March 26, 2010. One year later.

The last port on the first leg of our cruise was to Malaga, Spain.

Malaga is the 6^th largest city in Spain and is the southernmost large city in Europe.

It’s known for having one of the warmest winters in Europe (averaging 62 degrees) and for being one of the oldest cities in the world.

However, it is probably most well-known for being the birthplace of Picasso and more importantly Antonio Banderas J

When deciding which excursion to take in Malaga, there weren’t too many tours that really caught our attention.  The only one that interested me was the trip to the village of Mijas and the countryside.  Mijas is known for its white-washed buildings and is often compared to Santorini.  Well I’ve always wanted to go to Santorini so we headed to Mijas.

We were a little disappointed in this excursion because not only were the white-washed buildings the only thing to see but every store in town was closed while we were in town.  We did appreciate the panoramic views from some of the mountain tops and were able to get some pretty good pictures though.

When we arrived back on the ship, we sat on the back deck with our friends Pat and Paul from California to take in the last port exit before arriving in Barcelona.  Paul and Pat did this cruise opposite of us so this was actually their last port.  We still had another 9 days to go but they were exiting the ship once we arrived in Barcelona.

Paul retired a few years ago and they have been traveling ever since.  David and I decided we wanted to be just like them when we grow up :)  We had a great time with them and were really sad to see them go.

Cruises are really neat because you meet so many different people.  This one was especially cool because 75% of the people on this leg of the cruise were non-American.  I guess that’s why we gravitated towards Paul and Pat.

(This is a random picture of David deciding he wanted to be "European" and eat french fries with mayonnaise.  Dis.gust.ing.)