Renovation project - Ronda, Spain

Renovation project - Ronda, Spain

Today we are driving to Ronda, this was a place recommended by barrel hopping, we do not really know what to expect other than a very large bridge across a ravine in the town.

The drive is almost 500 km across Spain and at least this time the sat nav has found our hotel so we know where we are going!

The temperature stays at a steady 35 degrees centigrade and we get such a shock as we are driving across the Sierra Nevada National Park, the mountains still have snow on them, this is one of the strangest experiences and we stop for a drink and to get a photograph, we still can’t believe we are driving past snow capped mountains in this heat!!!

Once we arrive in Ronda and find our hotel we park the car, the hotel has secure parking underneath, this is something you have to be wary about when booking a hotel in a town or city, the parking is almost always extra, so be sure to add this to the price of the hotel, some were charging up to 18 euro’s a day for parking, so it is sometimes worth looking at a more expensive hotel that includes the parking.

The room is basic but has everything we need, there is also a balcony where you can see down the main street, the thing that takes us most by surprise is the amount of shops, this is one of the biggest shopping streets we have seen yet (obviously nothing compared to London or a big city, but much bigger than we had expected)

We have a quiet first night and are up and ready to explore in the morning.

The place is amazing, we walk to the ravine and wonder how on earth they managed to build such a bridge, 

we could not take a photo that did it justice.

The sun is burning down on us so we head back into the town for a drink, we find a fantastic bar that has a water mist spraying on you, this is bliss and the view in the little square is so pretty (we also found another bar with this mist but they hadn’t quite got it right and there were puddles everywhere and if you sat in the wrong seat you ended up very wet).

Walking back to the hotel we head down a few side streets and come across a little chapel, this looks just like one of the houses other than the carvings and the painting under the temple.

We have a small siesta before going to watch the sunset over the mountains, standing by the old walls, the drop is spectacular, it is hard to imagine that the entire town is built on the edge of the mountain, words and photo’s do not do the place justice and this is one place we would highly recommend to anybody to visit.

The sunset is so beautiful and we had planned to have a picnic with a bottle of wine, we are old romantics at heart, but I forgot the picnic and we didn’t find a shop that sold wine so we had to make do with a can of lager each, it was still romantic!

We find a tapas bar for some dinner in the town and the price was unbelievable the tapas ranged from 1 to 2 euro for each dish, the entire meal with a couple of drinks each cost Euro’s 19, and the food was beautiful. I even got to try the snails, I have wanted to for sometime but just couldn’t bring myself to order them in a restaurant in case I didn’t like them, but at a euro, who cares? I had one and it was OK, although I didn’t have another, I couldn’t get the vision of slime out of my head, even though they did not taste slimy, they were very like shell fish, but at least now I can say I have tried them, the other dish that stood out was dog fish, again a first but this will definitely not be a last! If we ever go back to Ronda we will definitely be finding Bar la Posada again.

There is also a bull ring in the town and apparently it was the first purpose built bull ring in Spain, it was lovely to look at but the idea of what happens inside does not sit well with me, it is difficult to enjoy the sites when they go against your beliefs, but we concentrated on the building and it was nice.