Trip Report! Day 5: Granada to Ronda

The drive out of Granada was straight up crazy. Benjamin insists it was no big deal but he is WRONG because it was terrifying. There is one road into the Sacromonte, no wider in most places than a standard one-lane Scottish country road, but intended for two way traffic and crammed between buildings on each side. The narrowest section is right at the neighborhood exit, and naturally, it was at this point that someone else was coming the opposite way and decided that rather than backing up to let us pass, they would just squeeze by. I honestly cannot imagine the clearance between our cars was more than one inch. This is why nearly every car we saw in Granada had huge scratches on both sides, clearly. Anyway, though, we somehow made it out of the Sacromonte and through the equally crazy Albayzin and out to the freeway without incurring any damage to the car. I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone ever drive in Granada. Rick Steves says to park on the outskirts of town and take a taxi to your hotel, and he is one hundred percent correct. Even Ben agreed after that the fact that although it had worked out fine for us, it probably was not something he would want to do again.

Ronda is the largest of Spain's White Hill Towns, and is routinely referred to as "spectacular," so I was pretty excited to see it. The drive there took about 2 hours, on major highways most of the way, and despite one wrong turn entering town and then an incident with the parking lot attendant that required our hotelier to storm across the square and yell at him, we made it. We stayed at the La Colegiata de Ronda apartments, which were absolutely lovely and in a great location in Ronda's old town.

This church was next door to the apartments.

It really was a full apartment, with a small kitchen, washing machine, separate bedroom, and patio. I love staying in apartments when we travel and I can't understand how they are not more expensive than regular hotels. 

It was really a gorgeous place, with heavy wood ceiling beams and doors.

This is the view from our patio.

We got lunch at the restaurant right in front of our hotel. Ben ordered breaded, deep-fried chorizo (unsurprisingly, this would become a favorite item from the trip) and I got a tapas sampler.

During the ordering of this food, our waitress seemed to understand English pretty well. I asked her something like, "is this little or big?" and she seemed to answer the question, but then later she said something that sounded like "little pig," and I thought, "hm." A few minutes later, she walked outside and said, "the little pig will take 20 minutes," and we smiled and said okay and then exchanged furious whispers about what in the world that meant. "Are they going to bring me an entire pig?" "What will we do with it?" etc.

It arrived and was only a portion of a little pig, thank goodness. Ben felt pretty uncomfortable about the whole concept as it was not something he would have ever intentionally ordered, but he did eat it and reported that it was pretty amazing.

After our accidentally huge lunch, we walked down through the old town to see some sights.

Ronda is famous for the Puente Nuevo bridge, which was built in the 1700s. A nice German lady took our picture in front of it.

Ben surveys the landscape.

Our walk led us back up into the newer section of town, where Ronda's bullring is located. Modern bullfighting started in Ronda (or so they claim), so we paid to go in and look around. There were horses there but no bulls.

These are the stalls from which they let the bulls loose to run into the ring.

It's sort of hard to believe bullfighting is an actual thing, but it is still very popular in Spain. 

There was also an interesting museum inside, but pictures weren't allowed.

After the bullring we walked down to the bottom of this cliff for a better view of the gorge and Puente Nuevo.

It's a pretty magical place.

The path got really muddy and slippery here but Benjamin wanted to keep going.

He took pictures of the river and waterfalls at the bottom.

Then, sadly, we had to hike all the way back up to the top, at which point we needed showers, so we headed back to the hotel for relaxing on the patio.

Ronda really quieted down after dark - most of its tourists are day trippers from the coastal resorts. We ate dinner on a patio and then walked around for a while before bed.

Ronda was lovely! There are not a lot of things to see, per se, but I could have spent another day or two there just relaxing.