Spain's Andalusian Costa del Sol

0:15Hi, I'm Ryan Davis. And I'm Kiernan Schmidt. And this is Out of Office, a travel podcast.

0:23Kiernan:This is taken. Hey, Kiernan. Hello, Ryan. How are you today? you know it's it's uh it's been raining a lot like like every day it always rains every day but it's been raining like every day for like a long time and it's uh you know i assume you're in columbia is that i mean yeah i'm in is there like a rainy season is that happening right now we're in it yeah yeah but is that a known thing or are you just calling it that to be cute No, it's definitely, this is more the rainy season than other months. So, you know. And how are you, are you a raincoat man? Are you a boots or umbrella? No, I'm a run to the Uber kind of guy.

1:09Kiernan:See, I had a feeling that was true. Do you not carry an umbrella? No, I don't carry an umbrella. And people... That's insane. That's an insane policy. I'm anti-umbrella. I think they're dangerous. And, you know, people get hit in the face with them. And, you know, when you walk into a store, you got to figure out what to do with it. It's like there's nothing worse. What people are getting hit in the face with them? There, you know, you whip them around in the city. I thought in New York they should have been outlawed. Like that should have been Zoran's campaign, like outlaw the umbrella. Yeah, Zoran really needed your advice to figure out how to get elected.

1:50Kiernan:I love umbrellas. My go-to brand used to be something called the Gust Buster. The Gust Buster had a special patented teardrop vent technology that made sure they never flipped inside out. And the company would shoot videos of them in wind tunnels. But I eventually walked away from Gus Busters because they're a little bit of a premium price. And I just found I was not great at not forgetting them in restaurants. Yeah. I mean, you know, you can always get a good umbrella at a restaurant though. That's, you know, they have a ball in the front. Those aren't just for you to take, Ryan. No, I love rain gear.

2:37Kiernan:I'm a real, because when I was in the boy scouts that used to pour every time I went on to a camp, a camping trip, the, the troop used to have a joke. They called it the KPS curse because my scout master, Kevin Patrick Sheehy, and me, Kiernan Patrick Schmidt, anytime we were on a trip together, it would pour. And so I got very skilled at rain suits, which is not just a rain jacket, but also rain pants. Oh, I love rain pants. And then a poncho. And because you don't do you don't do umbrellas and camping. That's I do. We do draw the line there. Yeah. You don't walk around a forest holding an umbrella.

3:16Kiernan:No, that that would poke you in the face. Yeah. Yeah. So we shouldn't talk about poking in the face because we're not talking about your weekend plans. Now, Ryan, this is going to be a special Ryan episode. So what are we talking about today? So back in December, I took a little trip in December, January. And one of the places that we went was the Andalusian coast, which is called the Costa del Sol and in Spain. And yeah, we're going to talk about talking about that translate to Ryan. I think it's the coast of the sun. Very. OK, that was a test and you have passed it. Now, can you remind me? Can you remind me?

4:00Kiernan:What's the Immaculate Conception celebrate? Right. The Immaculate Conception. It's not the one that everybody thinks. Which is what's the one everybody thinks? Everybody thinks it's like celebrating like her getting conceived to have this child. OK. Yeah. We meaning her meaning Mary. Mary. Yeah. Have you forgotten her name? No. The Virgin Mary. Yeah, sure. And you're right. It is not that. So I feel like I'm making some headway here because, you know, that's the wrong answer. So what is the right answer? When she was immaculately born, conceived, when she was conceived. Yes, yes, yes. That is right, which is when St.

4:43Kiernan:Anne became pregnant with Mary because she was immaculate, not in that there wasn't sex involved, because from what I heard about St. Anne, well, anyway, but it's because she was sinless. She was immaculately conceived. I kind of feel like that might have happened to me too, you know We're going to skip the Judy alert today So we can't call up Judy and ask But Ryan, I do have one just quick I'm very excited to get to the coast of Spain I've been to Spain, but I have not done this trip in Spain So I'm very excited to hear about it But I also wanted to let you know, you know This is publishing on Tuesday We just had a major Massachusetts holiday called Patriots Day yesterday Are you familiar with Patriots Day?

5:28Kiernan:Is it something to do with the revolution? It's exactly like now that we're in the 250th anniversary year of the Revolutionary War breaking out. This is a very special Patriots Day. And I was thrilled that I got invited back on that NPR show to talk about special Revolutionary War-related sites around Boston that are off the beaten track, off of my book, Secret Boston, An Unusual Guide. ah so what was one of the what was one of the most sort of patriot day uh secrets there's a great one it's it's in somerville which i would describe it's sort of like a borough of boston if boston had boroughs somerville somerville which is where i live there's a place called powder house square and powder house square has this uh sick this uh this windmill, this former windmill that still stands on this little hill.

6:26Kiernan:And it was built in, I believe it was 1707, if my memory serves me correctly. And it served as a windmill. It has a story about a woman who was being chased by a man, a bit of a creep, and she took refuge in the mill. And the man came in and he got caught in the gears of the mill and ground to death. And she was saved. That doesn't have to do with the revolution. I just like that part of the story. So then the family who built the windmill sells it to the state. The state says, you know, these two-foot thick walls would be really good, not just for milling grain, but for storing gunpowder because it would keep it dry, it's weatherproof, and a fire is not going to break out because they're these big stone walls.

7:13Kiernan:So they take the millwork off, they fill it with powder. And then as things were, revolutionary spirits were starting to rise, the royal governor of the colony of Massachusetts was getting very nervous because he noticed a bunch of locals kept taking bits of powder out of this powder house. They had access to it through local authorities. Like Sam Adams? Not Sam Adams particularly. He was more the Boston side of things. But so the royal governor decides, I'm going to quietly take away the keys to this powder house. And he had this whole plan that, you know, I'm going to be patient. I'm not going to draw attention to it.

7:55Kiernan:And then finally lost patience, gave up, got 260 British soldiers to come with him. And he forcibly took over the powder house. Now, this was before this was seven months before Lexington and Concord. OK, the shot heard around the world. And so in reaction to him taking over this powder house, there was the very first mass demonstrations against the crown. And they were right here in Somerville, Massachusetts. And you can still go to that powder house. It's in a beautiful park. That is a that's a cool story. I feel like there's so many mill related stories. stories uh i mean i could write just a whole secret mill book which seems like this one this one the my the book as it is already has too many i have a lot of things about special historic stairways so maybe the next one could be all mills yeah yeah my favorite stairway is outside outside of bc you can visit the uh stairway where the exorcist was filmed oh cool oh that's a good one.

8:56Kiernan:That's a really good one. Don't get me started. I mean, famous stairways of Boston. I mean, this could be the least performing episode. Even worse than how to get cheap Broadway tickets, which famously, for some reason, out of office people don't like. Well, you know, I think we should jump into the coast here, but before I do, folks, give us five stars, write a nice review if you enjoy. That would be swell, wouldn't it? We keep getting attacked, Ryan. We just got a review. I think it was still, I believe, well, it was not a great review because they said they enjoyed the travel content, but that we talk politics too much.

9:38Kiernan:We're a big tent podcast. We're not, you know, you don't have to be liberal or conservative to find a home here. yeah uh well we we welcome uh all all kinds of folks and we do have a lovely um uh shout out on the on the uh and we do have a lovely shout out recently a five-star review they love the pod and they love the reference uh to all the reference to catholicism um but they don't they don't go to south america so my trips don't interest them very much but today i i just want Well, you know, today we're not doing South America, Europe, but the waiting pool to the world as the godfather of the show, Rick Steves calls it.

10:20Kiernan:And I just want to say you got to help us because Ryan and I, we have listened. We have listened. We rarely bring politics up in the podcast. We are Romney Democrats. You need to drown out these people who are giving us low ratings because they like 90 % of the show and they don't love our chat, which is like another 9%. And then there's just one measly little percent where we, you know, we might voice that we have slight opinions on politics. But we didn't do that on this episode. So even if we do say that we don't agree with the current administration, we can both admit that Joe Biden is old.

10:58Kiernan:He's very old. Did you see him call out that guy we thought looked like Obama? Okay. I just, okay. Yes, I saw this clip. I thought it was very disingenuous, the journalism on this. It made it seem like he was confused in calling this man to look, calling him Barack Obama. He was making a joke. He was saying, you look like Barack Obama. He knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing. Absolutely. All right. Well, I think with all that, it's time to take off. Tell the cabin crew I need some sunscreen. Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff, please. All right. Well, we are here in Spain. Like I said, we were here in December.

11:41So just keep that in mind as sort of I tell the story here.

11:46Kiernan:Now, Ryan, you're going to be pronouncing it in the traditional Spanish way of Andalusia, correct? Yeah, Andalusia. Andalusia. Yeah, this is an autonomous community. You mean it's autonomous? In Spain. See, we can be politically incorrect like Trump. Absolutely. We're Big Ten. So what makes this area really interesting, Kieran, is it's been under control of like a lot of different cultures. So there were the Romans and there were the Moors and then there were the Spanish. um so there's a lot of you know interesting uh architecture and uh archaeological sites sort of scattered about um from these you know the fact that this has been a how this area has been around for a very long time um we went to costa del sol which is the mediterranean coast and this got really popular sort of right after um world war ii and the spanish civil war in like the 50s uh became like a real hot spot for celebrities uh you know grace kelly marlon brando frank sinatra uh you know all kind of hanging out around uh some of the cities we're going to be talking about today uh and now there's a whole lot of of uh tourists it's a it's a heavily touristed beach area.

13:14A lot of British, German, Scandinavians and me, American. So the peak summer in Costa del Sol is, you know, June, June through August. We were there during the winter months. So we were there in December. So, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of beach clubs, there's a lot of resort properties, you know, we were more kind of doing the city exploration, um you know and not the beach because it was cold although we walked along the the beach quite a bit how cold are we talking about like 35 45 degrees pretty cold chilly yeah it was christmas you know um so i want to talk about malaga and marbella uh these are two cities that are very close to each other uh you can take the train to either of these cities from barcelona um the annoying thing is there's no train between them so we actually had to get a car um and how far of a ride is that it's about two hours it's not so bad gosh that's like a really long time to have to hire a car for yeah like an yeah like an hour and a half two hours but you go down the coast it's really it's a really pretty drive um malaga is a bigger city it's got the uh the airport and it's one of the oldest cities like in the, in the world.

14:33It's been Roman. It's been Moorish. It's been Christian. So there's a lot of deaf different sort of like a lot of different sort of layers to the city. And it had one of the most striking sites that I saw in my entire, in my entire trip this, this last time. And that's right in the center of Malaga. There is this Roman theater and then above it are is a Moorish palace and above that is a Moorish castle. So you're basically looking at multiple like generations of history in this one street that you're kind of that it's an incredible site. Have you have you do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah.

15:21Oh, yeah, absolutely. yeah so that's a very uh cool place so the center is where you're going to spend you know most of your time when you're sort of uh bopping around you're going to want to see uh you know the roman theater you're going to want to check out uh al cabal al cazaba you're going to want to check out al cazaba which is is the um is the sort of palace that's above the the theater now we were there over the Christmas holidays. So, um, we, it actually wasn't open for us to go inside, but, uh, so reason to go back, but it's known for the sort of views of the entire city of Malaga. And they also have a cathedral that only has one tower that got finished.

16:05It didn't finish the second tower. So it's sort of a, you know, it's a lonely town, the lonely tower cathedral, you could call it.

16:12Kiernan:Good. I mean, sometimes I think there, these churches are too symmetrical. No, I think it's definitely beautiful. And the whole downtown is really, the whole kind of historic center is interesting because you have this mix of like the Morish architecture and the Spanish architecture and then these Roman ruins that are sort of scattered about the city. So really beautiful, great place to sort of just walk around and spend, you know, just a day or two kind of checking out the sites. now Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga oh interesting do they have like a like a preserved home or museum so they have two museums dedicated to him they have a small museum in the house that he was born in that wasn't open when we were there but then they have a larger Museo Picasso Malaga And this is a a like a in an old castle and it has about 200 unique works by Picasso that that tracks his entire career.

17:17So you can see it sort of see the stuff he was doing as a teenager all the way up to, you know, the famous Pablo Picasso and then his sort of later work. So it's a it's a really beautiful museum in this old Renaissance palace. And, you know, if you're somebody who enjoys Picasso and kind of wants to see how he developed as like a kid starting here in Malaga, it's definitely worth your time.

17:41Kiernan:How'd the security seem there? Because, you know, we've done some art heist episodes recently. I've been thinking about where to hit and 200 Picassos in an old palace suggests maybe not all the security cameras work. It was pretty secure, I have to say. that was one of the things I noticed in all my museums uh that you know I went to quite a few museums on this trip and they were they have definitely uh stepped up there they're secure I do so it's very similar you find yourself sort of casing the joints um now with that art heists are on the mind well I'm also reading Goldfinch which uh has an art heist as sure yeah yeah so I've read Goldflinch.

18:23Kiernan:Have you gotten to the explosion? I'm almost done. Oh, okay. You're well into the explosion. Yeah, it's been a lot of travel in the book. So that's sort of the city center. And you can do all that really in a day or two. I would suggest get your tickets in advance if you want to go to the palace and the castle because those tend to sell out. But it's even if you don't go inside, it's it's an incredible thing. Make sure you go at night because they light it up. So they light up the Roman theater and then they light up the palace above it. And I'll post a picture on the Instagram podcast. But it was really, really beautiful.

19:07And you can also take a walk down to the beach. It's about a 10 minute walk from the city center to see the beach. It's beautiful. And, you know, a lot of little restaurants, cafes, bars, beach clubs down there. Um, that were, some of them were open when we were there, but not all of them, but you know, you get the impression it's a really bopping beach town, um, in, in the middle of the summer.

19:30Kiernan:And do you find it when you're, when you're visiting off season like that, is that like depressing or is it a good time because like you could get into everything you want to. Um, it was a little colder than we had wanted. I think, you know, we were supposed to go to Thailand. We just didn't get it together in time. So, um, but it was, it was interesting to be either off off season because we just, you know, had a lot of time to kind of read and relax and unwind. It wasn't like a super high, you know, high stress trip. And we ate some good food. There's a lot of good seafood restaurants in Malaga.

20:05I want to call out one that we really enjoyed, Restaurante Casa El Lado. And this is like an old school white tablecloth seafood place. they sell the seafood basically by the pound it's a family run. So it's like run by not by the pound. Cause it's Europe by, you know, whatever, whatever that would be. So just be careful. Cause there's no prices. And we spent more money than we had thought we thought the meal was going to be. And, and because it's like, you know, the catch of the day. And it's like, you know, they don't give you, you wouldn't ask for the details, but it was, you know, that I would,

20:44Kiernan:but Oh yeah. You go, you go back there and watch them. like like weigh it yeah um is that before or after it's cooked the weight um that's a lot of water weight in there right now come on let's give it a squeeze um and it's been run by the same family for for like three generations um yeah so definitely recommend if you want a really nice uh you know fine night out on the town uh there's also really fresh fish obviously so there's a great japanese uh restaurant there uh serving sushi really fresh local stuff called takumi and this was a really cool place had a good wine list and you know if you want to get away from some of sort of the the more traditional um spanish food or just the seafood uh it's a good it's a good night out for a change change of scene so um we took the car like i said to marbella um And this is a much smaller town, but again, like another really beautiful beach town.

21:52The old town is really small and it's one of these old towns where you're walking around and the streets are incredibly thin and narrow. So you're in and there are so many flowers and all the houses are so beautiful. It's something like, you know, kind of Disney-esque. It's such a pretty, beautiful little town to kind of stroll around in. And they have all these little plazas that are surrounded by restaurants where you can eat outdoors. And the main plaza is called the Plaza de los Naranjo. Plaza de los Naranjos. And Naranjo, obviously, are oranges. Sure, of course, yeah. You know, there are so many orange trees all around Andalusia because Europe, because that area of Spain has the best climate for citrus.

22:53and um originally the uh the moors brought all these citrus plants to spain because they thought it really smelled they smelled nice and they made for a really good urban design like the way that the the plants uh the trees grew so when you're walking around seville or malaga or mabella there's so many of these orange trees that you'll see everywhere, but you can't eat them. I mean, you can, but they're really gross. They're really bitter. They're not the ones that you typically eat. And when they are harvested, they turn them into like a local marmalade or a liqueur. So look good, smell good, don't taste good is what you should know about these orange trees that you'll see all around town.

23:47and uh the plaza de los naranjo's great place to like i said to have a lunch this sort of people watch it's really beautiful with all the orange trees and you should definitely

23:57Kiernan:um check it out i'm getting the real sense of that sort of beach town vibe where a lot of it is just kind of sitting back and enjoying yeah there's a lot of that a lot of shopping I mean, you know, they've got a lot of cute local brands and, you know, it's the kind of place where a family goes out on the beach during the day and then they have a nice dinner and they walk around and buy like, you know, souvenirs kind of. Yeah, straight Picasso here and there. Yeah. Now there is from the from the old town. if you're going to walk towards the beach and you want to see uh you know some of the shots there um you're going to take this uh this avenue del mar um and it's a it's a a pretty cool walkway because they have all these uh salvador dolly sculptures up and down the the walkway so it's really beautiful a lot of people stopping to take pictures this trip radicalized me against dolly I've talked about this on the pod already, but, you know, Dolly, not a great guy.

24:58But, you know, that is some enjoyable art. What did he do?

25:02Kiernan:I don't remember what he did. Is he is he canceled? I know he was just he was just like, you know, he like partnered with Franco and all these projects. And he had that pointy mustache. He probably poked people with it. A lot of good food. Again, it's like a beach town. So a lot of seafood. food um one place i do want to call out is this sort of mediterranean um place that's got like super rustic kind of cabin vibes that's on one of the main streets and it's a really had a had a had cool vibes and good food it's a uh cassinous bistro marbella um and i'll link to it in the show notes but if you're if you're looking to have a nice dinner um definitely recommend that and they've got a menu that's sort of french and belgian expire uh inspired so you're you can kind of get away from some of the tapas if you're if you're tapa if you're top of tired like I I so often get yeah top it out yeah you get top it out um so yeah so that's that's Costa del Sol um you know there are a bunch of little towns up and down um the coast these were just the two that that we picked out but you know really beautiful I I'm definitely gonna gonna go back and um I think you know the next episode we do about this region should be on Seville, which deserves its own full episode, I think.

26:23Kiernan:I'm very curious when you were considering where to go during this holiday break, what made you choose this coast in the off season? Well, we wanted to go to Barcelona anyway and do a bunch of like restaurants and museums there. And then we were just like, OK, what is around that neither of us had been to? And we picked here. And we've been to so many beaches together. We were not like we didn't need a beach necessarily. All right. Good. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. So. So, yeah. With that, I think it's time for the last stop. The last stop. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last stop on this train.

27:05Everyone, please leave the train.

27:08Kiernan:All right, Ryan, we're here in the last stop. This is the last segment of the show, the final segment of the show. That's why it's called The Last Stop. It's my favorite segment. It's your favorite segment. And it's popularly known as the people's segment. You know, we think of ourselves as the people's podcasters. They're calling us these days. And the reason that it's called that is because it's a time for community and communion. It's where we come together to share. We might share anything. It could be a piece of gear. It could be a story. It could be a memory. It could be a dream. It could be a news article.

27:42Kiernan:could be a theater experience. It could be anything. As long as it checks one box, it must meet this criterion, which is that it has to inspire the spirit of wanderlust within us, even during the workday week. So Ryan, I'm going to ask you, as I ask you every episode, do you have a last stop this week? I do, Kiernan. I was on Twitter, like I often am, And I saw someone tweet about a new feature on the Wikipedia app, which I haven't opened in a long time. So I went and I opened it. And there's now a button that says map. And you can click on that and it will spin around and show you a map of where you are.