Airport Location: Malaga, Spain
Amenities: One 24/7 café.
Disadvantages: Almost nowhere to sleep, no one doing it with you and only one place to buy snacks after about 11 PM.
I wasn’t planning on sleeping in Malaga. My ingenious plan was to beat jetlag before it hit and get on Central Standard Time a day before I left. What that would mean is staying up all night at the airport before catching my 6 AM flight the following morning, then promptly passing out the instant my fat arse hits that cheaply upholstered plane seat.
Only, nothing I ever plan typically goes that well. I also made the mistake of drinking two rather large beers at an outdoor café and felt just tipsy enough to want a quick kip at about 11:30 PM. Lucky for me, there were literally less than 10 other people looking to camp out overnight and I found a spot on a long cushioned bench near a café called Café Rigatta in Terminal 2. I sprawled out (sharing only with one other guy, there was room for at least 2 more on the bench) and conked.
Another downside to the Malaga airport is that unlike most budget airports with no overnight flights, the loop of security reminders and general airport announcements tends to get turned off between the hours of 12 and 5. Not here. The loop continued, playing the “please do not leave your suitcase unattended” blah every 15 minutes into eternity. Needless to say, even with my earplugs, I was still woken up by this every couple of plays. They’re not quiet.
When I finally let myself wake up for good at about 3:30 to go wait in line at my check-in counter, I passed only a handful of other people spread out across the airport. None of them must have looked far for their hideouts as they were all on the floor or on hard windowseat benches. I’m not saying my cushy bench was super comfortable (it really only worked when I was on my side as it was REALLY narrow and I am… well… not narrow), but at least my body parts weren’t falling asleep every 5 seconds from being squished against concrete. I even saw a quite obese woman sharing a snooze with her much thinner counterpart on the floor near one of the windows and she looked like an underfilled water balloon. There’s no way it was comfortable.
To note, the 24 hour café is called Café Y Te and is located in Terminal 3 all the way to the right behind the check-in counters by the bathrooms. There are hard chairs but no benches or seats nearby.
Overall ranking: 3/10 and only because of the lucky bench I found.