Ronda - our kind of town

A young and genuine but carefree and sometimes careless friend of ours, recommended Ronda - he thought it was our kind of little town. This friend might also recommend shady nightclubs and drinks with questionable herbs and other additives. Nonetheless, we took his advice and we are so glad we did!

Ronda is a little white town way up on a rocky bluff. A couple of unbelievably beautiful bridges span the river gorge that cuts through town. There is farmland below the bluff and mountains in the distance.

We went to the Information Center for a map and they strongly recommended going to see the bullring - the OLDEST bullring in Spain! We saw it - from across the street.

On the door of the Information Center, we noticed a little hand-written note posted, "Baños de los Arabes - abierto." Ooooh!," I exclaimed, "Matthew look! There are Arab Bathes!"

The woman said (in her limited English) the bathes are very nice - the mejor (best) in Spain. I knew that Matthew would just LOVE an ancient bath. But, he didn't bring his bathing suit. It was long way down to the bathes ... of course, down by the river (and hot springs). On our way down, I thought maybe we should have stopped at the sport store to get Matthew a bathing suit before we walked all the way there. Hee hee. Imagine my surprise when we arrived to find some very nice, very well maintained ruins. So, Matthew didn't get his Arab Bath but it was still pretty cool see.

Instead of warming ourselves by the (non-existent) hot springs - we found a Belgian Hot Chocolate Shoppe. Yummy!

We walked up and down and all around. Ronda is definitely our kind of little town.

We stayed at a great pension. Unfortunately, we cannot recommend it because the owners retired the moment we left ... as was planned, not because of us. (It is true!)

A mountain of more photos of Ronda in case you have nothing better to do than to look at our photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/abrownell/sets/72157612239536335/