Malaga

 Malaga, from the top of the old castle fort.

tile roofs ancient patterns Adam and Eve

 Landing in Madrid, this could be December 30.  The man sitting next to me, on the flight to Paris, said 'no need to see the Prado, you have been to the Met, it is just more of the same'.  There was not much time, but I wandered through the Prado, just to see a painting or maybe two, finding Ruben's Adam and Eve and  a very long Tinteretto.  This was good.  In Toledo, the El Greco museum was closed, but we found a church with a large El Greco altarpiece, so the real intent, the room and the installation was visible, so ornate. The nuns, who mostly seemed quite aged ran the entrance to the shrine to El Greco and sold sweet backed goods.  I saw  a small painting of a well dressed woman being accompanied by two angels, she seemed reluctant to take that next step, their arms were around her arms, but she seemed like she wanted to maybe slip away.

 Sometimes a tiny fragment can suggest the whole thing. Like the painting of the two nuns, painted on some kind of door, high above eye level in the chapel...I thought maybe it was a monument to eternal sisterhood and the importance of art.

 

 There was nothing open on New Years eve, except the only Chinese restaurant in town, in the village of Antequera. That is some distance unclimbable mountain, it base covered in olive trees and orange groves.

I want to paint an orange tree like Giotto would paint an orange tree.  It still amazes me that oranges just grow on trees. 

El Camino del Rey January 1

 In the somewhat remote mountain area of Andalucia in southern Spain, there is a famous climbing area called El Chorro composed of huge limestone cliffs and rock outcroppings. It is most famous for  the Camino del Rey, a board walk constructed in 1920.  King Alfonso the XIII first walked along it, hence the name.  For a long time it was the beginning or end of many climbs, but fell into disrepair and was condemned as being too dangerous. Lately, a restoration has begun with what appears to be limited access, but the path is locked and guarded by a guard with an ominous black uniform. They also installed several cameras to watch the walkway. Pretty irresistible. So I packed a rope, climbing shoes, a harness, a helmet and walked as close as I could, hopefully out of sight of the guard, trying to find a weakness in the rock to make it to the contrivance, listed as one of the 17 wonders of Spain.

 Fortunately, I met a young Russian and his Canadian girlfriend who had already been scoping the area for awhile.  We chose a path up the rock cliff, climbed over the protective fence high over the  water (with our helmets and scarves on to disguise our faces) and gained the walkway.  This is the  new walkway, that is build just above the old crumbling rusting version.  It was pretty great and went on for a quite a ways, maybe a kilometer, out the other side of the gorge.

The old  and very scary concrete bridge across the chasm. 

This is dinner in the tiny desayuno place in the village of Ardales a few hours later, not all the dinner, I also had a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.