Thursday 11.11.2010


Spain Light

Our good weather is back. It is cold again this morning but the skies are bright blue with the winds of the last few days gone. We are determined to use this time productively in Ronda before we leave this especially scenic area. Today is the fifth of six short drives between stays so we have plenty of time.

We opt for the walking tour of our previously Moorish neighborhood that gets us into every corner. We start with a relatively easy walk through some alley-like streets with frequent historic buildings on our way to the gorge. Right next to the hotel is the former home of the last of the Aztec Kings who decided to live out his days here and the street is still named Avenida Moctezuma.

When we get to the gorge there are nice views of the new bridge and a stairway that goes down a couple hundred feet to one of the old town gates. We get about halfway down for some dramatic photo ops and decide that will be enough of a climb going back uphill. The tour takes us through back streets and squares that were one thing in the 700 years ending in 1485 and something else since. An interesting and yet obvious fact that we acquire along the way is that the Muslim inhabitants of this area were not interlopers, but had been here for seven centuries before being thrown out by the Christians from the north. That seems profound considering the diapers that our country is still wearing.

There are churches that used to be mosques and you can still see the bases of minarets with replacement tops that are now bell towers. There is also a former Moor palace that is perched atop the gorge with steps all the way down to the river so the Christian slaves could haul the water back up to the top. The square that used to be the Muslim marketplace is now where our car is parked.


Speaking of which, Mary goes back to finish packing up (all the dirty laundry in one suitcase), and John gets the car squeezing into the little spot in front of our hotel. We leave our very lovely staff and promise to come back another time, a promise we might very well keep. Monique gets us on the road to Malaga down on the coast and then we will turn east to our stop for tonight, Nerja. About halfway to Malaga she tells us to turn left (east) through a little town even though the highway signs suggest otherwise. We blindly follow her directions and find ourselves driving though multiple mountain ranges on minimum maintenance roads. We have ignored her advice in the past in order to follow rural country roads and she has apparently picked up on the theme. It is slow but exciting with breathtaking views and breathtaking gasps.

Once we get to Malaga it is smooth sailing along the Med coast to Nerja (Nair-Ha). There is free parking at a big lot a block from our little Hostal in the middle of town and smooth sailing through check-in. We have been emailing our host Jane about the possibility of getting our laundry done somewhere nearby and she takes control immediately. It is a little after 2:00 so she thinks there is plenty of time to wash and hang a couple loads out to dry and tells us to go have fun while she gets washing. OK.

It is a fifteen-minute downhill walk to the biggest of the Nerja beaches where we find “Ayo” the “famous” seaside restaurant where they cook Paella over open fires. We have beers and plates of Paella served from a 3-foot-across skillet, toast Jane the Laundress and watch the few brave sun worshippers on the beach. It is now in the mid-seventies but the water is cold and the sun is low in the sky. We consider a second beer before deciding that we should get back up the hill before we have more. One quick walk on the beach gets us back to the walkway up and more heavy exercise.

Nerja is called the “Balcony of Europe” because of the high promontory that extends into the sea where you can see for many miles in either direction. The “Balcony” is a couple blocks from our Hostal so when we get back to the top huffing and puffing we go that way for a sunset and that second beer. Mission accomplished as we get both things done. Jane should be hanging out our laundry about now.

After a short break, we (accomplished tapas travelers) do a half hour tour of the small downtown area and then head for a targeted tapas spot, “The Round Bar.” The place is packed, and with the tapas displayed around the bar, they are hard to pick out. There is also a guitar-playing singer shouting out the moving songs of Spain. We get a couple red wines and two tapas (free here with a drink) and watch the show.

Here’s the big deal about Nerha. Jane and Ian, our hosts, are Brit transplants. Everyone seated near us at Ayo was a Brit. Everyone we heard talking at the Balcony was a Brit or a German. Everybody we see in this bar is a Brit or German except the bartenders and the guitar player. Around the bar are 70-year-old guys playing bongos on the bar, 60-year-old bottle-blondes shimmying to the tunes and everyone watching everyone else and shouting “ole” at the end of every song. This is Crosslake, Minnesota in the summer, Puerta Vallarta in the winter, but it is certainly not Spain. There is plenty of sun here which makes it a lovely holiday or retirement spot, and we are in no position to be critical. These folks are all having fun, and obviously in their comfort zone, but nothing we see has any resemblance to anything we have seen over the last two months in Europe. It’s interesting for a night but we’re glad we’re moving on tomorrow.

At a break in the music we move down to the square near the Balcony and Bar Lizzaron. Here you pick out your own Tapas, keep the toothpicks and pay for the number of toothpicks on your plate at the end of the night. Very civilized. We can’t resist stopping at an English Pub for a final beer on our way back to the hotel. We chat with a couple of Brits from near Bath (we’ve been to the baths in Bath—they haven’t) before calling it a night. We check the clothesline on the terrace and some things are still damp. It’s not our problem.

Today's Picture: Paella and cold beer on the beach in Nerja.

Wedenesday 11.10.2010


Help, Help Me Ronda

Note: Brother Joe has been hinting through email that we have to figure out some way to incorporate the title of an old Beach Boys song into our blog while we're staying in Ronda. As a person with multiple communication degrees, he should know that would be way too obvious and too much of a cliché, even for us. Not going to happen.

We have chores on our list this morning. The housekeepers here all wear pink work dresses and they are flitting around like a flight of butterflies this morning buffing and polishing glass and wood while they wait for the guestrooms to become available. John nods an hola as he hurries into town for a haircut. It was suggested that he be at the door at about 9:30 where he finds a sign that says Barber Juan Jose will open at 10:00.


We have made another aborted attempt to buy Alhambra tickets on line, so John decides to kill the half hour to try the Caixa Bank office again to see it they can help with the purchase. We have learned that bank lines take forever, but a young lady employee is working her way down the line to see if she can help dispense with some easy stuff. She understands the Alhambra issue and walks John over to the ATM and has him put his card in. She then steers him through the process and lo and behold, out pop a couple tickets to the Alhambra for Sunday afternoon. Who knew you could buy tickets from an ATM. John also scouts out the laundry since that is also on our list, but that too opens at 10:00.

Juan Jose finally shows up at 10:20 and seems to be apologetic—a woman came by earlier who said he would be poco tarde and John didn’t know if that was a little late, or if he would come in a little later. The nuances kill us. Haircut accomplished, Alhambra tickets scored, let’s get on with the laundry.


Mary and John haul two big bags of dirty clothes, almost everything, the better part of a mile to the only laundry in town. After confidently plopping them on the counter the lady tells us that today was not possible. Tomorrow morning? No way. Maybe tomorrow afternoon which means after 4:00. We’ll be long gone. We haul the same two bags another better part of a mile back to the hotel where we spend a while with the desk person to see if there are other options. There aren’t. We will hope for the best that there is an option in Nerja tomorrow afternoon and Mary washes out some underwear and socks.

The day is chily but there are some peeks of sun so we want to do the town tour today. We start at the gorge, a 360 foot deep, 200 foot wide chasm that runs right through the middle of town. Our side is the old Muslim city with whitewashed plaster buildings, narrow alleys and former mosques that are now churches. The other side is the "New City" built by the Spanish when they kicked out the invaders in the 1400's. This is where most of the commercial areas are along with the bull rings and swarms of hotels and restaurants (McDonalds). Standing on the edge of the gorge you can visualize the Moors throwing barbs at the Spanish and the Spanish throwing barbed things back at the Moors. This is where the tour groups mostly hang out and the photo ops are incredible, although the bottom of the gorge probably only gets an hour of sun a day.

Walking the very nice terrace that runs along the length of the gorge on the "new" side brings us to the city bull ring, the Plaza de Toros. In the late 1600's and early 1700's bullfighting became favored by those in power and bull rings popped up all over the country, probably financed by a 1% hotel and restaurant tax. Ronda was an early leader in the sport and is considered the birthplace of the modern style of bullfighting with the capes and flourishes and one fellow on foot with a sword at the end. There are tons of artifacts, costumes and gear along with an impressive firearm museum and equestrian school. They still hold bullfights here every September but the rest of the time the museum and a walk through the bull ring itself is the attraction.

It's mid afternoon and time for our Spanish time late lunch. We cross back over the bridge where we coax a ruluctant lady to wait on us and sell us a couple big burgers (which is what happens to the bulls at the end of their afternoon in the ring). We toast them with a Coke Light and capuccino before hunkering down for a late afternoon break.

It's tapas again tonight. Last night we made it to Bar Lechuguita, Tragatapas and El Porton which were all good. Tonight we start at Bar Faustino where we make the mistake of being led to a table. It is a good thing in that we avoid all the smoke in the bar, but once again our server gets busy and disappears while we wait to pay and leave. We are tapas professionals now and the unwritten rules require that you eat and move and here we are thrown off our timing. Finally we move on to Bar Maestro where there are two bartenders, a cook and us. Obviously the service is better here so we stay put to finish our evening.

It's still cold and we have limited protection since most of our clothes are still stuffed into a laundry bag so we hustle back across the bridge to be with the ghosts of our muslim predecessors. No help from Ronda.


Today's Picture: Ronda's Muslim Quarter, Gorge and New Bridge.

Tuesday 11.09.2010


Costa del Sol

It isn’t pretty this morning, cold and rain predicted all day, and we have come to a change in our itinerary. Our plan was to move a couple hours down to the coast to Tarifa, where tomorrow we would take a ferry on a day trip over to Tangier, Morocco. Mary has never been keen on the idea and after getting many comments from our fellow travelers in Lisbon, we have decided to can Morocco. Luis said it best: “You will only see theater with the Moroccans playing the part of the annoying pests pulling on your sleeves and you playing the part of the annoyed tourist, too intrigued to walk away.” So it is three days with Ronda as our base instead.

The little British lady we met yesterday caught us to tell us excitedly that there were four more Minnesotans at breakfast this morning and she tried to find us. We told her that it was ok since we see Minnesotans at home all the time.

So, what should we do on a rainy day in Ronda? Let’s drive to Tarifa. We did decide to poke our way through these hills, maybe as far as the coast anyway, so let’s see if we can find some better weather. The total drive is only about 70 miles, but it will take us two hours as we wind up, down and around these beautiful hills. Every twenty minutes we see another little white town in the distance trickling, like a pearl necklace on a beautiful woman, down between the mountains. (Very steamy, right?) Eventually we start to ride a gradual downhill grade toward the water.

We hit the coast at La Linea, the gateway to Gibraltar. Apparently there is a bit of a tiff going on between the Spanish Government that thinks the “Rock” should be part of Spain, and the British who have controlled Gibraltar since the 1700’s. It has historically been petty, for example there are no signs on the Spanish roads that point to Gibraltar, but lately it is getting more serious with the opposing law enforcement agencies glaring at each other over disputed territorial waters. We’re happy because we get some English radio programming.


It is windy and rainy when we get to Tarifa and we recognize the symptoms from Nazare where the high winds would change the weather every few minutes. In spite of the misty air we can make out the distant shore of Africa and the white buildings of Tangier. We park by the docks where ferries steam back and forth across the Strait of Gibraltar departing every couple hours. It is an uphill walk through the town walls and into the city which is quiet in November. In addition to the Africa tourist connection this is a big-time wind surfing community with the gales blowing in off the North Atlantic and being squeezed between the two continents. It must be too blustery because we only see vacant, uninviting beaches.

We find the “Central Café” that is protected enough that we elect to eat lunch at an outside table. The temperature since we left the mountains has risen from the mid-forties to the high sixties and that makes the trip seem worthwhile. John has a Sandwich Especiale (everything in the kitchen between three slices of bread) with fries and a cinnamon coffee and Mary digs into a tuna salad and cappuccino. There are only a few other brave souls around today so the square is peaceful.


We try to talk Monique into a different route home which she finds disturbing, so we temporarily fire her and go back to manual navigation (Mary with a map). We follow the shoreline east through Algeciras and Estepona to San Pedro, the latter two being east of Gibraltar and therefore on the Mediterranean coast. This area and beyond is the “Costa del Sol” which is beaches, condos, golf courses, hotels and tons of new construction. The Brits love this part of the world and make up a huge percentage of the population.

For us it is one photo op after another. The mountains here stretch almost to the water’s edge, the water itself is magically colored and the sun and rain are continuing their dance resulting in a rainbow around every bend in the road. It is the type of picturesque setting that might cause a high number of traffic accidents if it were only Minnesota tourists driving here. We’ll have to watch out for the other four.

It is mostly dark by the time we get back to Ronda. Mary spends some time on the computer in the breakfast room (where the reception is reliable) and John finds Judy from Alexandria, MN, one of the elusive four, on the house computer. They are soon joined by “Chickie” (really) and eventually, Mary. Their husbands are knocking back a couple cocktails up in the rooms. They are here for two weeks of Spain, don’t care much for the food and are leaving in the morning. Well, okay then.


We hold out until 8:00 and have a list of four tapas bars for tonight. We make it through three of them before giving up and going home. We have gourmet tapas (really good!), and cheap tapas (0.75 euro each). The last one was a fried quail egg on a little square of toast with a slice of great ham on top that you popped into your mouth all at once for a little explosion of breakfast. Too bad for Judy from Alexandria.

We debate stopping for a local Sherry, but good sense wins out and we make it home to bed by 11:00, early for us Spaniards.


Today’s Picture: A slightly misty Gibraltar from just outside Algeciras, Spain.

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.