Antequera, Cordoba, and Ronda
Antequera is a really pretty city. After almost four days here, it is
still nice to look around the city. Driving around the city is a bit
of a problem for Tomas as cobblestones don´t have the best grip but
he´s doing well.
On our first day here, we decided to take in the sights of the city.
Although it´s a really pretty place, there isn´t that much to actually
see and do. There are lots of churches and nice looking houses but no
museums in the actual town. The town has a bullring but you can´t walk
around it like you can do in Ronda. So we walked down to the bullring
and Vanessa and Tom has churros which apparently are delicious. I
tasted one and didn´t like it. After churros, we walked about the
town, looked at some buildings and walked up the hill to the fortress.
You can´t actually get into the fortress so we walked around it and
managed to come out right at our house. Of course this was a sign that
a siesta was reqiured.
The next day, we set out for Cordoba. Purely because it had the most
things open on a Monday that we wanted to see. Vanessa and Cameron got
to experience an hour long car trip with Tom and I. They are not
coming on a driving holiday with us again.
We had a bit of trouble finding a car park in Cordoba and after
driving around the city (small medieval streets and cobblestones as
usual) we gave up and parked at the shopping centre across the river.
Corboda isn´t a pretty city. It´s quite ordinary. However it does have
a huge cathedral. It used to the mosque when the town was occupied by
the Moors but then the Catholics recaptured the city build their
cathedral inside the mosque which was apparently very tolerant of
them.
We ate meat for lunch. Big plates of meat. It was a quite expensive
lunch but very tasty and the service was the best we have had in
Spain. Probably a good thing seeing as how the meal was over 100
euros.
After lunch we split up, Cameron was going to get his Internet fix and
Vanessa, her shopping fix. Tom and I had already made plans to visit
the Arab baths. We are so glad we went there. It was definitely one of
the highlights of the trip. We had a bath and a massage. The baths
were the traditional arab/turkish/roman affair of starting in the warm
bath. Getting in the hot bath for five minutes and then plunging
yourself into the cold bath for as long as you can stand before
repeating the process. The water must have had a very high salt
content as I could float around in the warm bath quite easily. Even
Tom who normally can´t float was floating a bit. After a few rounds on
warm/hot/cold we were called for our massage which was good and
followed by more bathing and dreaming about having a house that we
could have arab baths in. Eventually we got out of the baths and
headed up to the terrace for some delicious tea (I tried to buy some
Farenn but they didn´t sell it).
On the way home we stopped at the 'supermarket' for supplies. I bought
what we have affectionately called 'Melon Baby'. A giant melon. I´m
not sure what kind of melon it is, but I hope it is the delicious
melon I have been having all over Spain. I put it in the boot of the
car for the trip home but we had to rescue it after a few minutes as
it was rolling around int he boot a bit too much for my liking.
Needless to say, we haven´t massacred melon baby yet.
Decided not to eat dinner due to the large amounts of meat eaten
earlier in the day and had ice-creams for dinner instead which Cameron
very kindly went out and got for us.
Today we went to Ronda. Ronda is a pretty city. It is literally
perched on top of cliffs inbetween a gorge. We set of later than
normal and got there just before lunch so we had enough time to see
the bullring and museum before lunch. The bullring was very
impressive. You get to walk out into the ring and can climb through
the stands as well as see (and smell) the pens where the bulls are
kept. The museum was small but interesting.
After lunch, we headed to La Mina - the mine - which is a set of
Moorish steps cut into the side of the gorge. Apparently you walk down
60 metres to the bottom of the gorge. It didn´t really feel that far
on the way down, but on the way up I am sure there were more steps.
Tom thinks there were about 200 steps in all. It was very cool though
as you are literally walking down inside the rock. Only slipped once.
Saw some more arabian baths today except these ones were not actually
being used anymore.
Unlike Cordoba, there are plenty of places to park in Ronda and we
chose one of the first. It didn´t turn out to be the best choice
though as we had a little trouble getting out. Our car is a Peugeot
207 diesel so it´s a pretty grunty car - so grunty that I have
nicknamed it 'The Beast' or Beastie for short. Despite this power,
Beastie struggled to get up the ramp out of the car park. We gradually
slowed on our way up the ramp until about halfway when Beastie gave up
and stalled. In Beastie´s defense, the ramp must have been slippery so
I´m sure she had some trouble getting traction. Tom valiantly tried to
restart Beastie but she wasn´t having any of it. Eventually, everyone
but Tom had to abandon the car just so Tom could get us out. I blame
the meat from yesterday.
Depsite the carpark incident, Tomas and Vanessa are having churros
right now while Cameron and I are getting our Internet fix.
