Following the Irish wedding in Cork, we couldn’t get a direct flight back to the Spanish airport nearest to our apartment in Los Alcazares, Mar Menor. Instead we had to fly to Malaga, which is on the south coast of Spain and about a five hour drive from our ‘home’. Rather than attempt to mad-dash drive through the night to get back home, we decided to instead spend a few days exploring this area of Andalucia in a more leisurely manner.

I had my preconceptions about what Malaga would be like — an airport city that you only stayed at immediately before or after a flight. We had originally only booked the hotel for a single night, with the intention of driving on it the morning.

I’m happy to tell you that this was a mistake that we soon rectified — and stayed another night. Malaga is a beautiful city: A smart high-street, numerous beaches, cosmopolitan bars and restaurants and plenty of quaint little streets and alleyways to idle through. A deserving mention also goes to our hotel, the Ibis Centro hotel, which is easily the best ‘affordable’ hotel that I’ve experienced and brilliantly situated for the city centre, in terms of location, facilities, cleanliness and price.

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