travels with toby

Continuing my series of posts about our trip to Spain in May, this post is about our visit to Malaga’s botanical garden. We had such a pleasant day at the Jardín. It is so lovely and full of all kinds of plants and trees and flowers. And this time there were many sculptures throughout and those were so interesting. The weather was perfect for a spring day, sunny and in the upper 70s. As you can see from the map below, there are many trees offering enough shade if we got too hot. It’s about two miles from one end to the other.

We took a taxi which is much easier than the bus ride then mile walk to the Jardín that we did five years ago. We’re older now and we decided we were going to “live it up” and not worry too much about what things cost. The taxi driver gave us a card with their phone number so that they could pick us up when we were done. Except that I couldn’t get my phone to work? I tried all combinations of things and nothing worked. Instead I asked the young lady in the gift shop if she wouldn’t mind calling the taxi for us. She was so nice and did it right away then told me the taxi would arrive in five minutes. Perfect!

But let’s not talk about leaving the place before I get a chance to add some photos. And I forgot to tell the story of the woman helping with the ticket machine at the entrance. Hubby was the money keeper and when he handed her a paper euro bill she said the machine would return the change in coins. In other words, are you sure you want to put that bill in the machine? So, he reached into his pockets for coins for our tickets. At that moment she lost her patience with us, as if we were supposed to know there was a machine. If we had known, we’d have been more prepared. We paid at the information desk five years ago and I shouldn’t have assumed it would be the same. Alas….and it was her retort “madre mía!!” that we sort of made fun of for the rest of the trip. Every time a situation called for it, I’d say “madre mía!!” and giggle. She was something indeed but we didn’t let it ruin our day. (editing to add a translation for “madre mía” could be “oh my god”)

I went back after we got our tickets and asked her for a map and she just pointed over yonder. Luckily, I had already seen a map on a board that you could stand and look at. I had hoped for a paper map but at that point I was done with her and just took photos of the map on the board. Then on to the cacti. They have such lovely cacti!! My first gallery is a collection of my favorite cacti photos. Click on any photo in a gallery to see a larger image and to see captions.

Next up is a collection of some of the sculptures we saw throughout the Jardín. We really enjoyed those and I think they were new since we were there in 2019 as I don’t recall seeing them last time.

This last gallery is a combination of other photos from our day in the Jardín. Their bamboo section is amazing and there is black bamboo. I had never seen black bamboo before we visited in 2019. There is also a lovely hibiscus path that is full of lovely flowers.

I absolutely love visiting gardens and this one is one of my all time favorites. We had hoped to eat at their cafe again because we really enjoyed it in 2019, but about a month before our visit there was a fire and the cafe was boarded up. Plan B for lunch then. After our taxi dropped us at our hotel, we ventured out to find something to eat.

I highly recommend the Jardín Botánico if you’re visiting Málaga. Just be prepared with coins for the ticket machine 😆

If you missed any of my other posts about our trip here are links to them:

We love Spain

I always return to Madrid

Granada overview

La Alhambra in Granada

Málaga, España

I have one more post from our time in Málaga then a couple more of our last few days in Madrid. I hope you’ll come back for those. Until then……hasta entonces.