Who goes to Spain’s Costa del Sol for 24 hours and no more? (Hand raised.) I went to make an overnight trip from Córdoba to… somewhere. Donna is in the U.S. with family and I’ll admit to a tad of boredom, very much missing my partner in adventure, los dos numero uno, Donna.

Besides, Spain’s southern coast on the Mediterranean is only two hours away. So why not? I spent much of the daylight hours of the trip, when not driving through an endless canyon of condos, crouched over manhole covers (but that’s another story). Nevertheless, I was in situ long enough to develop some impressions, which I’m none too shy to share, as ever. Plus pix.

A quick check of the map told me that Motril and Estepona were about equidistant from Malaga, the biggest city along the Costa del Sol, approaching 600,000 residents.

Our inexpensive lodging was perfectly nice. I had dinner at a quite good Italian restaurant a few steps from the hotel. The waiter was either Italian or consciously mixing some Italian into his Spanish. He needn’t have made the effort as the food was quite delicious.

Half of our 24 hour sojourn was coming to a close. We would resume by driving the next morning into Estepona 1.0, which originated as a town in the late middle ages. This face of Estepona is quite charming, a mix of the rather new with the stolid buildings of the 1700s. Estepona today has a population of about 77,000.

From Estepona we made our way back east in the direction of Marbella, where we avoided the beach from the start and enjoyed yet another traditional Spanish town still thriving after so much history. Marbella is one of the largest cities in Andalucia with around 160,000 inhabitants. Ella and I toured a sliver of the town, focusing uphill, away from the highrises. I was mainly eyes-down here, taking photos of steel hewn to the shapes of apertures in the sidewalks, so I can’t share as many pix. But I certainly developed a favorable impression and I’ll be tugging los dos numero uno’s sleeve to go back and see more of Marbella.

And then we arrived in Malaga, our departure point back home, almost due north. I had been in Malaga twice since our December arrival in Spain. Donna and I, under the exigency of constructing a home in Córdoba, had twice driven to Ikea in Malaga. We had brought no furniture to Spain from New Mexico and we both favored the Ikea esthetic. So we went. Back and forth to a commerical section of Malaga, via highway, failing to actually alight in the old Malaga. So my venture was a first opportunity to interact with the genuine, historic city. Again, I was delighted by old+new Spain.

As with Marbella, I didn’t photograph much. So I close this narrative with what I have, a few shots in the vicinity of the Malaga Cathedral or Santa Iglesia Catedral Basílica de la Encarnación de Málaga. Hope you enjoyed!