Spain Spring 2019 Guaranteed fresh orange juice. Seeing a lot of these machines show up this year. This cool Chinese gal has a clothing store where we bought some warmer layers for these winter months in Spain. She loved to talk about climate change, population control and all sorts of cool topics. So I’m sitting on a bench by the rock outcropping along the coast south of Torremolinos and a feral cat surprises me by jumping up on my lap and acting like we’re old buddies. OK. How many pigeons do you count? It might be partly my imagination, but I think I see about 15. That faint rainbow ends right at our apartment. It’s usually hard to get close to these green parrots. Selling jewelry along the beach. Back in the northern hemisphere. Snow? What’s that? Rain? I’ve heard of it. A rare fog rolls in suddenly. There are some really good sand sculpture artists here. A bunch of their work follows. From high above the golf course we can watch golfers on every one of the 18 holes! In Marbella, they can build along the coast but they can’t mess with any of the existing trees. The promenade in Marbella. There are other sections that are paved. The mountain behind Marbella. A small fraction of the boats harbored at the Benalmadena Marina. This is about a 30 minute jog south of where we live. Here we walked way out to the very end of the Benalmadina marina sea wall and looked back More boats One of the fancier sand sculptures about an hours walk south along the coast. Now here is something I never saw in Mississippi. Recreational marijuana is legal in these clubs scattered all over Spain. Some new grass beach shelters that just went up. There was an event right below our window. A couple 50’s bands (one of them from California) played for thousands while old cars did a 1/8 mile drag strip race down our street. One of the couple dozen vintage race cars competing in the 1/8 mile race. We splurged and got new hats for those sunny afternoon walks. There is a rock outcropping about a 10 minute walk south of us. It is home to something like 50 cats. It seems they are all very well cared for. (and quite content) Sorry this is a bit out of focus, but this is the restaurant owner that made us a vegetarian (it was actually vegan) pailla. A pailla is usually made with seafood and it is a proud Spanish concoction. Lots of rice and saffron. We moved! See the room directly below the AJ of the sign? That’s where we live. 9th floor. Million dollar view of the coast and ocean. OK. So as we walked by this restaurant in Benalmadena, Charlotte spotted someone tackling one of these gigantic lemon meringue pies. She had to have one. Taken on the day Bernie announced he was running for president in 2020. That huge painting on the building behind me is a replica of a famous Salvador Dali work. We had this art hanging in our living room growing up. We wandered a couple miles beyond our comfort zone and came upon the botanical gardens. The trees grow bigger up here a bit away from the coast. Met some good looking, fine and curious birds at the botanical gardens. I love sitting by the ocean waves and let them wake up my 328 million year old DNA, but some of these spots in the botanical garden are equally refreshing. It is illegal to harm any owls in the whole Andalusia area of Spain. These seasoned meditators have not moved in hours. Hey, grand master evolutionizer: “What is the deal with these toucan snouts?! They just don’t make tubs like they use to. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down… Wait. You’re not Rapunzel. The only large forest we’ve come across in Torremolinos. Pretty clean, huh. Somebody was tossing this out. Can you imagine the hundreds of hours of watching candles burn? Our night view. No wonder they can’t find this guy in the Himalayas – he has moved to the Mediterranean. Loves the nicer climate. We get some pretty nice sunrises here. Here we are taking a short bus trip north of Malaga to a cave at Nerja. Along the way we go through miles and miles of avocado trees. I love living near avocado trees. North of Malaga, this is one of what are called the White Villages. All of it up a steep hill. In Nerja, we found a little alley that lead down to a partly concealed beach. Near Nerja, there is a traditional aqueduct bringing water to the town. A very small part of the caves at Nerja. There are caverns so large in here that they hold concerts in them. All over the city of Torremolinos, there are streets lined with orange trees. Free for anyone to pick. Nobody can go hungry here. That’s not us. That’s a mirror on the other side of the tracks at the train station in Malaga. An unusual artist that does extremely complex rock balancing. A very strange land we’ve come upon. That previous picture was just a close up of these very unusual tree trunks. This girl carries quite a message. An American vehicle makes its appearance for a car show down the road. Malaga park. Nice to have huge bronze statues of musicians instead of military men. The huge ferry that leaves and comes back to Malaga every day. We could have taken this to Tangier, but instead of docking right in Tangier, it docks about 50 miles away at a huge new facility they have put in service. I had never imagined seeing this. We took a small boat trip out into the Mediterranean Sea. Thought we might see some dolphins, but no luck. Hopefully, you only see this on St. Patrick’s Day. A strong wind. A loud cracking sound. A building vibrating thud. Right below our balcony, I see the reason the next day. In Malaga we toured a traveling Van Gogh multimedia exhibit. Getting away from it all. Whipped up a special huevos breakfast in our tiny kitchen. When it almost never rains, you almost never get to see rainbows. But this double rainbow was up close and personal. Sylvia from Ottowa stopped at then end of one of our jogging outings and we had a nice chat about traveling.