Best Things To Do in Malaga

Being a coastal area, Malaga offers you beach activities, exquisite sea flavours and water sports. But this city is much more than that, it is also a city with an impressive nightlife, so its bars and nightclubs will invite you to stay and enjoy good music and wines.

I will tell you some of the best things to do in Malaga, which has activities for all kinds of visitors, you can even live incredible experiences with the kids in case you travel with them.

Malaga is an amazing city to visit and walk through its streets and avenues, so if there is something you have to do as soon as you arrive to this city, and after making the transfer from Malaga airport, is to enjoy every historical and cultural corner it has to show you. I recommend you to take a guided tour with an expert who will tell you everything you want to know about the city.

There are many ways in which you can do this kind of tour. You can do a quick walking tour, or you have the opportunity to tour the city by bike or segway. Another option, which I think is one of the most fun, is to take an electric tuk tuk tour. In short, there are plenty of options for touring the city.

Part of what you will see on this type of tour is the historic centre of the city, which has structures of great tourist interest such as the cathedral of La Manquita, the University of Malaga or even the Picasso Museum, which by the way, before visiting it, I recommend you to know its opening hours and prices.

In addition, you can make tours at sunset to know the nightlife of Malaga, as well as enjoy the most refreshing drinks and the most exquisite tapas.

The Malaga sightseeing bus is an excellent option if you have little time to visit Malaga and you want to see as many places as possible. If there's one thing I like about this tour is that you have the option of getting on the bus as well as the boat.

As well as taking you to see the whole city by land, it also takes you on an interesting tour of the bay, an activity that I recommend you do in Malaga in November, when the temperatures are much more pleasant. You can take this bus by buying a ticket and getting on at the time you want within the bus schedule, plus you can enjoy the pass for the next 24 hours from the time you make the purchase.

You have a choice of three bus lines, one red, one green and one blue. Each of the lines takes you very close to the different places of interest in the city. You can stay on the bus without making any stops, just listening to the audio guide commentary, or you can get off at each stop to get a closer look at each place.

I love this option because as well as saving money, it's a flexible ticket that allows you to explore the city at your own pace, without pressure, and enjoy each of the sights as you wish, from inside or outside.

Malaga, being classified as a coastal area, offers multiple options to visit the city by boat and tour it from the coast. The boat trip in Malaga is available at any time of the day, so you can do this tour at dawn, during the day or at dusk to appreciate how the sun sets on the skyline of Malaga.

You can board boat cruises, catamarans or sailing boats. Depending on the option you choose, these are tours that you can do privately with just your group of friends and family, or you can share the tour with other tourists passing through the city.

Drinks, meals and snacks are usually provided on these tours. Depending on the time you board, some of these tours offer lunch or dinner, so it's a complete experience of sea, sun and tastings of the most exquisite tapas and wines, worthy of one of the best gastronomic tours in Malaga.

On the other hand, many of these tours offer you the possibility to practice certain sports such as snorkelling and other water activities while you travel aboard a boat. You can even go on half-day and full-day excursions if you want a more exciting experience than just a couple of hours on board.

The coastal area offers you a lot of water activities to practice, so you need to go to Malaga in 4 days at least, to practice some of the most fun extreme sports. One of my favourite sports to practice in Malaga is paddle surfing, and there are many tours that offer you to do water routes to practice this sport.

If you want to continue living incredible experiences in the sea, you can go snorkelling. This activity is amazing to do with the family and with children because they love to know what marine life is like. In some cases this type of experience requires a minimum age to complete it, but most of the time children can participate.

To continue enjoying the sea, there are also many tours and excursions available that offer to take you kayaking along the coast, being one of the top 10 most fun activities in Malaga to do with family and friends. Finally, parasailing is a high altitude adventure.

This last experience is for the bravest, and if you are one of those people who love extreme adventures, you definitely have to include this among the activities to do in Malaga, you just need to get on a cruise ship that offers this option and start flying through the air above the sea and having incredible views of the city.

The flamenco show is one of the most representative traditions of all Spain and if there is a place where you can enjoy this art is in Andalusia, and especially in Malaga. So if you go on a trip for at least one day to Malaga, you have to visit a tablao and enjoy one of the best flamenco shows in Malaga.

If you want to do this cultural activity, you can do it on your own by going to a flamenco tablao at night, to enjoy, besides the show, exquisite tapas and sweet wines of local production. But in case you don't know which places to visit and how to enjoy this art, you can hire a guided tour.

In general, many of the best tours in Malaga take you to enjoy flamenco in the tablaos, they offer you much more than the entrance to each venue, they also offer you drinks and snacks, as well as the accurate comments of the tour guides who are always attentive to show you what are the best options for drinks and food in the place where they go.

This is a show to enjoy as a family, knowing that flamenco is much more than just dancers. It is a complete stage that mixes singers, guitarists and colourful costumes, as well as castanets and other typical elements.

The Alcazaba is one of those places where you can appreciate the rich cultural legacy left in Spain by the Islamic period. It is a fortress with an incredibly well-preserved structure that stands guard on the slopes of Mount Gibralfaro. At the top of this mountain you can also visit the Gibralfaro Castle.

Both structures remain icons of the city of Malaga and are a must see not only for history lovers, but also for the tourist in general, who loves to discover interesting places. Before visiting the Alcazaba I recommend you to check opening hours and ticket prices.

If there is one thing you will love about going up to the Gibralfaro Castle is the incredible view you can appreciate from this place. As this castle is located at the top of the mountain, it is possible to see Malaga, which is undoubtedly one of the 10 best cities in Andalusia, from another point of view.

But these are not the only Al-Andalus monuments that you can see in the city of Malaga, in fact there are many structures in this city that remind you of this Islamic past not only in Malaga, but also in the whole of Spain, being the Roman Bridge one of them, which you can include in your list of places to visit with your family.

Malaga is a cultural city par excellence, and the importance that art has in this city is incredible, that is why one of the nicknames for Malaga is the city of museums, being located in this place some of the most interesting and fun to enjoy with the family in Spain.

Among the top 10 museums to visit in Malaga are the one dedicated to Pablo Picasso, considering that this is his hometown. You can also visit the Automobile and Fashion Museum, the Centre Pompidou in Malaga, the only one outside France, among many others.

This is one of those activities not to be missed if you are a lover of art and culture. Other interesting museums to visit in Malaga are: the Russian Museum, the Wine Museum, the Glass Museum, the Music Museum and the Malaga Art Centre. In some of them you can even participate in workshops and they usually have interactive spaces.

To visit them all, you will need to make a trip to Malaga of at least 3 days, in which you dedicate a large part of the trip to visiting the museums. But if you're short on time, I recommend you visit at least a couple of them, and take advantage of the fact that most of them offer low-cost, reduced admission and sometimes free admission for children and seniors.

On the outskirts of the city you can find a lot of vineyards that you can visit if you have enough time in the city. That's why one of the activities I recommend you to do in Malaga in summer and if you are a lover of wine and good food, is a good tour of the wine villages on the outskirts of Malaga.

Marbella is another town located just outside Malaga and is a wine region where you can also enjoy the different varieties of wines. Before embarking on an adventure to this city, I recommend you check out how to get to Marbella from Malaga.

The local wines are of high quality and mostly quite sweet, so you will probably want to try more than one glass during the tour. I like this kind of wine tours because not only do you get to taste the oldest and highest quality wines, but you will also have the opportunity to learn about the wine making process.

If you don't want to leave the city to get to know the different flavours of wines that Malaga has to offer, you can stay and visit some of the most special wineries in the city, or even embark on a wine and tapas tour that will take you to the bars where they serve the best local and refreshing wines.

One of the must-visits you can't miss is the Antigua Casa de Guardia, a winery founded around 1840 and which has been in business ever since, even in the most difficult moments of Spanish history. Its wine list offers a wide variety of wines with different ageing times, making it one of the best places to sample quality wines.

This is one of the most impressive hiking trails in Andalusia and was once considered one of the most dangerous routes in the world, but has now been reorganised to make it much safer.

This adventure, which is considered one of the best excursions from Malaga, is an hour away from the city by car, so it is a good alternative if you want to do a different activity outside the city.

You can find tours that take you from Malaga to this amazing place, and you can even have the company of a tour guide who will show you the way and everything you need to know about this route.

What will definitely take your breath away during the route is that it is at an impressive height above sea level. It is a good experience to include among the activities to do in Malaga in October.

Something you should know before embarking on this adventure is that you have to be completely sure that you will be able to complete the whole route, because once you start crossing, you can't go back because the path is one way and if you go in the opposite direction, you simply won't be able to pass.

The baths of Hammam Al Ándalus are one of those places of Islamic Spain that still remain standing and represent a golden past of this Islamic era. This is one of the most interesting places to see and visit in Malaga in 1 day. You will be transported back in time as soon as you enter this place.

To visit them, you can go on your own and book the tickets online before your trip, but you can also hire a guided tour that will take you to this place in the company of an expert guide who will teach you everything you need to know about the Islamic culture and the Hammam baths.

Inside you can do a host of relaxing activities such as enjoying massages, participating in relaxation rituals and living experiences that will make you reconnect with your inner nature and peace. This is one of those activities that disconnect you from the rest of the world and that will help you feel that you are enjoying your trip and your holidays to the maximum, in fact, it is an ideal activity to do in Malaga in winter.

One of the services of the Arab baths that I like the most and that I'm sure you will also like, are the so-called water journeys, which are relaxing sessions in which water will make you feel peace, tranquillity and calm from the beginning to the end of the experience.

The botanical garden of La Concepción is one of those places that is impossible to miss. It is located in Malaga and offers you a journey through all the places of the world through plants. Here you can discover the different plants and flowers that can be found in many parts of the world.

In addition, you can visit this garden during the day and making reservations in advance to avoid queues, but you also have the possibility to visit it at night, being a good plan to include among the things to see and do in Malaga at night, especially it is an activity that I recommend you to include in your list of things to do in Malaga in December, to appreciate the lights that illuminate the garden.

This is one of the best things to do in Malaga with children and family because it is always interesting to know the flora that can be found in many places in the world. Another thing you have to know about this botanical garden is that they have a lot of activities for the whole family, that's why before visiting it, I recommend you to visit the website to find out about the activities available.

To visit this place you can do it on your own by public transport, taxi or rental car. You can also take the tourist bus on the green line, which will take you directly to the garden. Another option is to hire a tour service with an experienced tour guide who will take you around the garden and tell you everything you want to know about the garden.

An amazing plan to do when you are in Malaga is to embark on an excursion to another city and/or town, and what better place to visit than Granada. This is one of the most beautiful places to visit in Andalusia. Granada, with its famous Alhambra, is one of those destinations that you cannot miss on a trip as enriching as this one to Malaga.

There are several interesting neighbourhoods to visit in Granada, and you can even spend some time getting to know the local gastronomy before returning to Malaga. The other option you have is to go on a guided tour.

Generally in this type of guided tours, the tour guide is usually the driver of the vehicle, and in many occasions you can find these tours in languages other than Spanish, in case you want to visit the city together with some friends or family members who don't speak the language.

This kind of excursions to Granada usually last the whole day, so I recommend you to do this trip only if you are going to stay in Malaga for more than one day, so you can use the necessary time to visit this city in all its splendour and experience the different atmospheres and colours it has to offer.