Saturday morning we took our time and had cafe con leche on the Balcón de Europa in Nerja.  We liked Nerja better by day, and the view of the beach and the mountains is beautiful from el balcón.  But the town is very touristy, practically everything is in English, and we just didn’t feel drawn to explore more deeply, so we got on the road.

We still hadn’t decided where to go next, but we had two ideas: check out Mijas more fully, so we could do an apples to apples comparison with Almuñecar, and stop by Rincón de la Victoria, because we knew of several churches in that area.  Rincón was on the way west, so we drove there first.  We somewhat accidentally entered the area through the neighboring town of La Cala del Moral while looking for one of the churches, and we saw that the area has a bunch of cute row houses and a nice little park where the kids could play.  We parked the car (quite easily!) and chatted with a mom and her 3rd grade daughter at the park.  She told us the town was “tranquilo-demasiado tranquilo!”, which to us is actually a good thing.  We walked down to the beach, which was just a few blocks away, and were very happy to see lots of young kids and their families at the playground and playing in el paseo near the beach.    

We played and talked a bit with a couple of boys about Peter’s age, and noted that the beach there is more sandy than the rocky pebbles on the beach at Almuñecar.  We picked up some snacks in the panaderia just before it closed for siesta, and took some pictures of the little historic church there.    

We liked this town!  It seems like it might have housing options within walking distance of school, beach, maybe church (depending on which one we choose to attend), easy parking, easy access to basic shopping needs, and only about 15 minutes from Malaga city and major transportation.  The only thing I didn’t like was seeing a decent amount of graffiti in town – it makes me worry about safety.  

Ah…  A Little coca-cola refreshment!  You can kind-of see some of the cute row houses in the background.

We decided we liked the town enough to stay and explore more, so we got a hotel and made plans to meet with one of the pastors in the area that night.  It started to rain, so it was the perfect time to take a nap!  That night around 8pm we got to see the church building of the Parque Victoria Church, and meet with the pastor and his wife.  We were so glad to be able to visit with them that night, because this weekend is the one weekend in years that they were not planning on having a regular service because they were hosting a German gospel choir instead!  So we decided to attend another church in Rincón de la Victoria.