I’m a little sad to be leaving our lovely Malaga apartment this morning but I am looking forward to revisiting Ronda, last visited in 2003 during the first stage of our honeymoon! The it was chilly and wet so I am hoping for a bit more sun this time.
I did my usual clean around the apartment to the extent that our host Nikolay texted that his cleaner could not believe how clean and tidy it was! We met her on the way out and she was very nice and I managed a stilted conversation in my dodgy Spanish. Our driver Daniel who had picked us up from the airport arrived bang on time, in-fact 15 minutes early, to take us to the car rental place near the airport.
We have used OK car rental a couple times before… after a rather negative start of people shouting and no seats being available in the office, we eventually got seen with ticket 20 on the Argos like queuing system. The chap was actually very helpful and ‘Gulliver Bear’ made him laugh with his pro EU badge which he showed to his grumpy colleague who also laughed so I feel responsible for cheering up the office and hopefully improving the peoples experience behind us! We ended up with a Peugeot 208 which we had to duly photograph all the way around and even video with an exceedingly interesting commentary. It served its purpose and using my phone for navigation which unfortunately had a slight delay, we headed off towards Ronda using Daniel’s advice of heading in the direction of Cártama which was really helpful.
The journey got easier as we headed towards Ronda and the roads got smaller. The countryside was stunning until we got to the one way system in the town itself. We illegally parked outside of a garage opposite our apartment building and I was amazed that the remote unlocking system operated via my phone and a message from Alejandro worked perfectly and I managed to get our luggage upstairs and retrieve the keys. Then onto the garage which despite being literally 2-minutes walk from our apartment took nearly 10 minutes to drive around the one way system. Parking involved using the key fob to access the car lift and a terrifying journey down a level in the lift. That was a first for us both. Luckily the parking bay was almost opposite the lift and Colin parked perfectly. It was another story finding our way out using the pedestrian stairs and we nearly ended up in a residential first floor area area. I was very relieved to eventually get out on ground floor level and vowed we would not use the car until our return journey to Malaga.
The apartment is OK but not as nice as our Malaga one and this was my second choice. There is a little supermarket opposite so we bought a nice picnic lunch and had a rest after the drive. I don’t think anyone has stayed here for a few days as it is quite chilly bu we have managed to get the air con onto heat mode and it is gradually warming up. Later in the afternoon we took a stroll around the town and it did rain just a little bit in remembrance of our honeymoon visit nearly seventeen years ago. This is the amazing view near the bull ring across the gorge. It’s funny but apart from the gorge itself, parador and bull ring, I don’t recognise anywhere.
In the evening we headed out again to try some of my selected tapas bars but we’re obviously out of season as many were closed and those open were full. In the end we chose a rather soulless hotel restaurant with harsh lighting but surprisingly good food - Sol y Sombra’ - the sun and shadow.
Check out the footsteps, I was a few hundred short so I ran around the apartment to get to 10,000!!
