We were guests. That changes everything.
Deb and Rod come back here every time they travel — Benalmádena is their place, and they know it well: the right restaurants, the short cuts, the things worth seeing. When they invited us along, we said yes, packed light, and went with the flow. Which is not always our natural mode. But it turned out to be the right call for this one.
The apartment was two minutes from the beach. The balcony looked straight out to sea. A collared dove sat on the blue rail most mornings as if it lived there, which it probably did.
The balcony rail. Same spot, every morning.
The morning ritual
The first walk started before anyone else was up. Out of the apartment, down to the seafront, into the January sun that was already doing more than January sun has any right to do. The promenade was empty — palm trees, coloured tiles underfoot, the sea flat and silver on one side. A Moorish-red building sat at the waterfront, catching the last of the sunrise. Someone had put significant architectural thought into a building that appeared to have no obvious purpose, and it was better for it.
The red building at the seafront. Moorish arches, Moorish colours. January morning, nobody around.
The Benalmádena Costa seafront. A morning that made England feel very far away.
The marina was worth a lap at any hour. At dusk it had a different quality — the white Moorish-styled apartment buildings reflecting in the still water, the boats barely moving, the steak houses and yacht club restaurants starting to glow. Someone had parked a Chinese junk between the sailing yachts, red and gold with dragon motifs, as if daring anyone to comment. Nobody had.
A Chinese junk, moored in Benalmádena marina. Context-free. Completely at home.
The marina at dusk. White buildings, still water, everything reflected.
The promenade mosaic panels were worth stopping for. Underfoot, in among the plain paving, someone had laid ceramic scenes — an octopus in deep blue, a diver in teal and white, pebble-work figures pressed into the ground. The kind of thing you only catch if you’re actually looking down.
Promenade mosaic — octopus in blue ceramic, set into the walkway. Easy to miss.
A second panel — diver, fish, teal tiles. The whole stretch has them.
Up the hill
The bus to Colomares was Deb and Rod’s suggestion. We’d have walked there — of course we’d have walked there — but it was further up the hill than the map made clear, and taking the bus was the right call. Also, we were guests.
The Castillo Colomares turns out to be one of those things that photographs can’t quite prepare you for. It reads in photos as a novelty — a fantasy castle on a Malaga hillside. In person it’s something else. A monument to Columbus’s 1492 voyage, built across seven years by three men as an act of private devotion to the idea of discovery. The detail is extraordinary. Not theatrical, not theme-park: genuinely crafted. Every arch, every tower, every carved creature was put there deliberately. A fountain inside the grounds carries the inscription La Esperanza — 3·VIII·1492. The date Columbus set sail.
Castillo Colomares, full view. 1987–1994. Tribute to Columbus. Somebody’s house.
Inside the grounds. The scale only becomes clear when you’re standing in it.
The detail up close. Carved figures, brick archways, the inscription “Génesis de la Hispanidad.”
The fountain inscription: La Esperanza, 3·VIII·1492. The date the ships left.
The agave plants outside had been used as a guestbook. Dozens of names scratched into the leaves — Sandra, Maria, Miky, a date from 1951 — scarring the plant slowly while it just kept growing. We stood looking at it for longer than we expected.
Agave leaves outside the castle grounds. Years of names. The plant doesn’t seem to mind.
The view from up there put the whole resort into perspective. Benalmádena Costa spread below — white and terracotta rooftops stacked down to the sea, cranes rising where the next development was going in, the Med flat and blue beyond it. The old town of Benalmádena Pueblo, a few kilometres away, felt like a different world from up here. Down there: apartment blocks and beach bars and English-language pub signs. Up here: orange trees and a white church on a quiet cobbled square.
The view south from the castle. The hillside, the sea, the town below.
Benalmádena Pueblo. The church square, the restaurant shutters still down, the snowflake lamp post.
The old town
The walk through Benalmádena Pueblo was the part we liked most. White walls, blue pots, a Lorca poem painted on a facade in green script. The streets narrow and shaded. A fountain in the central square with a small stone figure at its centre, water running. It had the feeling of somewhere that wasn’t principally designed for us — which, by this point in the trip, we had started to notice was what we needed.
The main street through the Pueblo. Blue pots on white walls. A poem on the corner.
The square in the Pueblo. Fountain, stone figure, an arch of winter greenery still up from Christmas.
A white lane in the old town. Two figures ahead, the sun nearly blinding.
Sand and sun
The mornings were the best of it. Out early, south along the boardwalk, Sarah on the empty beach with palm trees behind her and the whole strand to herself. A sandcastle on the beach — an elaborate one, the size of a small car, properly engineered with towers and gates and battlements — catching the sunrise. The person who built it was long gone. The sea was nowhere near it.
The sand sculpture on the beach. Sunrise light. Better than it had any right to be.
Sarah on the beach at first light. The palm trees, the empty sand, the sea beyond.
One morning we walked along the seafront past a bar inside the train station — Bar Carriles — which had a full steam locomotive mural across the entire back wall. A black LMS Black Five, number 44871, filling every inch of the space behind the espresso machine. Nobody in there seemed to think this was unusual. We ordered coffees and sat in front of a train.
Bar Carriles, Benalmádena station. An LMS Black Five painted floor to ceiling. Just a normal bar.
Not quite us
We had a good time. The sun was real in January. The food was good and plentiful. Deb and Rod were generous and warm and showed us things we’d never have found on our own.
But we also know ourselves. Benalmádena Costa is full of people doing exactly what they came for — the beach, the marina, the bars, the sun — and there is nothing wrong with any of it. It just isn’t what we’re looking for when we travel. Too curated around a certain kind of British comfort. Too many menus in English where Spanish ones would do. The places we keep returning to in our heads after a trip — Girona, Ravenna, Kaunas — have a different texture. They don’t know they’re being visited.
Benalmádena knows. And it’s very good at it.
Sunset at the marina. The light makes everything look better than it is. This is a talent.
The last evening we walked the boardwalk as the light dropped, past the Ferris wheel silhouetted against the blue hour, past the Chinese junk again, past the straw parasols and the fish sculpture stuffed with plastic bottles that may or may not have been art. The sand was gold. The sun went into the sea cleanly, without fuss.
Sarah on the seafront at sunset. The harbour wall behind, the sea going dark.
The Ferris wheel at dusk. Palm trees, golden sky.
We got the bus back to the apartment. A perfectly good holiday in a place that’s perfectly designed for holidays.
Not everywhere has to be the next thing. Some places you go because someone you like goes there, and you go to be with them.
Benalmádena, Costa del Sol — 7.00 miles combined — 2hrs 46m — 291ft — 15,086 Steps