Winter break in Malaga

**Sorry these posts are getting published so late! I know I say it all the time but there is very limited free time while studying abroad.  If I am not in class or doing school work, I am jet setting for the weekend, so that leaves little time for much else.  I also wanted to make the most out of my abroad time so if I did have free time it was spent exploring Madrid! I hope you understand! But I am back for the summer and excited to publish all my abroad content and start on some other fun stuff! Thanks for following along. Without further ado, the first of the rest of my study abroad posts!

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After a hectic midterms week in February, two of my roommates and I headed down to Southern Spain for our “winter break”.  The sound of warmer weather and coastal towns had us hooked.  We literally booked the trip the night before we left (a bad habit we never seemed to  break!).  We were a little skeptical about the trip from the get go just because there was a big flood that had happened the week before, but we were reassured by many that things would be fine.  We took an overnight bus (let me tell you…not the most comfortable place to sleep, but hey, its cheap #collegebudget) from Madrid and arrived in Malaga early Thursday morning.

We taxied to our hostel feeling like zombies from lack of sleep but ready to freshen up and take on the day.  This was my first hostel experience and it could not have gone any better!  The place was so clean and nice and the beds were super comfortable and even had curtains you could shut to give your bunk a little more privacy/cut out the light.  It was so cool to meet people from all over the world and chat with them.  We have some wild stories about one of our hostel-mates that to this day my friends and I joke about.  Overall I have nothing but positive things to say about our hostel experience.

We were in Malaga for 4 full days and did two day trips (blog posts on those trips to come!) One of the days my friends and I did a free walking tour in Malaga.  We try to do one of these in almost every city we visit because they are so informative and you get to see so much without having to plan everything out yourself.  While the tour is free you are supposed to tip the guide at the end based on the experience you had on his or her tour. (If you google free walking tours you can pretty much find them in every city!) We got to see so much on the walking tour, although the weather wasn’t the greatest.

The other full day we had in Malaga was beautiful, sunny and 70 degrees.  A complete 180 from the first cold, rainy day we spent there.  My friends and I put on our bathing suits and headed for the beach where we proceeded to spend half the day laying in the sun, reading books and dosing.  We even ran to the supermarket down the street and bought some food for a picnic (our new favorite thing to do!)  After several hours of this we headed back to the hostel where we changed into workout clothes so we could climb the very steep path up to the castle of Gibralfaro.  It was quite the hike and our legs were burning by the time we reached the top but the views were gorgeous!

After we finished that excursion, we headed back to the hostel and got ready for dinner in record time so that we could head down to the beach to snap a few photos as the sun set (outfit post here) We then headed to this amazing tapas restaurant and then finished the night with gelato and people watching in the plaza.  Carnival was occurring the weekend we were visiting so everyone was dressed in fun costumes.  Carnival is sort of like Europe’s halloween.

On sunday we caught a overnight bus back to Madrid.  It is safe to say I will be trying to avoid buses for as long as I can! I managed to sleep for maybe 4 hours and then snuck in an extra hour when I got home before I had to get up and head to school (ahhh the life of an abroad student)

Also here is the link to my go pro video I made for this trip!

I had the best long weekend with two of my roommates.  We saw and did so much and it was so cool to see another part of Spain for a change.  We always think to jet off to other countries but Spain has so much beauty to offer and we have to take advantage of it!  As always if anyone has any questions about places to stay or eat etc. feel free to shoot me an email! Thanks for reading!

xo,
H