Sophie Wilson - www.stuff.co.nz

Sophie Wilson visits Malaga on a trip from Barcelona to Morocco - and discovers a magical town, free of charter flight tourists.

Small plates of oil soaked anchovies vie for space on a wine barrel covered with marinated mushrooms, fried calamari and glasses of tinto de verano and beer.

We graze on the tapas, a Spanish delight, and sip drinks into the balmy night as buskers do the rounds, playing a tune or two and collecting coins before moving on to the next crowded street bar.

There, where wine barrel tables spill out onto cobble stoned streets, they will play the same few pieces, on guitar perhaps, or accordion, while people eat into the late hours of the night and drink, though never get drunk.

I expected Spain's Malaga to be a tacky town, brimming over with charter flight tourists on their way to the Costa del Sol, avoided by anyone with an allergy to resort towns.

For that reason I was just passing through on my way to Morocco, dropping off a rental car and giving up perhaps a night to the city, maybe a morning to its streets.

But I found an absence of package tourists looking for bacon and egg breakfasts and instead a solid Spanish crowd eating croissant and drinking coffee as they stood at bars late each morning.

It seems tourists give Andalucia's charming city not a second glance before heading to the horrible, crowded beaches.

But it is gorgeous and I would happily have spent a week, a month, eating tapas and drinking wine, or shopping for bread, cheese and vegetables at the huge indoor market to picnic in a lush park, with friends and a two euro bottle of sangria.

It would take that long for me to learn to navigate the winding old streets, which luckily all seem to lead, in the end, to the main plaza.

And to be able to find the Picasso museum - testament to Malaga's famous son - whenever I like, rather than because chance leads me to it.

The Moors occupied Malaga until the mid fifteenth century and have left their mark on the city's historic centre and its 1065 fortress La Alcazaba.

After the Moors the city became one of the biggest trading centres on the peninsula. Now Malaga is a charming hybrid of old and new, a shopper's dream as well as an historian's.

We had come from Barcelona, where I immediately remembered tastes from a previous trip to Seville in the tang of the tinto de verano - red wine with lemon soda - and in the delicious open affection of the Spaniards.

We submerged ourselves in the streets and the gorgeous La Boqueria market off the Rambla, a food lover's fantasy, overflowing with olives, meats, cheeses and breads, tapas bars and vegetable vendors.

We walked hours every day until we began to recognise corners, streets and plazas, knew where to get the best coffee and croissant, and had been ripped off by streetside shysters.

Barcelona is layered with history, with monuments of Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance periods, as well as the modernist architecture led by the standout, organic works of Antoni Gaudi.

But four days in we left, the bull fight we planned for rained out and our rental car waiting unused while we lounged around lovely Barcelona.

Our road journey took us inland, where we roadside camped in golden fields, eating delights like calamari and baby octopus. Where we roadside picnicked in orange groves, eating the divine Spanish olives, cheese and avocados.

Via Valencia, where we missed the bullfight by a day, to Malaga, where we were weeks early for it but visited the museum, where photos of gouged bulls and men put me off the idea completely.

We then rent a car with friends who are in Spain a matter of days - such are the opportunities of cheap charter flights - and drive up, up, up to Rhonda, an ancient walled town poised on the edge of a ravine.

Then finally to Morocco, much later than planned, but glad for the Andalucian idle and Malagan magic.