Saturday, April 9, 2016

Exploring Ronda

Saturday, April 10, 2016

Our drive from Zahara to Ronda, Spain, covering the beautiful Spanish countryside, was short and uneventful.



We arrived at Parador de Ronda Hotel in our little Opel Meriva rental car around 1:00 pm.



After checking in and dropping off our bags, we decided to stroll through Ronda to find a decent place to have lunch.


We strolled through some narrow cobblestone streets to Bodega San Francisco.


We ended up eating our lunch at Bodega San Francisco - a restaurant frequented by locals.



We enjoyed our inexpensive lunch there with all of the other local Spaniards.


The "Fried Mushrooms" were good, and the "Russian Salad" was fantastic. We really enjoyed our lunch at Bodega.


After lunch, we wandered around Ronda, exploring the ancient city walls and ruins.





We enjoyed walking around and marveling at the old houses, shops, and ruins.




One of the strolls led us outside the main city walls on the outskirts of Ronda, where we saw sheep grazing.






There are many beautiful, old, arched bridges in the city, and we stopped by a few.


Ronda is quite hilly, so we walked a lot up/down.




There are hundreds of beautiful overlooks of the surrounding area.



We decided to go for a long hike down to the valley below.



The view of the Puente Nuevo bridge is fantastic.


We saw a small waterfall under the bridge.


We hiked all the way to the bridge to the water storage facility.







There are very sharp, steep cliffs on either side.



Inna even managed to climb up on one of the platforms.


There were many blooming wildflowers on the trail.









There are very lovely-looking arches in Ronda.





After the hike, we decided to stop by a wine shop for a quick bite & drink at the El Morabito bar.




After drinking hot tea, we strolled some more, watching the beautiful sunset.






Nearby was the Plaza del Toros - the bullfighting ring - where bullfighting originated in Spain.






As the evening started to settle, we decided to look for a place for dinner. All of the places we looked at were either closed or packed.

We finally found Restaurant Nueva 13 open and filled with locals. The food was okay, the best we've had, but -it was fairly reasonably priced.





Sunday, April 11, 2016


In the morning, I woke up earlier to capture pre-sunrise photos. All of Ronda was asleep with no one out.









After taking many photos, it was time for our first and last breakfast at the Parador de Ronda Hotel.






We had a delicious breakfast with fresh croissants, juices, and coffee. It was time to say goodbye to Rondo and head to the Malaga airport (a few hours away).

We had an exhilarating time in Rondo and really enjoyed Spain overall.

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