Ronda

On Oct 13th we went to Ronda. It is a small 40ish thousand person town tucked away in the hill between Sevilla and the sea. The ride up was gorgeous, with groves of olive trees and rolling hills. As we got with in 30 minutes of the city, we started an uphill climb. It reminded me of rolling up Old Fort Mountain when you come up I-40 West (can you tell I am getting home sick). The landscape here has less foliage than the Appalachians and no evergreens.

The town was gorgeous. The town is divided into two parts by a huge, and I mean huge gorge. The old city is on one side of the cliffs, the others side housed the newer part of the city. An 18th Century bridge connects the two sides, and it is over a football field to the bottom of the gorge. During the Spanish Civil War, political prisoners were thrown off of the bridge, first being told that if they survived the fall, they would be free. The city itself is the stereotypical, picture perfect ideal of a Mediterranean City with glowing white houses, cobblestone streets, big huge churches, and a heavy influence of Islamic architecture.

The main sites that we visited were "La Casa del Rey Moro" aka House of the Moorish King, the bullring of Ronda, and the Mondragon Palace. The House of the Moorish King was tour of the mine and the gardens. The mine went 60 meters down spiraling stone steps to a well/pond that the kings servants brought water from up to the house itself. The garden part was pretty and girly and a garden (look at the photos, if it doesn't have a story about people being thrown to there deaths about it, I am not going to spend much time describing it).

In terms of the bull ring, we just hung out on the exterior of it and it had a cool bull statue. It is one of the most historic and largest bullrings in Spain, and word has it that it is every bullfighters dream to fight in this excessively large and dangerous ring. I took the picture of the bulls ass, Tiffany said I could take it as long as I mentioned that it was my idea.

The Mondragon Palace was a cool museum of Ronda's history. It dates back to the 13th century itself, and it houses artifacts from Roman times, through the Islamic rule of the city, up till the Spanish Civil War. The house had some cool rooms, tiles, fountains and gardens.

The Bridge was by far the coolest part, as was the views off of the various cliffs. After spending all day there, we hopped on a bus back to Sevilla and enjoyed (aka slept) the rest of our weekend (away).