Malaga

July 24th
Malaga Spain

Today we were back in Spain, but Malaga instead of Barcelona. I had a rehearsal in the morning, but then was free to get off the ship to see the city. I had about 3.5 hours off the ship to walk around, so I did just that. The city was beautiful and has a great garden area that I walked through to get into the downtown area. When you get downtown, there’s a lot of shopping, which isn’t so much my thing. It was nice though just walking through those areas. I saw some great buildings and an old roman amphitheatre which was really cool to see in person. Also, there were a ton of street musicians playing either clarinet, accordion, trumpet or strings, some of whom were in groups. I grabbed lunch at a tapas place, which was good but not without a story… So I ordered a filette de cerdo, which was good, some kind of meat (I forget what cerdo was from high school Spanish). I had ordered water with the meal, and my waitress brought over some bread as well, I was trying to not spend too much. When she brings over the check, my meal was what I had thought, but I got charged an extra .50 euros for the bread I didn’t order and 1.75 euros for the bottled water she brought, bringing my bill to 7.70 euros. Oddly enough, I left the boat with exactly that amount, lucky right? Well, lucky till I had given a street musician .50 euros for playing glasses, you know the sound that you can make circling your finger on the rim of a glass, yeah, he was great (look up armonica, Ben Franklin’s version). So I’m .50 cents short, and they wouldn’t take visa or my American money, so she goes back in to talk with the manager. Thankfully, they said it was ok and let me off the hook, but feeling bad about the unsettled bill and inability to leave a tip, I left a starbucks card on the table with some unknown amount, hopefully my waitress will have a starbucks somewhere she can use it at. I got back to the ship then, played my two shows for the night, saw a standup act that night, and then went to a crew party afterwards. That was fun, there was a dance floor set up in the ice rink, so I danced with an Australian girl and Argentinean girl. But that was my day in Malaga, good times, Lisbon tomorrow!