Malaga

Laurie Lee described Malaga as “an untidy city on the banks of a dried-up river” and our hotel, amusingly enough, is on one bank of that phantom waterway. Instead of water, there’s an expanse of concrete and graffiti, crisscrossed with numerous little bridges. It looks a little like the T-Birds and their ilk should be racing up and down in it but seems to be more the late-afternoon hangout of teenagers, dog-walkers and the occasional game of scratch volleyball. A day of travelling – fairly smoothly after some early stress on the M25 (luckily, whilst we’d left home late enough for some concerns about the state of the motorway, we were actually early enough to have lunch at the Nandos and wander aimlessly around the airport shops) – and after we’d checked in we didn’t have energy to do much more than seek out a plate of mixed tapas at the Bar Central on Plaza de la Constitucion.