Ten second wisdom

We walked into town after breakfast this morning and visited Malaga's Interactive Music Museum. It has a great collection of instruments of all kinds from Western Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, including a remarkable number of 19th and early 20th century European pianos, all in beautiful condition. It has a section dedicated to modern hearing tests, and several booths where one can try out different kinds of instruments, percussion, stringed and wind. 

I was tempted to try out the hearing test section, as I've had troubles lately with ear wax blockage due to the heat, an annual summer nightmare for me these days. Then I realised the impairment has diminished over the past couple of days due to anointing my ear cavities with a smidgeon of olive oil. For the moment, I can hear almost equally well with both ears. So I skipped that section, and went on to look at the amazing collection of traditional and hybrid stringed instruments. 

Tow large adjacent houses in the same block have been given over to this museum, and transformed by renovation to accommodate the museum. The ground floor of the second building is paved with glass for visitors to be able to look down at a section of the mediaeval city walls which, I guess at one time would have formed the boundary to the basement of the property. Such a delightful place to visit.

From there we wove our way through the back streets to find a vegetarian restaurant for lunch which was in the same street as La Casa Invisible which we visited last week, called Vegetariano El Calafate. We enjoyed a high quality menu del dia for just under 10 euros in a pleasant back street environment. This is just close to a residential Old Town barrio which is undergoing a measure of regeneration, with the church of Nuestra Señora de la Peña at its heart. It's an area I've not noticed hitherto. 

One of its local characteristics is writing on the walls - not graffiti, though there's a certain amount of that as well - but rather, cleanly stencilled aphorisms from poets and philosophers, four metres above the pavement on surfaces freshly rendered and painted. Is this the thinking man's barrio, I wonder? In Germany and Austria, quotations from scripture or devotional hymns or poetry are commonplace traditional forms of domestic decor. Then I remembered how often in cafes, here in Malaga, and elsewhere in Spain for that matter, the little packets of sugar you're served with have a quotation on the side without advertising on it. It can be an aphorism, or a joke. Great practice to decode when you're learning a language. This is probably not unique to Spain, but here is where I have noticed and appreciated the proliferation of ten second wisdom. I wonder where this began?

We returned to the apartment for a siesta, and afterwards, as Clare didn't want to go for a swim, we walked out on the eastern quay of the port to inspect the most recent cruise liner to arrive. All three seen on Sunday afternoon were long gone. The Royal Caribbean Line's Bahamas registered MV Navigator of the Seas was docked at Terminal one. Although it's not as big as the Celebrity Reflection, docked on Sunday, it carries ten per cent more passengers. It's fascinating to see these giants of the sea coming and going, but I find it hard to imagine taking a holiday on what is, in effect, a floating city.