MacsTravel Blog

It has been an unseasonably mild winter so far in Ontario. With the exception of the bitter cold snap over the weekend of our daughter Taylor’s wedding to Mike, it’s been mostly above zero temperatures with little in the way of snowfall. And it feels like we haven’t seen the sun in months.

We were looking forward to escaping the greyness of January with a trip to sunny Andalucia, with stops scheduled in Sevilla, Granada, Ronda, Cadiz and Malaga, before spending some time in Portugal prior to heading home to Newmarket in March.

And so it was after 11 hours of travel, including one connection in Frankfurt, that we stumbled into the sunshine outside of Malaga’s airport in search of the train downtown. We were staying the night to catch some sleep before taking the bus north to Sevilla.

I had been preparing myself for my encounter with the staff at the ticket booth. My year long Duolingo streak (Yo tengo diecinueve boligrafos! Mi perro come manzanas!) had surely equipped me for this encounter!

I rehearsed in my head: “Quiero dos billetes para la estacion central por favor.” I looked around: no ticket booth. In its place a row of machines, two of which were working. I joined the line and watched with increasing anxiety as people stabbed at buttons and flicked through screen after screen of instructions before tapping their credit cards and receiving their tickets.

When it was my turn, I froze. Dozens of options populated the screen and every time I touched something a warning page would pop up in flaming red text accompanied by an excessive number of exclamation marks. Despairingly I glanced over my shoulder and croaked, “Estacion central!?” to the young woman texting on her phone at the front of the line. Without missing a keystroke on her phone she somehow navigated me through six screens, indicated when I should pay and gestured at the cleverly hidden slot where my tickets emerged. “Merci gracias!” I heard myself say.

My dreams of Spanish fluency dashed, I lead Robin to the wrong train platform where another pair of helpful Malagans redirected us, warning us in pitying tones to take the stairs to the other side rather than crossing directly over the electrified tracks.

Things improved from that low point and we successfully found our way from the train to our hotel and then downtown for a walk about the historic core of Malaga. We planned to return in a few weeks to close out our trip in Spain so we were happy just to have a wander and to find a spot for a drink and some tapas.

Tomorrow would bring a relatively simple bus ride to Sevilla where good friends Darren and Truus would meet us at the station and escort us on the short walk to their apartment where they were kindly hosting us for the next week. We were here now. What could go wrong?