On to the Province of MALAGA

The first stop is Nerja on the Costa del Sol, while the second stop, Ronda, a Pueblo Blanco is inland.  Both are autonomous Andalusian communities.

The first thing we notice here is the huge, beautiful trees, nearly barren of leaves but bursting with purple flowers.  Their colour is like nothing we've seen.  Dr. Google identifies them as Jacaranda trees.  Stunning even now near the end of their blooming time.  The bell-like blossoms drift to the ground like purple rain.

Our Airbnb is only a few blocks from the beach.

At the end of our street to get to the promenade

Walking the promenade is a great way to stretch after a bus ride.  The weather is warm but windy.  The beaches are inviting.  We do something rare for us and pay to return the next day to comfortable loungers for a beach day.  We haven't had a beach day since leaving Mexico.

Views up and down from our beach chairs:

From the promenade, the Balcon de Europa is visible, along with the restaurant that lies under it.  To get there one walks the narrow winding cobbled streets filled with vendors, cafes, bars and restaurants.  The views of the coast are expansive from here.   This rocky place, jutting out over the sea used to be a fortress to keep out British pirates and privateers.

From the promenade towards Balcon de Europa.  Look for the round glass building.                    The Plaza is its roof.

The next two photos are from the Balcon de Europa looking either way:

The Plaza of the Balcon de Europa is a wonderful people place.

The pretty little Church of El Salvador in the Plaza is a favourite place for weddings and there is one each day that we are in Nerja.

On our last evening, there is an event at the Plaza, starting at 5 and going late into the evening.  It starts out with young children from dance classes performing.  The ages get older as the evening goes on.  The children do mostly ballet and a bit of Flamenco.  A group of older women do some Flamenco.  A group of teens performs some scenes from Grease...well-done.  The last dancers (a couple) seem professional with their modern dance.

Then as darkness descends and the Plaza lights up, the music starts.

There is a young man who plays solo guitar.  The crowd loves his work.  The last performance we see has about eight guitarists backing up a female singer.

This is a fun community event, people greeting each other.  Children getting hugs and kisses from extended family after they get off the stage.  The children running to hug and kiss their (Abuela) grandma Flamenco dancers as they get off the stage.  Everyone eating ice cream and celebrating each other's talents and efforts.

A groomsman from tonight's wedding talks to the MC and they get permission to take over the stage briefly during an intermission.  Men from the wedding rush the groom onto the stage and throw him in the air a few times, while the bride, bridesmaids and other women look on.  The crowd cheers.

Nerja is a great place to eat tapas.  Buy one beer or wine (at prices less than in Canada) and get one free tapas.  Two or three tapas is a meal.  We are surprised at how substantial these petite dishes are. So a little bar-hopping is on.

Locals and ex-pats dress up for their bar-hopping, especially women with their jewels, make-up and heels.  Here we are in our casual shorts, shoes and shirts.  The narrow alleys with the bars reverberate with laughter and talking.  It's so noisy it's hard to hear the music from the buskers in the street.  The servers are busy, busy but still attentive to everyone.  They seem to have as much fun as the customers.

Its only 170 km from Nerja to Ronda but it takes two buses and most of the day to get there.

We find information on the web on how to do this short trip ... but something about it doesn't seem quite right, so we opt to head early to the bus station (a kiosk on a street) to inquire.  Sure enough, the web was wrong.  We get our tickets to a bus arriving in ten minutes.

We have to go to Malaga, then Ronda.  The bus arrives with the name Malaga on the front but the driver waves us away with no's and pointing to the space in front of his bus.  The next bus arrives, has the names of other communities on the front of it ... and its the one to Malaga.  Go figure.

The bus from Malaga takes us through little villages, olive groves and goat farms on the way to Ronda.  Ronda was first declared a city by Julius Caesar in the first century AD.  We look forward to exploring its old town and the Puente Nuevo and perhaps hiking down into the El Tajo gorge.

Its dinner time when we arrive, so off to the grocery store, cook a meal, then head into the streets.  Just around the corner is a small bar with a crowd of people at its outside tables.  They are here to hear the music, two guitarists and a flautist.  They are playing songs that people know.  Folks are dancing in the street and singing along with the words.  Their kids are running around playing with friends.  Everyone's happy.  We join in for a while.

In the morning it's off to the train station to buy tickets for our next destination, then we get to explore.

On a beautiful tiled wall with dedications to Ronda in a variety of languages, this one stands out:

Here is the entire wall

This is an amazingly accurate rendering of the town in tile

The number of tourists in little Ronda is shocking.  Most are here on day tours from Seville.  The crowds thin out in the late afternoon as the buses pull away.

Plaza del Toro is on the way to Tourist Information.  Ronda is famous for developing the modern style of bullfighting that is practiced today.

Statues of famous matadors and a bull are outside the bullring, which we choose not to enter.

TI tells us that we cannot hike into the bottom of the gorge now as repair work is being done on the paths down into the gorge.

In the end, it hardly matters.  We can get low enough that the views of Puente Nuevo (New Bridge) and the 120-meter deep gorge that carries the River Guadalevin are fabulous; as are the views of the valley in the distance.

The door that you see (in the photo above) over the central arch has a room that has been used both as a prison and a torture chamber.  The rumour is that up to 500 civil war captives were killed by tossing them off the bridge to the rocks below and that Ernest Hemingway wrote about it in his book, "For Whom the Bell Tolls".  That is not substantiated.

The bridge has 3 spans, is 66 meters long and 98 meters tall  Construction started in 1759 and finished in 1793.

There are two other bridges to see, the first being the old bridge or Puente Viejo:

Puente Viejo was built quickly and not very well.  In 1741 it collapsed, killing fifty people.

Below is the Arab bridge (AKA the Bridge of San Miguel):

We visited the Roman baths in  Palma, so decide to not go into the ones here, just a glimpse from the outside:

Wandering about the town we come across this man set up in a plaza hand-painting fans.  On this one he is meticulously creating an image of a bull out of a series of coloured dots, dabbing each one in its right place.

Today we try the menu of the day for lunch, sharing one order.  For 8 Euro we get a beautiful salad, fresh bread, rabbit (in a delicious sauce) and fried potatoes.  Beer and Sangria only 2 Euro per glass.

Bandoleros have quite a history in Spain dating from the 19th. century.  Many became bandits driven by poverty and the harsh feudal conditions in Spain.  While they were romanticized in film, art and even comic books for their proclivity to rob from the rich and give to the poor, they were a real force to be reckoned with.  Ronda claims to have the only museum in the world dedicated to Bandoleros, so we have to go in.  The museum prides itself on having documents that verify the existence of these men.  Everything from birth and death certificates, to reports of police and army being injured, while trying to capture them, to prison and execution records to news stories from the day.  They have almost 500 books written about them, dating back to 1823.

There are many drawings of bandoleros romancing women.

Posters from movies about bandits.  You will have seen some of these:

Ronda is a lovely city.  We are so glad we came here.  We are staying in a one-bedroom apartment that costs less than one of the hostels we stayed in.  It's around the corner from Puente Nueve and this and adjacent streets are filled with restaurants, shops and small bars.

Street one over from ours.  Our street looks the same

Another month has whizzed by.  Only one more stop in Spain.  Tomorrow it's on to Tarifa.  We have our ferry tickets to get over to Tangier, Morocco.

Random photos from Ronda:

A bowl of giant tomatoes

Alcazaba Fortress 

GRANADA - AKA, the Moorish Jewel

Now we are in Andalucian country, land of the Gypsy people of Sacromonte with their passionate Flamenco; a land with a past of eight centuries of Islamic rule, leaving behind the beautiful Nasrid palaces and a land where you can ski the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada in the morning and swim in the sea in the afternoon.

In the caves of Sacromonte, the Gypsy people gave birth to the zambra style of Flamenco, a dance and singing party that originated in the marriage rituals of the Moors in the sixteenth century but transformed into a unique art form.  A dance of the people.

This is our first Flamenco and sitting only six feet from the stage in a darkened cave, its almost overwhelming: the passion, the energy, the emotion, the singing, the clapping, the heels on the stage and the guitar.  It mostly fast and furious but can slow right down with deliberate hand movements, facial expressions and body language.  Its breath-taking.

The performance starts out with the guitar player, joined by two singers who mostly sing one at a time.  The woman seems to have very emotional songs to convey, the intensity can be quite startling.

The dancers mostly do solo performances.  Each one very intense, energetic and unique.  While one is dancing the other dancers and the singers are clapping, using their feet and following the performance with keen interest.

Granada, while quite hilly to walk is fairly compact.  Wandering the narrow, winding streets of the Albaicin (old Arab quarter) area, its a treat to see the Moorish architecture, the merchandise in the shops ranging from fragrant teas, spices and herbal medicines and dried fruit and nuts to colourful lamps and the beautiful views of Alhambra sitting high on a hill and on the banks of the river Darro.

The main reason to go to Granada is to see Alhambra "the Red One", so named for the colour of the rock from which it is built.  

Get your tickets to Alhambra about two months ahead of time if you can.  We did not and it's stressful trying to get last-minute tickets.  Tickets are not sold at the gate (despite what some people suggest on the internet).  They can only be purchased online from the official site.  Tickets are sometimes released when it appears that all are sold out.  We are told to check the internet at midnight, then about 6 am and regularly after that.  We do, and some tickets become available at about 11 am for the following day.  Whew!!

Alhambra, built for the last Muslim emirs in Spain dates from the 13th. Century and is at once a fortress, palaces and a small medina surrounded by orchards, gardens, and fountains.  The plain stone exterior of the Nasrid palace hides the most beautiful carved stone interiors that one can imagine.  

There are many rooms to the Nasrid palace, with no tags to say what each is, so imagination can fly.

Close-ups of some of the magnificent stone carving in the Nasrid palace:

Three painted ceilings in the palace:

Some of the many tile patterns in the Alhambra:

A few of the many gardens of the Alhambra:

So Many Types of Roses:

The one bottom middle is actually a lilac colour

Some of the great views from the Alhambra:

Its been a long, but rewarding day.  If it wasn't for fatigue, we would keep soaking in the beauty, and history.  We are heading back to our hostel in the old town to meet up with Linda for drinks.  We enjoyed her company another evening, so have planned to do it again.  

Random Photos Alhambra:

There are many incredible wood ceilings in the Alhambra

Almost home, stop to get some Euros and the ATM eats my bank card.  Great.  It turns out OK.  The guy at the emergency ATM phone reassures me I can get it back tomorrow, and I do.  The Credit Union back in Canada takes the withdrawal amount on the card down to zero, in case its a scam and will re-instate it when I give the word.  A lovely woman from Finland stops to reassure me that it happened to her the other day and she got her card back just fine.  It would be ideal to have bank cards from two different banks, but all our eggs are in one basket, so our back up is more than one credit card.  If worse come to worse, cash advances on the cards work.

Next, we head off to the Andalusian town of Nerja for a few days of relaxing at the beach, then a few days at Ronda, one of the Pueblo Blanco's in a stunning setting.

Random Photos from Granada: