Here we are in Ronda on a cold, wet day. Not really cold, it’s not snowing, and not really wet, we walked a few blocks in the rain and didn’t soak through. But yesterday was definitely better for cycling and tomorrow’s forecast is good.
After breakfast, we finalized our plans for the next 3 days. We booked accommodation in Ardales for tomorrow night and then, surprisingly, found it challenging to book anything in Anquetera for Saturday night. We didn’t expect that; we thought Anquetera was a bigger town and would have lots of options. It does, but not this coming weekend. It seems Monday is a holiday, Constitution Day, and many people are taking weekend trips, it seems.
In any case, we couldn’t find anything reasonably-priced that we could book online. I searched for websites of specific hotels (after all, not every room is on Booking or similar) and managed to get us a room over the phone. The fellow who answered had about as much English as I have Spanish but I think we have a room. I think he quoted me 40€ so we’ll see. Given that the options we saw online were 3 to 10 times that much and it’s only one night…
After the stressful foreign-language phone call, we went to see Casa Don Bosco. A nice house but it would have been nicer to see it in the evening with a Spanish guitar concert. Those have ended for the season.
Next up, a mediocre lunch and a visit to the Baños Árabes. This was definitely worth seeing. There was an informative video about the location and use of the baths, along with how the water and heating systems worked. We watched it in English; a Spanish version followed.
There were explanatory tablets like this one showing the layout of the site.
From there, we walked along the old walls until we came to a big church, which we didn’t feel like paying 1€ each to see. Instead, we went to the sweet shop across the little plaza for coffee and delicious goodies.
Inside the sweet shop. There’s a map of the world on the wall with pins showing where visitors are from. We added one for Vancouver. There’s a map of Spain for this on another wall.
We found ourselves walking across the Puento Nuevo again and realized we hadn’t yet visited the interpretation centre. Interesting and it answered my question about the truncated arch. There had been a previous bridge at that location but it didn’t last long.
This and the next are from one of the videos in the interpretation centre. I would have liked more detail but you can only cram so much into a very short looping video.
Our hotel. Apparently there are just 5 rooms. Ours was basic and small but very quiet, especially considering we were only a couple of blocks from Puente Nuevo.
