A whirlwind tour of Spain

We've just finished a whirlwind tour of southern Spain - Arcos de la Frontera, Rhonda, Granada and then back to Seville.  We visited the Alhambra, the Alcazar and Alabyzin, and I'm getting a bit mixed up about all the names and places we've visited in the past 5 days.  Here is a map with our stops from our last week in Spain:

(You can also see some of the places we "day-tripped" from our Zahora beach house: Cadiz (just up the coast), Vajer de la Frontera (so close it's buried under the Zahora "X"), Tarifa (the southernmost city in continental Europe that sounds like the name of a desert), and Tangier (across the water in Africa).  Conil is not on the map but is just north of Zahora, on the coast.)

We finished up our stay at Zahora Beach with a walk down the beach at sunset, and then a visit to a local restaurant (La Triana) for dinner.  They specialized in seafood so we had ... seafood!  Then we stayed up until about 2AM so Jack could hang out with his new friends.  Our neighbours (who were from London, although the wife was originally from Malaga, Spain) recommended that we visit ... Malaga!  Apparently at Malaga they have the best seafood, the best olive oil, and the best wine.  Everyone from Malaga thinks so.  They also recommended Granada (others had also recommended Granada to us) so we decided to spend a couple of nights there.

We got a late start the next morning (we left our beach home after noon) so we drove to Arcos de la Frontera for lunch.  Arcos is a "pueblo blanco" (white hill town) much like others we had already visited.  We had a nice lunch (tapas) and did a walking tour of the town.

Does this look like every other "pueblo blanco" that we've visited???

Sonya is happy with a glass of wine at the Flamenco bar :-)

This apparently is a popular spot for suiciders.  Male only though, the women have a separate cliff.

Then we drove to Ronda to spend the night.  (For the curious, Zahora to Ronda was about a 2 1/2 hour drive altogether.)

If you have never been to Ronda, Spain - go!  The town spans a deep gorge, which is crossed by several bridges.  There are 2 older bridges, which are fairly small, and then this amazing "new" bridge (it's called the "new" bridge because it was built in the 1700's when the previous bridge fell down; the 1700's is the start of the modern era here).  The town of Ronda itself is very beautiful, and although there are many tourist areas, the whole town is not "spoiled" as many similar tourist destinations in Italy and Spain have become.

The next day we had what has become my favourite breakfast of this trip - a toasted baguette with tomato, olive oil and ham.  In this particular establishment the proprietor trimmed some ham off a pork leg that was sitting outside the restaurant, basking in the sun.  I think Spain has different "food safe" rules than we are used to.  Nevertheless, delicious!

Then we accidentally found that there are many hiking trails around the town.  We bought the pamphlet for the simplest trail (about 5 km) that meandered down to the base of the "new" bridge, and then out into the countryside around the town.  Giving us a spectacular view of Ronda, the town in the hills.

My last meal in Ronda, a mixed (surf & turf) paella.

At this point some of us were regretting that we had already booked the next 2 nights in Granada.  I could easily spend a few more days in Ronda, hiking some more of the trails and generally relaxing about town.  Ronda also has one of the oldest bull rings in Spain (at least I think it's in Ronda, we've visited so many towns they're all starting to blur together.)  However we packed up the car and headed to Granada!

(I had google-mapped the drive, and according to my memory it was purported to be about 1 1/2 hours, however it took about 3.  So much for my aging memory!)

In Granada the first thing we did was book tickets to see Alhambra, an old Moorish city, fort and castle.  It is considered one of the most spectacular sights in Spain (and the main reason we decided to make the long drive to Granada).  It was well worth the drive!

In Granada, as in most European towns, the church(es) dominate the skyline.

The fort at the Alhambra.

One of the many courtyards at the sultan's palace.

There were elaborate decorations on all the walls and ceilings.  They were made by pressing molds into the plaster when it was wet.  In the day the walls were painted red, blue, green and gold (the colours of Islam) but now most of the colour is faded and the walls are just white.

You can see some traces of the old colour here.

One of the may domes ceilings.  The windows were placed to allow the light in a certain angles to make the dome seem to "swirl".

Another of the sultan's many gardens, this one is at the Generalife, the summer palace.

In the evening we met up with Marcos (a friend of mine from Victoria who was vacationing with his family in Spain) and he took us to some tapas bars a bit "off the beaten track".  Another nice feature of Granada - they still observe the tradition of serving a free tapa with each round of drinks.  So while we have been "paying through the nose" for our meals, Marcos & family have been bar-hopping, ordering small beers, and taking full advantage of the ancient traditions (i.e. free tapas).

Afterwards we went to a flamenco show at the Generalife (the summer palace and gardens near the Alhambra), which was fairly spectacular.  There were no photos allowed during the show but here is a pic of the troupe bowing at the end of the show.

The next day (our last day in Granada) we explored the Albyzin, the old Moorish neighbourhood on the hills facing the Alhambra.  (This is where the Moors settled after the "reconquista".)  It was very hilly but provided more terrific views of the city.

For breakfast, churros ... dipped in chocolate.

In the late afternoon we returned to Seville.  We encountered a serious traffic jam just outside of Granada, and thought we had hit some weekend traffic (we realized after we were already on the road that we had planned our drive at 4 PM on a Friday afternoon) however it turned out that the heavy traffic was due to a garbage truck that had overturned and blocked the entire highway!  This added about an hour onto our drive, and we arrived in Seville around 7:30, giving us time to freshen up before heading out to an early Spanish dinner (9:30 PM for dinner is considered early here).  We went back to one of the tapas bars we had visited on our last trip, and then wandered about town some more looking for a second course :-)

The next day Jack & I visited the Plaza de Espania.  (Sonya decided to go shoe shopping rather than doing something "fun" with me & Jack.  Pffft.)  It was built in 1929 for the World's Fair, and has been used as a film set for many movies, including the Star Wars franchise.  Our hotel guy told is it was "the most beautiful thing in all of Spain" and he was not far from wrong!

However Jack felt that this was "boring" so we packed up and headed over to the local bull ring for a tour.  This was very interesting (!) to learn what bull fighting is all about.  Some people don't realize that the bulls are killed in the fight (however the meat is sold afterwards at a special supermarket).

We didn't see any bullfights but we saw lots of pictures of bullfights.

Later in the afternoon we visited the Cathedral.  It was built on the site of an old Moorish temple, and the builders wanted to build a cathedral "so big that people would say we were crazy!"  It was pretty big and I say they were crazy.

The bell tower is the tallest structure in all of Seville, and in fact according to the local building code you cannot build a structure taller than the bell tower of the cathedral.  How insecure is that?  At any rate it means that the view from the bell tower is unobstructed and pretty spectacular!

(See the smoke off in the distance?  Someone tried to build something taller than the cathedral.)

In the evening we met up with Marcos & family (I'm not sure who is stalking who here, although it's nice to have a "local" (Marcos is relatively local since he lived in Spain for a period during his youth and speaks Spanish) to show us around) and went to another flamenco performance.  This one was in a very small venue and featured two local dancers.  A certain critic labelled this "the best performance of our trip!"  Once again no photos allowed during the performance :-(

(Except at the end.)

The next day we visited the Alcazar.  (Anyone getting confused over all these very-similar-Arabic-names yet?)  This is a Moorish-style palace, although it was built (in the Moorish style) for the Christian rulers of Spain.  They imported Moorish architects who secretly included Islamic sayings in the decor ("there is no conquerer but Allah" etc).

Notice the similarity of design to the sultan's palace from the Alhambra.  Since this palace is newer (and still in use by the royal family of Spain) there is more of the original colour of the plaster decorations.

There were many elaborate tile mosaics (the Spanish sure love their tiles!) however this one was my favourite:

It falls under the heading of: "You had one job!"

Then we had a nice lunch (tapas again) and headed to the airport for our flight back to Italy.