Bling

We took the opportunity of a local social club running a coach trip to go to Málaga today. The coach first dropped us outside the old tobacco factory which houses a) a car museum consisting mostly of the private collection of a Portuguese millionaire and b) a museum of Russian art. Plan A was to visit the latter. But because of the traffic we got there late, and there was only an hour and a half for the visit, not enough time really. And S wanted to see the car museum, so that's what we did.

It was very much about cars as artworks or indeed objects for fetishism. Someone had obviously told the organisers that wives would get bored, so they were paired with random fashion items such as dresses and hats to keep the ladies interested. There were artworks made of car parts such as headlamps and wheels, and even a selection of pimped up engines. I think it would have been more interesting with information about the development of cars and the design constraints they had to work with over the century, but hey, I'm a woman, what do I know? :)

Anyway, it was a very shiny collection, the worst example of bling being a Rolls Royce studded with Swarowski crystals. The millionaire seemed to have a penchant for massive American cars, some of which qualified for my #UglyCars hashtag. There were very few French ones: a lovely buttercup-yellow Citroen, a green Peugeot, an elderly Renault. I was charmed by some of the cars though: the Czech Tatra that Ferdinand Porsche used as inspiration for the Beetle for example. I took dozens of photos,  but there are only so many ways of photographing cars, especially if you don't have a fetish for them. The whole blingy album is here. 

The bus then dropped us off in town for the rest of the day, and S and I headed unerringly for the Meson Mariano, a very traditional tapas bar in the old part of town. It was already packed although it wasn't even 2 o'clock; they squeezed us onto stools at a corner of the bar from which we got a front row view of the bustle of waiters from kitchen to bar, and we had an excellent lunch: the specialities here are artichokes and kid, so we duly had kid pâté, artichokes a la plancha, and then a couple of lamb skewers and our old favourite fried aubergine slices with cane syrup. Delicious and just the right amount of food.

Afterwards we wandered about doing random bits of Christmas shopping. This included finding a rather strange shop that sells a random assortment of British chocolates and snacks, plus a massive range of alcohol -- they had literally fifty different kinds of gin, but sadly no vintage port (guess it's not fashionable enough). We impulse-bought a big box of Thornton's Continental chocolates.

After shopping, and coffee drinking whenever our feet got tired, we had a rendezvous with the rest of the group at the top of Calle Larios to see the Chirtmas lights being switched on.  It was heaving, and we didn't find anyone we recognised. The town hall obviously spends 95% of its lighting budget on Calle Larios, so we got a ten-minute show of loud rock music while the arcade of lights running down the length of the street were switched on and off in time with it (see extra). Other streets just have a few token decorations.

Finally we fought our way back down the street to the coach and were back home around 9 pm, thoroughly exhausted and not in any fit state to go to the intercambio.