My Travel Adventures

I woke up at six o’clock in the morning with a burning desire to test the public transport network in the greater Málaga area. My mum’s house lies around forty minutes by foot from the centre of Sayalonga, and I read that there are four regular departures for Málaga on weekdays. The bus stop was not particularly easy to find. It is marked accurately on Google Maps, but there are no evident markers or noticeboards nearby. I only became sure that I was in the right place when a fellow passenger came to stand beside me. To my great surprise, however, the bus arrived by this roadside stop in a Spanish village on time, and it reached Málaga just a few minutes behind schedule.

On the 26 th we made a short trip to Málaga. I hesitate to call it a day trip, as we only reached the city at noon owing to forgetfulness and general malaise. We made our first stop at the Moorish Castle of Gibralfaro, which served as a good introduction to the history of Málaga. The city was founded around 770 BCE by the Phoenicians, who named it Malaka – a name that either derives from the word for salt or the word for trading post. Although the Phoenicians were the first to build fortifications on the hill overlooking Málaga, the current fortress dates to 929 when the Caliphate of Córdoba was founded. The name Gibralfaro traces its origins to this period: the first part of the name is likely a butchering of “jabal,” the Arabic word for mountain, and the latter part comes from the Greek word for light. The fortress was one of the last Moorish footholds in Spain, only falling to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1487.