Day 4 - Malaga- part 2

Alcazaba was the first castle built in the area in the 700s, but with the advent of canons in the 1300s they decided to extend up  the hill to build Gilbrafaro and the 2 are connected by a series of  walkways and ducts that would allow the royals to escape when attack occurred. However, the walkways are not open to the public in the ruins now and so we have to head down the hill following a lovely pathway... but, it was a lonnng way down... it was verrrry hot.... and Nic's ability to pretend the pain in the ankle wasnt there was beginning to fade, this meant the 10 minute walk... took us closer to 40 minutes, but  we arrived at the entrance which was in a small traditional square. after a short rest in the shade we wandered into the Alcazabar, once again gobsmacked by the beauty and longevity of the designs and buildings, it was huge and built up the side of this very steep hill, through every archway was another area or building of beauty with gardens, water features and beuatiful flowers. I think you could easily spend days in both of them...they are simply amazing.

These are some views from the walk down the hill...

Bullring

Side of Alcazabar

We headed off to the bus stop to go home, the bus stop that... if the city had not been closed off (which was because they were trimming trees on the main street for gods sake!!) would have been where we got off.. 5 minutes from where we wanted to be... not the 35+ we walked from where it dropped us.

Back in the hotel, we tossed up if we were going to go to tonights hotel show... it had been advertised as "International Singer MIGUEL", in my mind i saw a cross between Dean Martin and a Matador. We were tired but we decided we mustn miss this chance to see an international singer of such repute so... battling heat exhaustion and ankle explosion.. we made our way down once again. Previous shows had crowds as high as 20...or 8... so imagine our surprise as we walked into the room to see.... TWO other people... and they were at least 1000 years old... and im pretty sure they had been in the same seats for both of the other shows... actually, im not entirley sure they have moved, they could either be Dummys, just put there to look like a crowd, or they have died there during the Grease show... and no-one has noticed.

We took a seat away from the stage for 3 reasons..
1)  There was a guy onstage with a little casio keyboard playing some background music.
2)   If we needed to make a quiet exit, we could do so without being obvious
3)  There was a football match on the TV screen to the right of stage, so i could watch that if "International Singer MIGUEL" didnt live up to expectations.

We sat listening to the casio belting out a couple of tunes... 2 or 3 other people popped their heads in.. and left just as quickly... it slowwly dawned on us, that, the man on stage with the Casio... was in fact "International singer MIGUEL"... some muffled laughter from my wife distracted me from the FC Braga Vs Porto match  and we discussed how we would leave.... we gave Miguel another chance as he mumbled his way through Blue Moon... then followed it up with a rather uptempo version of Im Still Standing... it was half time in the match... so we quietly edged past the two "dead" people who seemed to be enjoying all that Miguel had to offer.

Much laughter in the lift on the way back to the room.