Touring Around Southern Spain

My parents were able to make it to Spain for two weeks to visit me and tour around spain with a rented car. We had a blast their second weekend by touring around the southern autonomy of Andalucia. Here is a little background of the autonomy: it has beaches, mountains, farms and many booming cities like sevilla and granada. Along with that it has popular beach cities like malaga, cadiz and the straight of gibraltar even too.

We started off though in Granada, and they absolutely loved the Alhambra and the whole vibe of the city. They were happy to see me though with my spanish speaking skills, because they were having a difficult time.

So we drove souther towards the meditterean saturday morning and stopped in the beach town of Salobrena. We just took a nice stroll along the beach and then made our way west towards a smaller beach La Herrededura. We were able to get some great info from the tourist guide. So we headed up to this light tower on top of cliff, where we found a great trail along the cliff. Breathtaking views of the coast and also saw a little beach away from all the action. We drove through some dangerous curvy roads to go their for lunch. We came to find out it was a nudist beach, so it was funny to eat lunch with my parents while seeing beach nudists.

Once we drove through Nerja, we decided to go north a bit in the back roads of andalucia to find antequerra. They had a great national park there with some hiking trails. El Torcal was a beautiful little area in the middle of nowhere. We got to receive most of our exercise through this 1.5 hour walking through areas of beautiful rock formation and visits from mountain goats. The real interesting part came with trying to find our hotel that night in the small city of ardales.

It took us a good 3 hours through the dark in windy roads that were not on the map to finally find our hotel in a small andalucian village. It was a good brumbaugh family road trip that was reminded me of the Griswald family during their movies. We woke up though to the rooster roosting and sheep herding the next morning. My favorite part though had to be how there were "Man Bar's" opened on Sunday mornings with man drinking etc. So much for Sunday being a holiday day!

After buyin a Roasted Chicken, we took off for Ronda. This city is famous for its small canyon that rips through the middle part of the town. Along with this canyon, much of the city was along a cliff offering some great views. We walked around and then decided to move on to see some Roman ruins. The place was closed but we climbed over the fence because it looked as if there was no one in site. It is always interesting seeing 2000 year old figures, it puts you back into your place of realizing how small you are.

We left there for Cadiz, which is famous beach it as I mentioned before. The road trip there was simple and involved little map reading difficulties. There was a motorcycle rally going on in our highway that involved more than 1000 of them driving past us. The city is a port city for the Atlantic, where Columbus started off his sails for the land of the Americas. We walked throughout the city, including a light tower/castle that jutted into the ocean. It was awesomely beautiful, and the seafood was great!

Surprisingly somehow my parents survived their two weeks in Spain. The language barrier killed them at times along with knowing what to order at restaurantes. They did do a great job in visiting the famous and lesser knowns parts of spain by renting a car. So if my parents can survive spain, than dont be afraid of coming out here from the States!