Destinations
Places worth the drive, with parking and access notes.
Three towns in one — a pretty pueblo, a busy beachfront and the playful Puerto Marina — plus a mountain cable car and a fairy-tale castle. A varied, family-friendly stop close to Málaga airport.
Volcanic headlands, empty coves and whitewashed fishing villages in Spain's driest corner. Public transport barely exists inside the park — Cabo de Gata is the definition of a road-trip destination.
The Mosque-Cathedral, a maze-like Jewish quarter and Andalucía's most famous patios — under two hours from Málaga on the A-45, and far more rewarding when you control your own arrival time.
The famous cliff-hung walkway through the Gaitanes gorge is a one-way, two-entrance affair in the middle of nowhere — which makes a car by far the easiest way to do it, and turns the trip into a full lake-and-mountain day out.
The 'Garden of the Costa del Sol' keeps a genuinely Spanish old town — flower-filled lanes, a famous mural route and an easy, walkable centre — west of Marbella with long, uncrowded beaches.
A cascade of whitewashed lanes above Nerja, regularly voted among Spain's most beautiful villages. The catch: it clings to a hillside with no through road — so arriving by car, early, at the right car park is half the visit.
A relaxed, family-friendly resort midway between Málaga and Marbella, with a 7 km promenade, a Moorish castle and one of Spain's best small zoos — and very easy parking.
The capital of the Costa del Sol mixes an Andalusian old town with a glossy marina and 27 km of beaches — and it's the perfect base for the western coast and the white villages inland.
A whitewashed village perched 400 metres above the Costa del Sol, twenty minutes up the hill from Fuengirola — postcard lanes, sweeping sea views and an easy first taste of white-village Andalusia.
The Moorish Alhambra, the tangled lanes of the Albaicín and the Sierra Nevada rising behind it all — Andalusia's great inland day trip, about an hour and a half from Málaga by car.
A whitewashed beach town on the eastern Costa del Sol, built around the Balcón de Europa lookout — with cliff-backed coves, the famous caves and the village of Frigiliana all a short drive away.
Marbella's superyacht marina is pure Costa del Sol glamour — designer boutiques, waterfront restaurants and a beach on each side. It's an easy 10-minute drive west of Marbella.
A clifftop town split by a 100-metre gorge and stitched back together by the Puente Nuevo — reached by one of Andalusia's great mountain drives and far better with your own car than on a tour bus.
A white village literally built into a rock gorge — houses roofed by cliff, tapas bars in the shade of the overhang. Reachable only sensibly by car, and best combined with Ronda.
The Andalusian capital — cathedral, Real Alcázar and Plaza de España. Drive there on the fast A-92, park once on the edge of the old town, and explore the centre entirely on foot.
Mainland Spain's highest mountains, less than an hour above Granada: Europe's southernmost major ski resort in winter, high-altitude hiking in summer — and a spectacular mountain road either way.
The original Costa del Sol resort, just minutes from Málaga airport, pairs long sandy beaches with the old fishing quarter of La Carihuela — famed for its beachfront seafood. The handiest first or last stop of a trip.
Europe's southernmost town: a whitewashed old quarter staring across the Strait at Morocco, backed by kilometres of wild Atlantic sand. Public transport is thin — this is car country.