I’m drawn to the ocean. Everything about it draws me in. It seems like freedom, and discovery. I love it.
So of course I can’t be a in country like Spain and not see the ocean. And the Mediterranean? I can’t pass that up. The idea of “The Southern Coast of Spain on the Mediterranean” is just too tempting, am I right? So that had to be one of our stops.
Meh.
I expected it to be beautiful. It was. I expected the towns to be resort towns. They were.
I’m good in a beach town, good in a resort. My All-Inclusive Resort Game is advanced. She and I know our way around a pool bar and lunchtime barbecue. I have two trucker hats, and their sole purpose is for wearing in a pool on a hot day (dunk the hat, keep your head cool and shaded). She has sought out and found the perfect Floppy Hat/Pool Bag combo. That kind of vacation has it’s purpose, and I love them. Hell, right now I wouldn’t mind some grilled chicken eaten poolside before walking down the beach to the Monky Bar (misspelled deliberately. I miss you Guanacaste). But that was not this trip. This trip was to see, explore, experience. Not play Meat Bobber With A Mojito (as nice as that sounds).
But that stretch of Spanish coast was not amazing. It was sanitized, bleached of context. It could have been anywhere. Standing at the top of the beach, listening to a busker play classic American and British soft-rock classics, I could’ve closed my eyes, and let my feet carry me to the nearest hot dog stand or t-shirt shop. This was not what I came to see in Spain. But it was lovely.
So we got back in the car and headed to Málaga. That was where lunch was going to be. I can’t say much about Málaga, we weren’t there long. I wanted to get to the white mountain villages, specifically Ronda. We did, however, have an exceptional Moroccan lunch in Málaga. Maybe I’ll get back there someday.
Next door… 
…’round the corner. 
The Cereal Bom.
The drive to Ronda was beautiful. I grew up with the Rockies on one side and the Great Plains on the other. The high plains desert is beautiful. The drive into the mountains on our way to Ronda reminded me of the front range back home. But green. It made me wonder what Wyoming would look like if it kept all of it’s water for itself (talking to you Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California). It was like home with a different palette.
Ronda is astounding. It’s built on a cliff, bisected by a 400-foot canyon. There are three bridges crossing it. The Puente Romano, built by the Romans, the Puente Viejo (the “Old Bridge”), and the Puente Nuevo (the “New Bridge”). The Puente Nuevo was begun in 1753. I love Spain.
If a little kid were to describe a fairytale town, it’d probably look like Ronda. One of my few regrets from this stage of our trip was that we were still not completely well. I wish we’d have had the time and gastro-intestinal fortitude to sit somewhere, have a bite and a drink and just be part of the landscape for a day.
I also had read that one Grabados Somera creates prints and etchings near the Puente Nuevo. I read that they were beautiful and created using old tools and techniques. That’s my jam.
They were beautiful. The details were amazing, the colors rich. The press looked ancient, all iron and wood. At least it all looked so, through the front window. We were there on a day that wasn’t Tuesday or Saturday, the only two days he seemed to be open. Shit, and they looked so cool.
Time to go.
I’ll take the time here to explain how we executed this whole vacation. We knew the first week or so was going to have to be planned, there were too many moving parts, too many college students to wrangle. But the second half, 8 days or so, was just She and I.
The Return of Captain No Plan!
24-36 hours. That’s about how far ahead we planned. Partly because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to see more; this place, or that place. She and I had struck sort of a loose deal: She’d get us to Spain, I’d figure out where we’d go, and how we’d get there once on the peninsula. It didn’t totally work out that way because as the more experienced traveler, she wound up arranging transportation and lodging. But the Where was usually on me. So here’s what it looked like: Madrid – Toledo – Barcelona – Madrid – Seville – Granada – Nerja – Málaga – Ronda – Seville – Bilbao – San Sebastian/Donostia – Madrid. After Barcelona we played a lot of it by ear. For instance from Ronda we weren’t sure until the day before if we were going to Gibraltar and Morocco or Seville and San Sebastian. We ended up in San Sebastian, continuing our lucky streak (San Sebastian/Donostia is one of our new Favorite Places).
So, back to Seville.
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