience to plan elaborate journeys outside of big cities. It takes many hours to plan things like this but I have found it to be very rewarding. This was the first time on my trip that I planned something like this with a special friend in mind. It’s such a relief that it worked and also looking back on it, it was so worth the time and effort.