Ronda - the Birthplace of Bull fighting

Hello again everyone!

For those of you keeping track, Ronda was our second official stop on our tour around Spain and Portugal. As a point of reference, I am actually writing this post in Salema, a small beach town on the Portuguese coast, but since we are a few days behind in our posts I am going to catch you up on our wonderful visit to Ronda.

To start it off, here is a fun video clip I took in Ronda of some of the locals dancing Flamenco in the streets. It was a very festive atmosphere!



Ronda is a pretty incredible little white hill town in the south of Spain. When I say white hill town I don’t mean that the hills are white, but that all the houses in the town are white. There are a whole string of these towns across southern Spain, as they demarcate what used to be the border towns for the battle between the Spaniards and the Moors. These towns on the border normally have in their name “de la frontera” which means “of the frontier”. When we left Ronda we drove past a number of other small towns, but none that looked as impressive as Ronda.

Ronda’s most impressive feature is that it is built completely on cliff walls. And not just one, the middle of town is split down the middle by a ravine or crevasse that is over 300 feet deep. Originally the Moors built on one side and were able to defend it against the Spanish. Then after the Spanish overtook it, they built a bridge across and built on the other side as well. The new bridge is a very impressive site, and we have many pictures of it to show you.

We came to Ronda on the end of a big festival that they have every year. It turns out that bull fighting originated in Ronda, as a way for soldiers to train before battles. The “Feria de Pedro Romero” celebrates one of the most famous bull fighters in the country’s history, who was of course from Ronda, and they commemorate it by bringing in the most famous current bull fighters in Spain.

So we landed right in the middle of this festival. We did not attend any of the bull fights for a couple of reasons. We didn’t really want to see them kill the 6 bulls that they kill in each fight, and we didn’t want to pay the 80 euros per person to attend either.

Our hotel was great, and was actually the host of a big party for the most famous bull fighter who attended the event. The hotel, called the “Jardin de la Muralla”, meaning the Gardens of the City Wall” is located right next to the old city walls, and was very beautiful. You can see by the pictures how nice it it, although air conditioning would have been appreciated. =^)

Here are the pictures from this visit:

The first pictures are of our hotel. It was really great.

For Candido, because he asked, here is a shot of the mythical man-purse that is all the rage in Europe. Don't hate me because I am beautiful. =^)

Here are some shots of the town. It was very pretty.

Here are some shots taken by the bridge.

Here is Laura next to the Bull ring. Turns out that it is the biggest and oldest bull ring in the country.

Ronda was also very beautiful at night.

And this shot is specially for Manuel (Jr).

For anyone who just can't get enough of our pictures, here is a link to our Flickr account where we have the rest of our Granada pictures. Hope you enjoy!

Next after Ronda we went to Tarifa, Gibralter, and Africa (Morocco). I will post information and pictures soon!

Granada - A Truly Beautiful City

Hello everyone,

Things are finally starting to settle into normalcy. By some miracle we have received our bags, all four in the same day yet in three separate shipments, and once again can take a shower without having to wash the day's clothes at the same time.

I am writing this on the evening of Saturday the 10th, at around 1 am our time (about 4 pm on Sunday your time). We have some really great pictures to post for you, but don’t want to overwhelm you all at once. So what we decided to do was post one post for each city we go to (leaving out Barcelona since we will be there all winter and you will see plenty more from there later).

So the first city we stopped in was Granada. We chose 20 of our best pictures, which was difficult since we had over 200 to choose from. We are going to create an account on one of those photo sharing sites later so you can see them all if you want, but we figure most people would prefer the light version. =^)

To quickly describe our visit to Granada, I will say it was magical. The city has four main areas by our description. There is the new area we didn't really go into. Besides that there is the old district, which was really pretty with a beautiful cathedral. Also there is the Alhambra, a series of palaces and grounds that cover both 13th century Moorish buildings and the subsequent Spanish palace that Christopher Columbus made his request to Queen Isabel in for sailing to the new world.

The final area is called the Albayzin. It is a residential area on the hillside that overlooks the Alhambra. It is built in the old style of small white-washed buildings crammed together, with thin narrow twisting streets. It was magical to walk through in the evening after one of our dinners.

Here begins our picture tour:

This first shot shows me looking hot next to a small river that runs through Granada. At this point we had just started venturing out from our hotel, and had no idea where we were going. This was on the edge of the "Jardines de Granada". Soon after we started to learn our way around town, but at this point we were basically lost. It was very pretty though, perhaps more so in person.

Shot number two advances to Laura looking cute in front of a fountain a bit further into town.

Shot number three is taken from the edge of Plaza Nueva, something our guidebook writer Rick Steves talked much about and took some serious searching (and a quick lunch) to find. From here we were able to really navigate town, since by walking straight uphill you come to the Albayzin, you also have a straight view of the Alhambra, and we could access a tourist information office that gave us a free map.

Shot number four was taken in a small series of alleys that were full of shops. Notice that they kindly draped cloth above the walkways to block out the sun. This comes in very handy to keep off the heat. This market we later discovered is called the Alcaiceria, which was originally a Moorish silk market.

Shot number five is of either the Royal Chapel or the Cathedral. To be honest we are not really sure if they are the same thing or not. They are mentioned separately in our guidebooks, yet when we entered we only know we saw the cathedral. Inside we took a tour, an audio tour where you listen on a device, that was very boring.

Here is us on the tour. We were happy to be there, but this is probably the most we listened to the tours since they did a very poor job of holding our attention. It was extremely beautiful inside, but we didn't post any pictures because they don't do the church any justice.

Candido, this one is for you. This is just to show that we are thinking of you on our trip, or that at least we ran into a sign with your name on it. =^) Oh, and we will post pictures of the man-purse on a subsequent post, so stay tuned!

This next shot was taken in what was my favorite intersection. I took like 10 pictures of the buildings on this corner, even though Laura wasn't overly impressed. Branching out from this corner was some excellent shopping, something we took advantage of since we had no clean clothing.

Speaking of shopping, Laura found this neat hat that I told her she had to buy. She since has decided she doesn't like it and didn't want me to post this picture, but she looks so great in it, and the fountain is so neat, that I went and posted it anyway. Let her know if you like the hat, and be honest!

This shot is a view of the Albayzin district from the Alhambra. I really like this shot, because it gives you an idea of how beautiful and scenic it was everywhere we went. There were better views than this from many locations, unfortunately most of them don't look that great in pictures because you can only fit a small percentage of the view into the shot.

This was taken on the grounds of the Alhambra. The building on the right is Charles the Fifths Palace. He was the conquering King who finally drove the Moors out of Spain. To the left are some ruins from some of the other buildings.

This was taken from inside the older Moorish palace, called the "Palacios Nazaries". This temple was really incredible, and had impressive rooms decorated from top to bottom with carved wood ceilings, stucco stalactites, ceramic tiles, and molded plaster walls. One of the neatest things was that on the walls they have molded Arabic script. One particular saying, "Only Allah is Victorious", is repeated over 9,000 times throughout the palace.

Here is Laura next to one of the walls. All the walls were covered with this writing everywhere!
Everywhere in the palace had incredible views.

Here I am enjoying one.

This was inside the palace grounds.

More beautiful scenery...

More palace shots...

From the palace towards the Albayzin...

This pool was outside the Moorish palace. We really liked the reflection on the water.

After we left the palace we went to the Albayzin to enjoy the sunset at an incredible viewspot. We ended up having some wine at a restaurant that had a great view of the palaces.

So we will stop there. That should be plenty of pictures for most of you. I will let you know when we can get the rest online for those who want more.

Thanks for listening, and we hope you are all doing well!

P.S. - Manuel (Jr) this is for you!!!