After all the hulla-ba-loo of the holidays, I feel like I need a beach vacation! In all our parenting travels, we’ve only taken one “beach vacation” and it turned out we didn’t spend that much time at the beach. We took the girls to Malaga, Spain when Sugarplum was only 12 weeks old and Honeybun was 27 months old. A few weeks after Sugarplum was born, we booked a room at the all-inclusive Marconfort Beach Club Hotel in Torremolinos, just south of Malaga thinking it would be nice to just take a relaxing trip with the girls.
We flew into Malaga and took the train to Torremolinos. The train station is right outside the airport terminal building and the hotel was about a 1 km (a bit over ½ mile) walk from the nearest train station. We were used to taking the train and walking places around rainy Dublin so the walk in the sunny weather wasn’t a problem for us!
The first day we just hung out at the hotel and wandered along the beach, checking out the area and seeing what there was to do.
The next day we decided to walk to the main area of Torremolinos, which was just under 3 km/2 miles. We did some poking around the shops, wandered up what felt like hundreds of tiny little stairs (the city sits on the side of a hill) and watched a “Native American” group perform before taking the train back to the hotel.
The day was cloudy and not warm enough for the beach so we took the train into Malaga that afternoon and saw the sights there. We went to the Alcazaba Fort and had so much fun wandering around and climbing to the top where there was an amazing view over the entire area. We also wandered by the house where Pablo Picasso was born and went to the Picasso museum. Unfortunately the museum was not fully open when we went but we did a special childhood toys and art exhibit that Honeybun really enjoyed.
It finally warmed up and we spent the next two days lounging at the beach, playing at the park and swimming in the hotel pools. The water at the beach was a little cold but Honeybun had tons of fun running around the beach with hubby and Sugarplum just lounged around under an umbrella. There were a few different indoor and outdoor pools including a toddler wading pool but they were all pretty chilly and we didn’t last very long with the swimming, but Honeybun enjoyed every second of splashing around!
The last day we had a late night flight back to Dublin but had to check out of our hotel mid-day so we stored our luggage at the hotel and headed South to Fuengirola on the train. We wandered around the main city centre, had lunch overlooking the beach and then hiked up to the Sohail Castle (and it was quite a hike for this non-hiker, especially after walking 3+ km to the fort! There weren’t many people visiting that day so we were able to poke around the fort largely uninterrupted. After the fort we stopped by a city park for a play before running by the hotel for our bags and headed to the airport.
While we enjoyed our beach holiday, we found ourselves bored much of the time. This was one of the only trips where we actually put the girls down for a proper nap at the hotel instead of letting them nap in the buggy wherever we were when they got tired. We also quickly learned how incredibly friendly Spaniards are and how much they love little babies. During our meals at the hotel, the staff offered to take Sugarplum for us numerous times. It was a nice trip, but I don’t know that we’ll choose to do a “relaxing” holiday again, we just aren’t lounge-around-on-the-beach people, we want to see things, experience things, do things!
