Seville

We left Granada for the 300 km drive on A92 to Sevilla after an early lunch. After another confusing driving experience, we settled down at Hotel Vime Corrigidor and set out to explore the city. We walked along Rio Guadalquivir to the Santa Cruz area with the Catedral and Alcazar. We stopped for tapas at a great bar close to Plaza del Triunfo called Bodega Santa Cruz. The food was awesome and cheap and people super friendly. After another walk under a beautiful evening sky, we had dinner outside on one of the side streets by the Catedral.

The next morning we visited Alcazar, a beautiful Muslim palace and gardens (€5 and €3 audioguide). It was nice to walk around the different wings of the gorgeous palace. We had more tapas for lunch, including a thick version of gazpacho called salmorejo, Lowell's favorite tortilla, and more berenjas con queso (eggplant with cheese). I love Spanish food. Since it was Sunday, the cathedral (€7.50) opened at 2:30pm, though it wasn't too crowded. We then walked up winding stairs to the top of Giralda, the cathedral minaret, which had great views of the city.

After a little shopping trip and siesta, we went to a flamenco show at El Arenal. We found this place through the hotel so it was a bit touristy, but easy and the show was interesting. We head out for a late dinner after the show and decided on El Giraldillo on Plaza del Triunfo. It has prime real estate right on the plaza with an amazing view of the cathedral. The restaurant is a bit expensive, but we decided to splurge for our last night in Andalucia and it was totally worth it to sit on the plaza on such a beautiful night.

Click here for more Sevilla pictures on Kodak Gallery.

Notes on Sevilla:
**For flights, cars, and hotels in Europe, we have been using Wegolo, a Dutch run travel site. Pretty good hotel deals and we found a lot of flights with the low cost European carriers like vueling (my favorite), clickair, and easyjet.
**The flamenco show was nice to see, but super touristy (€35 for show and one drink). Definitely don't do the dinner option, go out after.
**El Giraldillo charges a fee for sitting outside, as other restaurants do commonly. It was about €100 for an appetizer, dinner, and wine, and Lowell says the shoulder of lamb he had there was his favorite dish in Spain (check out more at food blog)

Granada

We drove a few hours on highways along sunflower and olive tree fields from Ronda to Granada. After a nightmarish hour of being lost on Granada's narrow one way streets, we left our car a few blocks away from Plaza Nueva where we were staying at Hotel Macia Plaza (€60 per night).

After short siesta, we explored Plaza Nueva at the center of town and has tons of restaurants and bars. Dinner was great--iceberg lettuce and garlic salad, and an awesome cheesey eggplant stuffed with shrimp, hake and mussel gratin. After dinner, we had some sangria at a bodega down the street called Antiguedades II. Like many of Granada's bars, they serve free tapas (mini ham sandwich and fries) with your drinks.

In the morning, we took bus #32 from Plaza Nueva to the famous Granada Alhambra (€1). The Generalife stop is where the main entrance is. We got tickets for the Alhambra and Generalife (the gardens) about a week in advance on the Alhambra website (€10), which let us skip the long lines to get in. If you go in order of the audioguide, Generalife is last, but we chose to see the gardens first (though it might be better last). It is sprawling with many fountains and smaller gardens and a wonderful walk.

Within the Alhambra grounds is the Parador Granada, an expensive hotel and restaurant with beautiful views of the city. I was famished so we stopped for gazpacho and sandwich. Worth stopping for a coffee or drink, but don't eat there--there is a food stand with hot dogs and sandwiches in a plaza before Alcazar (audioguide #8). It was nice though, and we met a GSB'09 who saw Lowell's OA trips shirt.

We had a 1:00pm Nasrid Palace reservation--they have a limited number of tickets for the palace and you can only enter during a designated 30-minute time slot. The palace is an impressive Moorish structure with later Christian influences. There are numerous courtyards and gardens, and the facades and pillars have incredibly intricate designs.

We continued on to the Alcazar which is a cool military complex with awesome views of the city and rest of Alhambra. The Carlos V Palace, which was built when the Catholic Spaniards captured Granada, is another tour stop with a museum inside.

We were pretty exhausted after almost six hours in the hot sun and head back for siesta. After a nice drink on Plaza Nueva, we had paella, and went back to the bodega for more sangria.

Click here for more pictures of Granada.

Notes on Granada:
**Driving near Plaza Nuevo is a nightmare. Find out in advance about where you will be parking (hotel or public parks for €20 per day).
**Buy your tickets in advance for Alhambra! The line for same-day tickets was considerably longer than pick-up. We went during the day, but you can also get times at night for the Nasrid Palaces. Remember to bring your reservation number, credit card, and passport to pick up your ticket!
**Definitely get the audioguide (€3), there are almost no descriptions anywhere. We did fine sharing one guide, though you can't listen to it at the same time.

Ronda

The drive from Gibraltar to Ronda was about 2 1/2 hours inland through winding mountain roads. Little white villages sit in the sides of these cliffs, it's a pretty drive. There are great miradors that I loved to stop for pictures on the way. Note, cars in Europe are much cheaper to rent when they are manual--hence Lowell is the driver in all of these stories.

We made it to Ronda, which is a breathtakingly beautiful city. It sits on both sides of a gorge, connected by several bridges. We stayed at the Hotel Alavela de los Banos which was wonderful, a beautifully adorned in Middle Eastern style exactly like Lonely Planet said. It is at the bottom of the steps to the main town, but very close. We walked around and settled on dinner at Plaza del Socorro, where we had mussels and rabo con vino tinto, or oxtail, one of the signature foods.

We grabbed drinks at an awesome cerviceria after, El Grifo, where they have taps at each little bar table so you can pour your own drinks. There is a counter on it, think it ended up being about €6.50 for 2 liters of beer.

After a wonderful breakfast on the patio of the hotel, we head into town for the biggest picture-taking spree I have been on in a while (which is alot for me). We walked up the garden from Puente Viejo at the top of the steps up to Puente Nuevo (puente = bridge). Worth the €2 to see the bridge museum, great views for more amazing pictures. We walked along the cliffs and then head to the bullfighting ring and museum. Modern bullfighting was born in Ronda so they take great pride in the sport here. Had lunch in town, best gazpacho ever, then head back across the Puente Nuevo to La Ciudad, the old Muslim part of the city. Then off to Granada!

Ronda was our favorite--really nice and small town that was easy to get around, and simply beautiful. Highly recommend it!

Click here for more Ronda pictures on Kodak Gallery

Notes on Ronda:
**Do not drive in the town if you can help it! A mess of one-way and really narrow streets.
**We stayed at Hotel Alavera de los Banos for €95 and totally loved it. Parador de Ronda next to Puente Nuevo has amazing views and looked interesting, though more expensive.
**We got to town in the evening and grabbed dinner on Plaza del Socorro. If we had another night, we though a dinner overlooking the cliffs would be great. The two restaurants we noticed were Restaurante Casa Santa Pola in La Ciudad with an amazing patio on the cliffs and Restaurante Don Miguel which has outside tables right by the bridge (and is also a hotel). Not sure if you'd need to book in advance for an outside seat but I think it would be worth it!

Barcelona, Tarifa, and Gibraltar

Barcelona
Lowell and I landed in Barcelona at 7am, with a 6 hour layover until our flight to Jerez (southern Spain). We left our luggage at the consigna at the airport and hopped on the A1 bus for a 45 minute ride into central Barcelona. The bus dropped us off at Placa de Catalunya at the end of La Rambla and we walked around for a few hours.

Tarifa
The Vueling flight to Jerez was uneventful (big nap) and we got our little rental Fiat and drove down to Tarifa. The town is the windsurfing capital of Europe and maybe the world. Unfortunately we didn't see too many kitesurfers, but the highlight for me was seeing the rows and rows of windmills along the highway and on the mountains. Literally hundreds of them were powering the region, which is pretty cool. They are enormous too--we saw a caravan of trucks carrying one blade which was the size of a pre-fab house.

So we stayed at Hotel Dos Mares about 4km from Tarifa center in a little bungalow. The town itself has an old castle (unfortunately closed) and ferries to Tangier, Morocco. We walked around a bit, then settled at a little cafe where we had this awesome huevos con aioli tapas and two beers all for €9.60. We had a great seafood dinner outside on the patio of the hotel restaurant of a scallop and shrimp avocado salad and I had an amazingly meaty grouper.

Gibraltar
We had breakfast at the hotel and a nice walk on the beach, before heading off to Gibraltar. It's a UK state on the little tip of a peninsula in southern Spain. We parked the car at La Linea on the Spanish side and walked across the border crossing. There are British police officers and use sterling. We saw the Gibraltar Museum which was surprisingly good, and stopped in to get a hotel for the night in Ronda. Had a chicken shwarma kebob lunch at an awesome hole-in-the-wall Middle Eastern place--this area of Spain has great food influenced by North Africa.

We head up to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar on cable cars next. Gibraltar is home to the only non-African macaques, which hang out at the various sites on the Rock. They are used to people, as one jumped off of me on his way up a rail. Gorgeous view of the harbor and Africa from the top, easy to see why this Rock was important strategically for all of the countries that have warred over it. We walked down to the Great Siege Tunnels, which were pretty cool, and then the Moorish Castle before heading back across the border.

Click here for more pictures on ofoto.

Notes on Gibraltar:
**Do not drive into Gibraltar! The car line to get in and out of the border was a mess. Park on the street before the border and walk the few kms. You can get a bus pass to get to and from city center for €2
**The cable car fee does not include entry into Tunnels or Moorish Castle, they took an additional €13... Don't need round trip cable car--it was hot but we easily walked down the few km to the bottom