Monday 11.08.2010


Hill Country

It is going to be a little cooler today with some clouds this morning. We have a string of short drives so we have no need to leave Seville before noon. Jorge, our host in Tavira, told us that we could get Alhambra tickets for our later visit to Granada from the BBVA Bank in Seville and dodge the long lines when we get there. (He’s the one who spoke five words of English.) We had seen one of those banks yesterday so we walk past the Cathedral into the heart of the city to check it out. Mary finds out that all the ticket sales take place next door at the Caixa, and when we get there we see a sign that seems to indicate that the Alhambra tickets have to be purchased online.


Nothing left for us to do at this point but find one of the other Starbucks that is calling our names. It is a little cool and breezy on the patio so we take our coffees and walk back to the hotel to use their internet connection before we leave. On the way we see a poster for a big upcoming Flamenco show and the couple featuredon the poster is the same pair we saw last night. We thought they were good. We know the website for Alhambra tickets and try multiple credit cards to purchase tickets online but all are rejected. We just used one to check out at the hotel, which means the cards are working, but the ticket sellers must restrict foreign cards.

We drag the luggage (no hugs and kisses from the hotel staff--they must be employees) a couple blocks to our parking garage since John refuses to bring the car into the evil collection of back alleys, pay our fees and hit the road. We are taken through a long series of suburbs for about the first half-hour of our trip. The European inner cities we have visited are jam-packed hubs of activity with residents living in close quarters and spending a lot of time on the streets, which makes them inherently interesting. The burbs on the other hand tend to be a boxy industrial looking sprawl without character and missing the American-style trimmed yards, gardens and dressy shopping areas. Our exposure is usually along highways so that probably influences what we see.

The countryside doesn’t improve much for the first hour of our drive. There are scruffy commercial buildings, scruffier houses and unappealing low plants and cactus spread over arid ground. Gradually the terrain changes to rolling fields that have recently been planted with something, olive orchards, vineyards and citrus groves. That in turn gives way to the Spanish Hill Country and their dramatic white towns.

These hills are either very big hills or very small mountains. We saw the same type of “sierras” crossing northern Spain earlier in our trip as well as in west-central France. The elevation according to GPS chick Monique gets up over 3000 feet and the temperature has dropped at least ten degrees with rain moving in. Of late, Monique has been a less than reliable soldier for us and once again she lets us down. There is a lot of construction coming into Ronda, our home for the next three days, and Monique has us looping in circles around the town walls. We eventually get into the middle and see a sign for our hotel and after a couple u-turns we find it. Our discounted parking is a couple blocks away which seems to work fairly easily. We chat a bit with a nice older British couple who have retired in Scotland. The fellow asks John if it is raining out and John says, “if you’re from Scotland it is only high humidity.” He coordinated work between the British electrical authority and Control Data so has been in Minneapolis many times.

The hotel itself, the San Gabriel, is an old Spanish hacienda style with tons of fancy tile, heavy woodwork, chandeliers and pictures of ancestors. The public rooms are beautiful and so is our “suite.” We have a nice sitting area with a sofa, refrigerator and TV, with the sleeping area in an elevated alcove off one end. Our three third floor windows overlook orange trees, tiled roofs, a couple churches and miles of valleys beyond. Lovely. Former guests George Hamilton IV and Isabella Rosellini have their pictures on the wall downstairs so we won’t be the first beautiful people to have stayed here.

It is almost 5:00, cold, drizzling and we haven’t had a bite to eat since a muffin with our Starbucks this morning. We walk a block towards the center of town where we run into the first open café we see, order two beers and a very late lunch. We get a plate of albondigas, pale looking meatballs in a peppery oil sauce and a cold potato salad in vinegar and oil, seasoned nicely with herbs and onions. Our humanity has been restored.

It’s umbrellas up as we walk across the “new” bridge over the gorge into the main city. More about the gorge at a later date. We find the main shopping street/pedestrian area that we walk from top to bottom. With our late lunch and the cold rain, Mary suggests that we find a grocery store for a bottle of wine and some meats and cheeses to go with our supply of crackers for dinner in our room. That’s what a nice room should be for. Mary accosts some people carrying grocery bags asking for directions to the “Mercado.” Of course we don’t understand a word but try to follow the pointing without luck. We repeat the same process with another couple with different grocery bags who point us even further afield. Eventually we retrace our steps and find a good-enough place for an in-room picnic.


The front desk person, Hilda, had helped us earlier with a broken glass that flew out of our little refrigerator when we opened it, and now has a replacement glass, extra pillows and a bowl of ice for our party. Our entertainment for the evening is BBC News, the wine is good and our picnic is fine.


Today's Picture: An evening picnic in Ronda.