Ronda

So last weekend Victoria, Casey, Shannon, and I took a trip to Ronda. It is a small town about two and a half hours away from Granada by train. The trip was well worth it becasue Ronda was the most beautiful place I have ever been in the world. It is one of the many towns in Andalucia defined as "pueblos blancos". This is because all of the building are white. Not only that, but the town was built into an on top of a cliff/gorge. We spent the entire weekend hiking in and out of the gorge and admiring the view from the tops of the cliffs. It was a relaxing, but incredibly fun weekend! It is a place that I wish I could have shared with you so that you could understand what I was experiencing because photos and descriptions just cannot describe it. I will upload some pics to try and give you an idea of what it was like, but I truly believe that is impossible. (More description of our trip to follow via pictures)

Not only did we enjoy the town while we were there, but we met some cool people too! Especially Paul who was running the hostel where we stayed. He cooked paella for us one night and gave us salsa lessons! He is from Holland and speaks five languages at the age of 19... pretty impressive if you ask me. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed our company and playing games with us. He even wants to come visit us in Granada. And get this...he posted about us in his blog! (in Dutch)

Anyway, here is a narrative of what we did through photos...

We went on a hike down under the bridge and walked through old abandoned building and ruins.

This is Victoria and I on our terrace at the hostel where we stayed.  Amazing view of la puente nueva.

Here is the view from our hostel at night!

And during the day you could see all the way down into the gorge.

This is looking down from our favorite place to gram a coffe/snack cliffside!!!

This is our hostel from the bridge!  We were right on the cliff

On our hike down under the bridge...I could have stayed there forever :)

Salsa dancing in the hostel with Paul after a dinner of paella that he cooked us!

Just hanging out in the Arab Baths! These ones were ruined, but we are going to go to the fuctioning ones in Granada very soon.

We climbed up and walked around the old wall that used to surround and fortify the city! Great views from every angle!  It kind of felt like living in a castle

 

Lunch break outside in the sun! We got to drink fruta con leche (best juice boxes ever)

 

Going down into the Arab mines which lead to the bottom of the gorge.

Here we are at the bottom on the gorge.  It was so beautiful, almost like a different world.  On the right you can see two windows.  That is where we walked down inside of the cliff.  It was orignially built by the Arabs for slaves to bring water up.  Not only that, but there are also rooms built into the cliff.  One was for soldiers, one was called the room of secrect (because of the way sounds echo off the walls), and one was for treasure.

Plaza de Toros!  One of the oldest bullfighting rings in Spain! (of course Victoria and Shannon had to pretend to be bulls!)  Bullfights here started as training for knights under the reign of Kind Philip II as a way for them to prove their courage and become caballeros (gentleman)

Overall, we had an amazing weekend and I will absolutely be going back to Ronda sometime in the future!