Ronda

Sorry I'm like always behind on this, so I thought I would catch up. This week classes started. They are all in Spanish and are kinda boring. I mean, I'm only taking these classes to help me graduate. But some of them I think could be interesting, but my teachers just lecture for an hour and a half. In Spanish. But Wednesday marked the day that I am officially one fourth done studying abroad!! And Thursday could not be over with soon enough. I went on a run with Angie, Lindsay and I booked a flight for Easter Break to Switzerland, and our roommate Sarah left for her fabulous 11 day vacation to Amsterdam, Prague, and Dublin.

Friday I went on a trip with the CEA, my program here. We went to Ronda, Spain. Don't worry, I had never heard of it either. Although apparently it's famous in Spain. It's like one of the oldest cities and I think they are famous for bull fights too. So we met at the post office at 8am and got to Ronda at about 11:00. But the ride wasn't really 3 hours, we left late and stopped randomly at a bar halfway through. We then got a tour of the city.

Little geography: Ronda is inbetween the cities of Sevilla and Malaga. It is located in the province of Malaga. So the province of Malaga would be like the state of New York, and the city of Malaga would be like NYC. It was south of Granada, so it was like in the 60's and sunny. The guide said if you look through these like 2 mountains, you can see the rock of Gibraltar. I thought that was really cool.

They told us that we could either go with an English speaking guide or a Spanish speaking guide. Not a tough decision- I obviously went English. The first thing we did was walk to this little gazebo-type building on a ledge and look at the view. It was absolutely gorgeous. Our guide Armando explained that right now we were in the Mercadillo (I think that's what it was called) and he pointed to the houses on a ledge across this bridge and said that was the old town. The rich people lived there like 200 years ago. They even used the houses as summer homes. When they would go shopping, they would cross the bridge to the much bigger Mercadillo to buy stuff so the merchants didn't have to pay the taxes. At least that's what I got out of the tour.

Then we crossed the bridge, or Puente Nuevo. That means New Bridge in Spanish, but the bridge was built at the end of the 18th Century, so I wouldn't really consider that new. It separates the town from the marketplace, and, according to my map, it is the "real symbol of the city."

<--- This is the Puente Nuevo. Its huge!!

We looked at the old houses. Many of them have been turned into hotels or restaurants because the owners could not afford them anymore. This was the actual town of Ronda, so the houses were bigger. Many had gates on the windows, which is a sign of wealth. The more detailed the gates, the richer. Plus they also put gates on the bedroom windows of their daughters so that boys could not climb up and girls could not sneak out.

Our tour ended in a museum/palace/house. I'm not totally sure what it was, because the sign said museum, they said people lived in it, and it was huge. It had a courtyard inside. The ceilings and doorways were shorter than normal, and the guide said it was because back then people were shorter. He told us how short, but he said it in meters, so that meant nothing to me.

house/palace/museum

Then he took us back to the bullring and told us we had 3 hours of free time until it was time to go back to Granada. In order to save money, Lindsay and I brought lunches. We lost everyone else we knew because they went with the Spanish group, but eventually they had the same idea we did, and joined us for lunch. I loved just looking at the mountains. It was such a pretty view.

After that, Lindsay and I went shopping. She wanted new shoes and I didn't want to spend my money. She ended up buying a pair of shoes and a scarf, and I bought a scarf too. Just walking up and down the streets reminded me of California. There were palm trees and good weather. We kept saying that it felt like there should be a beach or an ocean around, but there wasn't. It was like a beach town with no beach.

Then we went back to the famous bullring and met up with everyone else from the CEA. We waited around until we got on our bus and then went home. I slept on the bus, but I slept on the way there too. Then we walked home. It was a really fun day!! I really didn't expect much from Ronda because I didn't really know anything about it. But it really did surprise me. It was a beautiful city and I'm so glad I got the chance to visit. :)

angie and anna in front of bullring

the view