Hello all,
Today the plan was to grab a daily rental car in the morning and drive that to Ronda, Spain. Which is around 1.5 hours from Malaga, Spain, where we are staying. In order to make the most of our day with the car and spend as much time as possible in Ronda, it was a very early day for one of our crew. Matt got up this morning early enough to walk to the train station then take the metro to the airport in order to pick up a daily rental car.
He arrived back at the Airbnb to pick the rest of us up around 10. Our crew also managed to be significantly less squished in our 5 seater car. Gage woke up with a light fever and he decided to stay back at the Airbnb for the day.
Once we arrived in Ronda we parked on the street and had a 20 minute walk to the scenic half of town. Ronda is known for its bridge that crosses a several hundred foot gorge in a valley. This is a bridge that you can walk across and see at different points in and around the gorge. (Parent note: the bridge is called the "new bridge" - Puente Nuevo - though it was built in the 1700s! It is the tallest (390 feet!) and newest of the three bridges connecting the parts of Ronda on either side of the gorge.).
The town of Ronda itself is located atop a large hill. (Parent note: why the good people of Ronda choose to build a city spanning a 390 foot gorge is an interesting question for the ages. Surely there were many alternative locations which would not have required the same engineering!)
View of the gorge from the Puente Nuevo
(Palace of Rhonda)
(Parent note: This is a view of the Puente Nuevo from one of the other - and much lower - bridges spanning the gorge. The middle part of the Puente Nuevo used to house a prison!)
(Parent note: we walked over the Puente Nuevo and through the old part of town, then basically down around the back side of Ronda all the way to the bottom of the gorge to get this stunning view from the bottom behind the bridge. And then had to hike all the way back up!)
We spent most of our day there simply walking around and exploring the area. Once we were done with that, we headed back to the car and since it was only around 3PM, we decided to check out another small town before we headed back to Malaga.
We stopped at the town of Setenil de las Bodegas. It is a small town with many of its houses/shops and restaurants built into its many cliffsides. Fun fact: There have been artifacts found in the town that date back over 5000 years! So we explored that town for around 1.5 hours. Shoutout to Kayla, who really wanted nothing to do with the whole town because it was all a LOT of ups and downs with some seriously cool but scary (especially if you’re afraid of heights lookouts) you did great! (Parent note: Our well-executed plan in Ronda was to find the first available cheap or free parking space and then just walk from there. It worked great in Ronda - the 20 minute walk through the very boring part of town from our free street parking site just whetted our appetite for the views. For Setenil, before we had a chance to find any good parking options at the start of town we were right in it - so Matt ended up driving through the town and up and over this crazy ridge and back down to the other side. Very narrow two-way streets with incredible views because of the incredible drop offs. The kids said the views were incredible, but Kayla and I were two busy clinging to each other in the back seat to fully appreciate them. And hopefully Matt was too busy focused on driving to fully appreciate them! Once we made it safely to the other side of town, we found a paid subterranean parking lot and happily paid the €1.90 to park for an hour and a half while we explored.)
We headed home to our Malaga Airbnb around 5:30 and arrived back right around 7. Matt then once again went to drop off our rental before making his way back to the house around 8:45. Big thank you to dad for getting up early this morning to get the car and then taking the car back for us later tonight! It was VERY much appreciated!
(Parent note: there was much talk of Connor and Kayla having a rest and then checking out the nightlife - which doesn't really start until 11 pm. However, the whole crew seemed pretty comfortable laughing along to YouTube videos when I went to bed around 10, so it sounds like Connor and Kayla decided they had enough excitement for one day. Kids these days don't have the stamina we did back when I was in my 20s!)
Check back tomorrow for more!
- Connor
Comments