Ronda via Antequera, Spain

10 - 11 March 2017

ROADTRIP!!  How exciting to be hitting the road for 3 days with Hanna.  For the first night we will be staying in Ronda, Spain which is a 3 hour (110 mile) drive.  To break the drive up we will be stopping in Antequera, one hour away.

As soon as we entered Antequera there was a sign for public parking that conveniently also had a tourist information booth.  Adorned with a map we mad our way out of the parking lot to be met by this gorgeous sculpture that just grabbed me:

As we walked up the main street we passed a supermarket and decided to buy the makings for a picnic lunch.  Here we are enjoying it street side:

Lunch on a street corner

What a beautiful, small village this is:

We were here primarily to check out the Alcazaba, a Moor fortress built in the 14th century. Like all forts, this one required us to walk up hill where we were rewarded with this view of the Antequera below:

What an incredibly amazing place this was:

This scenery is exactly as I imagined as you read about the Middle Ages:

Just passt Alcazaba was an old church with amazing architecture inside:

After Alcazaba, we made our way back to the other side of town where our car was parked and took in the sites of Antequera one last time:

We got into the car and drove the last 2 hours to Ronda to check out one of the largest "white hill towns" in this area of Spain called Andalusia.   Check out our apartment we rented for the night.  We have the whole first floor:

Hanna liking our dig for the night

Oh...this is right next door to our apartment:

We got settled in and decided to walk around and find a place to eat.  As we walked down the street the bells on this church started ringing:

Cool, old church

We approached a bridge just around sunset and saw all these people looking over the edge.  What are they so enthralled about?  As soon as we reached the bridge and looked over we now knew.  Holy cow!  This is amazing!  The town of Ronda is divided into two sections by this 360 feet deep / 200 feet wide gorge spanned by this incredible bridge built in the mid to late 1700s.

With the sun quickly setting it was hard to get any more photos, so you will just have to wait till later when I post photos from the next day.

We wound up in Plaza del Soccorro that was lined with tapas restaurants and just picked one to eat at.  The food was just so-so, but the sangria and the company were great:

After dinner we went back to the apartment and got some much needed rest after all the driving, walking, and visiting we did today.

Our plan for the next day is to tour the bullring in town and then drive to Málaga where we will stay on Saturday night.  We managed to get out of the apartment around 9:00 AM and crossed that magnificent bridge again.  Here is a view of the valley that I couldn't get last night;

I am pretty against bullfighting and would never attend a fight, but being in Spain we had to tour one bullring, and from what I read, this is the bullring to visit.  Ronda is home to the first, thus oldest bullring in Spain built in 1785.

Just bulling around

Tim posing like a matador

Ronda is quite proud that Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway both frequently visited here:

OK...one more look over that amazing bridge before leaving town for Málaga: