The original plan had been to stay in Málaga two nights and return on Thursday. But then I found out that long time Twitter friends Fred @fredshively and Arpi @Andalucinda were actually going to be moving to town that day, so I made arrangements to stay one more night in order to finally meet them in person. But Peter still had to get back to teach a class and then take out a tapas tour, so we spent his last morning here going out to the Automotive Museum. Seriously. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I’m not exactly an old car buff, but it had come highly recommended by several people so off we went. And what fun it was! I especially liked the hat collection. After that we picked up his bag at the apartment and went out for a last drink together before he caught the train back to Sevilla.

By then it was lunchtime and I wasn’t sure what to do as I don’t especially enjoy eating on my own, and I wasn’t sure where to go. So I took a wander around the centre and, after spotting a couple of likely candidates, I finally settled on one called Souvi Tapería because it just had a nice feel to it. And what a good choice that turned out to be. The food was amazing (that tapa in the collage is warm potato & truffle coulante filled with foie, served with boletus icecream) and it turned out that my waiter was not only from Sevilla but also from my barrio! When he found out about my tapas blog he said he’d introduce me to the chef & owner. I also ended up meeting the chef’s mother who was sitting at the bar and we had a great chat about Málaga, and swapped contact info. So it wasn’t a lonley lunch after all.

Then I came home to catch up on emails and do a bit of work and before long it was time to meet up with Fred and Arpi (Arpi is a writer and Fred takes fabulous photos). I really appreciated them coming out at all after spending the whole day moving here from the Alpujarras. And I really really appreciated that, when our first restaurant choice turned out to be a dud, Arpi let us drag her down the street to a cool little tapas bar “for one more” as that ended up being another delightful “discovery” for me. Anyhow, it was great meeting them after knowing them on Twitter for so long, and now I have two more lovely reasons to visit Málaga.

So it ended up being quite a wonderful Thursday. How was yours?