Day 124 - Oh My Gorge! Our Day Trip to Ronda
/We first became enchanted with Ronda when we were watching an episode of House Hunters International on HGTV, about 2 years ago! Honestly, who doesn't get inspired to travel from watching that show? We had no plans to be traveling overseas at that time, so we just added it to our "travel bucket list".
Fast forward to earlier this year, when we were deciding where we want to stay on our around the world trip. We immediately put southern Spain on the list, partially thanks to our fond memories from watching HGTV. When we found out we will be staying in Andalusia, we knew we will be visiting Ronda, even if just for a day.
On our drive there, we saw a lot of barren land, and lots and lots of wind turbines. We have seen these all over Europe, from Ireland to France to Spain. They always fascinate me, especially when we drive really close to some. The engineer in me often geeks out at the blade design :)
We arrived in Ronda in early afternoon, and our main reason for visiting was to see the famous El Tajo gorge, which is essentially a giant hole separating two parts of the city. We knew from TripAdvisor that there are some well reviewed museums and other activities, but we decided with the gorgeous weather we would skip any indoor activities and just walk around.
Here is a pictorial story of what we saw in Ronda, another gorgeous town in Andalusia. All pictures have brief captions, if you want to know more just click on the photo
Let's start off with the streets.
Some of the sights we saw as we walked through the streets of old town towards the gorge.
And then the magnificent El Tajo Gorge. The views, the views the views! And yes thank goodness for that strong fence my children are holding on to while looking down down down!
We also took a walk over the Puente Neuvo bridge, which connects the two parts of the city that are otherwise separated by the gorge.
We opted out of walking all the way down into the gorge. You can do this from a variety of locations, some of which charge money, but we did see one section where you could walk down for free, though a sign warned of poor conditions. In the end, we decided against it mainly because my shoes were not exactly appropriate for the activity, and we had walked quite a bit around town already.
We really enjoyed the views and were quite awed by them. We only spent about 5 hours in the town but felt that was sufficient to see the gorge from different sides and walk through old town (lots of stores by the way, chain and unique shops). We can now happily check Ronda off our bucket list.