The End of the Atlantic Crossing and a Previously Overlooked Sight - Malaga

Early morning arrival to Malaga

Perhaps the 6500 passenger Oasis of the Seas will come to Malaga if they build a big enough cruise ship terminal

Silver Spirit at end of mile long cruise pier in Malaga

View of animal sacrifice site in Malaga, Spain

11th Century Alcazaba is a major reason to explore Malaga

Alcazaba gardens were a surprise treat

Failing Spanish economy cause of some women not being able to pay for entire bathing suits on lovely Malaga beach

Glimpse of 400 passenger Silver Whisper (right) passing by 550 passenger Silver Spirit in rare "meet" in Malaga 

Japanese "tapas" lunch on Silver Spirit

Silver Spirit Hotel Director, Paulo, defending his honor as Silver Whisper Hotel Director, Normal, photographs his own shoes

Our butler, Neal, delivering half our belongings to Silver Whisper in Malaga for use in a few days

Friday - 2 May 2014 - Malaga, Spain

We finally reached the European mainland before dawn on the 14th day of the cruise. This was my fifth visit to Malaga. Barbara and I were there in March, 2012 towards the end of our Silver Wind cruise up the coast of Africa. As this had been her first visit to Malaga, Barbara opted for an all day excursion to the Alhambra in Granada and never really saw this overlooked gateway to the Costa del Sol.

Since our last visit, another huge terminal had been built at the end of the new mile long cruise ship pier I spoke of in my earlier blog. The squeaky clean terminal appeared to be geared to multi-thousand passenger mass market ships and therefore was noticeably underutilized for our 350 or so passengers on our 550 passenger capacity ship. The port authorities didn't even turn on the traditional free wifi, much upsetting the ship's crew members who really didn't have time during their breaks to visit the free wifi at the McDonald's downtown.

As soon as the ship was cleared by the local authorities, Barbara and I took the ship's shuttle bus to the McDonald's. I posted my Facebook "I'm here and you're not" status report, and we headed into town for me to show her the sights. After a visit to the Cathedral area and Roman theater ruins (sights documented in my earlier blogs), we looked at the city's bullring, a sort of round football stadium I believe. We then paid the senior price of 60 euro cents each to explore The Alcazaba, the previously overlooked 11th Century Moorish fort. I guess I hadn't felt obliged to pay the slightly more than $1 fee in the past, but I must say I had missed a lot. Alcazaba is a big reason to visit Malaga (besides the free internet in front of the McDonald's of course).

The fort is really a number of interconnected buildings rising from sea level to a few hundred feet up the hill overlooking the city and harbor. Each building has reflecting pools, fountains, and lovely gardens which are meticulously maintained despite the failing economy of Spain. Actually this made sense as we realized later during this trip that in the places we visited in Spain and Portugal on this trip, the only workers we saw were employed by the government. They weren't working very hard, but they did have jobs. At Alcazaba, they seemed all to be gardeners.

After spending most of the morning exploring the less than half of the Alcazaba open to the public, we took the one and a half mile walk back to the ship to the blaring of quite familiar ship's horns (universally called, "whistles", by mariners). This was due to Silver Whisper entering the port area on its unpublished charter itinerary. It is most unusual for two of Silversea's ships to be in port together, and the somewhat unbecoming 10 minute long tooting between ships is apparently traditional. We rushed back to get a picture of the smaller sister to Silver Spirit as it sailed past our ship, then got back to the ship to enjoy a traditional Spanish lunch of tempora in Silver Spirit's Oriental Seishin Restaurant. Well, it was in small plates. Ain't that tapas?

Since we would be joining Silver Whisper later in the week in Lisbon, we hastily packed some of our belongings for transfer to Silver Whisper so that we would not have to fly these "cruise clothes" to Lisbon. With help from our trusty butler, Neal, two of our bags were loaded onto Silver Whisper. This seemed like an easy maneuver when I asked permission to do this, but it took the good offices of Paulo and Norman, the Hotel Directors of Spirit and Whisper, respectively, to make this happen. Something about, "ship's stores in transit", or "binnacle the hatches" regarding Spanish Customs.  In the attached picture Paulo is shown explaining to a ship's passenger why he overreacted about something and Norman was for some reason taking a picture of his shoes as they supervised the moving of our suitcases. Of course, after the screw up with loading of my bag in Fort Lauderdale, I was most appreciative of what had seemed like a simple stowing of a few bags on Silver Whisper for later use.

We sailed out into the Mediterranean just before dinner en route to Cartegena as the realization came to us that the convenience of not having to check luggage on the upcoming flight from Barcelona to Lisbon actually meant leaving half of our belongings on a ship that was slowly receding from view in the Port of Malaga.