Spain Day Six: Help Me Ronda

Nerja

We wanted to get out of Granada, so we hit the road early and stopped at a gas station for fuel and a hot, fresh baguette. Today we would visit a few of the white hill towns of Analucia, starting with Nerja, on the beach. As we drove, we could spot them shining on the hillsides. Adam dubbed this part of Spain “Spain-torini” because it looked like what we had seen in Greece (though nowhere near as spectacular).

Nerja has beaches, but also a cliff-top promenade called “the Balcony of Europe” that overlooks the beach below. We walked to the end to take in the view while enjoying some cherry cheesecake gelato. (Yes, before lunch, don’t judge!) Nerja was tiny, the only other things we did were peek into the church and walk the one main shopping street.

Shopping streets are covered in Southern Spain, to shade shoppers

Just 4 km up the hill was Frigiliana, another white hill town. We found it wasn’t worth the drive because it was mostly newer construction, nothing historic. So we were off to our next home for the night, in Ronda. As we drove we noticed we hadn’t seen any cows at all in Spain. Adam wondered if that is because they are all used for bullfights. It was a beautiful drive. Andalucia looks a lot like Tuscany.

That's our hotel atop the cliff. 

Stole this pic from a postcard because it shows more than my camera did!

We pulled into Ronda and, while we knew our hotel would be on the side of a cliff, were in awe at just how on the edge of that giant cliff it was! A camera couldn’t even capture how deep the gorge was and how high up our hotel was! We walked into our room and both of our jaws dropped. Not only was it our largest hotel room so far, but it had a terrace that overlooked rolling farms as far as the eye could see.

Our balcony

View from our balcony 

We grabbed sandwiches and baked goods at a shop across the street. Adam had ham (shocker), which we watched the man carve right off the leg – with the hoof still attached. Gag.

This place had salami though – so I had salami and cheese. I like to live on the edge sometimes. We asked for mustard, aka mostaza, but he didn’t have any. We ate our sad dry sandwiches as we drove to Setenil de las Bodegas, a nearby town under a rock.

Setenil de las Bodegas from above

Now it was Adam’s turn to melt down. Even though I kept explaining that this town was UNDER! A! ROCK! – he had no desire to go. He wanted a nap. But he was worried about me going alone, so he went anyway. This town is tiny, and nearly impossible to drive in. The streets are barely one car width wide (we had to fold in the mirrors!) and often dead end after you squeeze down them. As Adam would back up, I would gasp because we were ½ inch away from scratching the rental car. He handled the driving like a pro – but my nerves – not so much. He told me to get out, walk the town, and he would go park above and wait for me.

It is UNDER A CLIFF!

This tiny town, which dates to pre-historic times, was built underneath the rock overhangs of a cliff along a river gorge. While I wandered, I found a tiny store built into a cave that was full of tiny jars of vegetables and jam. I walked in, and asked the woman if she had mostaza. She spoke no English and I speak zero Spanish.

But she understood the word and said “ahh, salsa mostaza?” and led me to a shelf, where there was one jar of it. I paid her 2 euros for it and headed back to find Adam to give him the best peace offering ever – more impressed with my mustard find than the fact that this town was under a freaking rock! As I was walking up, he was walking down. He liked his present and we reached a mustard peace accord. We walked the town together and took photos.

Back in Ronda, Adam took a nap while I walked around to see the bullring (the oldest one in Spain) and take more photos of that incredible cliff.

And then, as if the heavens sending me mustard wasn’t enough – they sent me kittens! I was walking through the park when I saw a small orange fluff ball playing in a planter. I walked over and found not one, but THREE kittens and a mama – the first cats I had seen in all of Spain. I sat and watched them for about half an hour because the cuteness was totally mood lifting!

I went back and got Adam up for dinner. It was just staring to get dark (at 9:40!) as we walked the old town section of Ronda. We learned that in small towns, restaurants close earlier, and our options were limited. We settled into the only option in town, on a charming square in the shadow of the cathedral, and perused the menu.

Our meat choices were baby lamb kidneys, blood sausage balls, sweetbreads – it was a HOUSE OF SPANISH NIGHTMARES. There was a photo of a baby pig leg with the hoof and everything on a plate. I ordered the “tropical salad” which turned out to be iceberg lettuce topped with canned corn and pineapple. The bread tasted like a campfire. The chef brought us a “gift” of breaded, fried mushrooms. Adam looked at me and said, “Babe, it’s like they have a cheat sheet of everything you hate!” He had garlic soup, which had egg in it and all I could taste was yolk. I started singing “Help Me Rhonda” to try to make light of the situation, which only helped a little. We ended up getting the special – Iberian pork steak. The waiter told us it was a baby, so it was red meat – like beef. Um, ok. It actually tasted good and was definitely more like steak than pork. I tried not to think about it and ate it. We had to get back because it was midnight and we had to wake up at 2am for the Cavs game.

I will leave you with more photos of the best view in all of Spain:

 (Borrowed from a postcard)

Tomorrow: Adam looks for the barber of Seville

xoxo

Spain Day Five: Granada and the Alhambra (Was All of L.A. Named After Spain?!)

(Adam would like to submit the alternate title of “Granada, not so hot-ta” for this blog post.)

We woke up in Cartegena and ate our pastries we had purchased the night before, which weren’t as good as the times we went to a pastry shop and ate them fresh. But that’s ok – we had Spanish gas stations in our future! We hit the road and entered Moorish Spain. Suddenly, the freeway signs were in both Arabic and Spanish. Signs on shops and restaurants were also written in both languages.

(A bit of history on this region – the Muslim Moors that live in the South of Spain are not immigrants. They are Spanish. They have lived here for more than 700 years. They are not any more connected to Arabia than they are to England. They are indigenous people. Christians have tried to drive them out since Roman times. We would learn a lot about this ongoing conflict over the next few days.)

We stopped at a gas station and picked up sandwiches. Adam ordered his ham and cheese sandwich, then told the woman making them that I wanted just tomatoes and cheese on my bread. She said, “JUST tomatoes and cheese?!,” apparently unable to understand why I wouldn’t also want ham. And then a ridiculous conversation ensued in which she asked if I wanted my tomatoes in the form of sauce, sundried, or sliced. Did I want my cheese melted? Should the whole thing be toasted? This was at a gas station, people!! 

The sandwiches we had been eating lately were good, but dry. We wished we had mustard. But it has been impossible to find in Spain. So we grabbed a handful of mystery condiment packets near the cash register and hopped back in the car. One of them turned out to be ham pate, which we called ham jam (nasty!), others were mayo, ketchup, and other NOT MUSTARD sauces. Then I had one packet left. It was called salsa mostaza, and had photos of vegetables on the front. I opened it and yelled “IT’S MUSTARD!!” It was delicious and my morning was complete.

Mustard in Spain

Our hotel in Granada, Casa 1800, provided excellent photo directions for how to get there, but it was still a pain. We had to drive into a restricted historic area, find a parking garage, hoist our luggage up 2 flights of stairs, find a cab that could take us closer to the hotel, then drag our luggage 3 cobblestoned blocks to the hotel. Our room had an amazing view of the Alhambra though, making all that effort worth it.

View from our window

There was no time to linger though, as we had tickets for 2:30 at the Alhambra. It was 1:00. We had to walk 15 minutes to find a random building in town called the Corral Carbon to print our tickets at a Ticketmaster machine, then hike up to the Alhambra. We had been warned it was uphill. But this was beyond uphill. It was up-hell. It didn’t help that we got lost trying to cut through a neighborhood, which looked like a shortcut on a map but actually added a second hill. Once we were finally on the correct hill, about halfway up – I had a meltdown.

Had this been the Amazing Race, this would have been the part when all cameras were trained on me as I burst into tears and sobbed “I have had enough! The spot on my flat feet where my arches are supposed to be is burning! I am hot and I think I smell! I can’t live on just tomatoes, bread and cheese! I hate how Spain tucks in their sheets way too tight on every bed and how you have to step on a pedal every single time you throw away trash! I hate eating dinner at 9pm! I miss my daughter and my cats! I just want to walk back down this hill and go home!”

Adam was a prince. He hugged me, wiped off my tears, and told me were were almost to the top (we weren’t) and then he literally pushed me up the hill. Once at the top, we bought water, and I felt better. We made it by 2:30 and entered the Alhambra Palace.

WOW. The climb was worth it. I felt guilty for my meltdown once I saw all the effort that went into making such a jaw dropping place – 700 years ago!

Spanish Muslims ruled their Moorish Kingdom from this palace until 1492. We saw the Sultan’s throne room, where 8017 inlaid wooden pieces cover the ceiling. In this very room, Christopher Columbus met with Isabel, Ferdinand, and other Spanish leaders to make his final pitch to sail to the Orient, and convinced them that he could reach the East by sailing West.

There are no paintings here like in castles or cathedrals. Muslims believe that only God (Allah) can create the human form, so they don’t paint humans. Instead, their artwork was in the form of intricate, smooth stucco that covered every single surface of this magnificent place. The stucco is carved with script to deliver religious messages via words instead of pictures.

It should be noted that each of my photos in this post took a great deal of patience and time as we waited for the throngs of other people touring the palace to move along. It was crowded and they let people mostly wander freely, so photography was a bit difficult.

The Alhambra also has great views over the old Moorish Quarter (where we were staying) and the gypsy colony in the caves on the opposite hillside. We were hungry, so we hit a café on site at the Alhambra and I had a – you guessed it – tomato and cheese sandwich – dry, no mustard.

We were about to walk back down when we saw a sign that said TAXI. WHAT?! It is possible to take a taxi up and down this mountain?! I was not amused. I hailed the first cab that pulled up, and 15 minutes and $5 later, we were back on the plaza near our hotel. We enjoyed the free tea hour at our hotel, then walked beside the river that runs along the base of the Moorish quarter hill.

We had read there was a great viewpoint at the top of this hill, which overlooks the Alhambra and is a great place for photos. Ugh. Fine. Let’s do this. At this point, we were both pretty crabby and sick of mountain climbing, but we did it, got our photos, and plopped down into chairs in a restaurant just below the St. Nicholas viewpoint for some bad, expensive Sangria with a world-class view.

I feel bad being negative, but I want to be honest about our trip so others can learn from our mistakes. I realize that travel is a wonderful privilege. I appreciate every moment of it – even the more challenging ones. Today was just exhausting, and neither of us found Granada (with the exception of the hour at the Alhambra) worth the effort.

We trudged back down the hill towards our hotel, ready to surrender and go to bed. But… as often happens just when needed most… we found a great little street that peaked our curiosity. It was full of Moroccan tea rooms and dark, tiled restaurants full of pillows. We ducked into one and ordered hummus, tabouli, chicken tagine, a meat pie (chicken in pastry, dusted with cinnamon and nuts), tea and dessert. It was awesome!!! The couple next to us was from New Zealand (via India). They asked us to take a photo of them, and a lovely conversation ensued. Adam and the man talked cameras, we helped them find the spot to pick up Alhambra tickets and circled it on their map, we discussed our travels. By the end of the meal, Adam told the man he reminded him of his dad. We had made friends, shared a good meal, and most importantly, felt emotionally refreshed.

Dinner in a 500 year old building!

We wandered through the old silk market and around the cathedral before finally hitting the sack.

Tomorrow: Help Me Ronda

xoxo