19 April
Does this carseat mean we're going home?
Today we rented a car to tour some of the White Hills Towns south of Seville. Katie was unusually excited about the carseat, and cried when I took her out to adjust something. I didn't realize until later, that she probably associated the carseat with home (having only been riding in planes and subway trains since we left home), and was excited about that prospect. Poor kid.
After about an hour and a half of trying to figure out this carseat with none of the hardware I'm used to having, we were finally on the road. I don't remember how long it was after that (not long, I think) that we stumbled upon this sight.
Of course we had to turn in. And once we got there, we discovered that there were no tour guides or fences, and all the doors were unlocked and open. The guys were all out of the car before it stopped rolling.
I explored a little with them, then went back to sit with Katie so Lindsay could look too. It was too rainy and cold to bother with getting Katie out of the car. Plus there was the 3' wide rushing torrent of water we had to cross to get there that I wasn't real confident about making while I was holding her.
They call this place a castle, but we decided that it's more of an outpost. It may have been larger at one point, but we couldn't find any other outside doors besides the one we came in. Was very cool to be able to look around it.
Then we got back in the car and headed down the road. Many confusing road changes later, we found Acros de le frontera, which chewed us up and spit us out. In this picture, you can see 3 buildings across what looks like 3 points. Very cool. the front one is a church, from what we understand. We spent at least 45 minutes on roads so narrow that we had to pull the mirrors in for fear that they would be scraped off on buildings, and switchbacks we barely made, up ridiculously steep grades. We made it halfway to the church, maybe. Then we apparently took the wrong switchback and ended up on that bridge about 2 minutes later.
At which point, we decided that we'd had enough of Acros and moved on to Zahara, which has a much more clear access to their castle. See where the castle is? Where the white buildings seem to meet the rocky hill behind them? The church steeple? That's where you start walking. At least you can see the building you're trying to get to, but oh man what a hike. (note the olive trees in the foreground. A very familiar sight.) Not hard to understand why this castle was the last Moorish outpost that the Spaniards were able to conquer.
Zahara from the castle. And more olive trees.
The top of the castle. Trying to stay out of the wind, really still not wanting anyone but Mommy to hold her.
Inside the castle.
Once we had decided that we'd had enough fun there, we walked back down the hill in the pouring rain and drove on to our next stop, Ronda. We stayed the night in Ronda, and it was lovely. Katie got to test out her new raincoat again.
We took a walk over this gorgeous (and very, very tall) old bridge.
Stopped here to gawk at the scenery and take some pictures.
And had supper in a pub with a bunch of babies running around. The waiter at the first restaurant we stopped at tipped us off to this pub. He said that if he didn't get free food at that place, he'd eat here at San Domingo. We agreed with him completely. The food was delicious, very well priced, and the atmosphere was to die for. Who can resist 4 adorable little kids running around? Certainly no one in this pub, everyone else was playing with them too.
20 April
In the morning, we took a little drive across the "arab bridge" and stopped to gawk at the scenery there too. Then we almost didn't make it up the very steep hill on the other side. Yikes.
Then, after a long, very windy road, one small upset stomach, and a bunch of yachts, (and a brand new Aston Martin Vanquish in the rich people part of town) we made it to the Mediterranean Sea in Malaga. We got our fingers (and our shoes) wet, and then hustled off the beach to play at the big playground before the rain came in too hard.
This church is unfinished on the other side due to lack of funding. (
See here.)
It is pretty cool nonetheless. We had a fantastic lunch here, and almost lost our backpack to some scam artists. But all is well, and Andrew has quick reflexes.
That's the last of my pictures in Spain. We drove back to Seville and Andrew and I went out to a Flamenco show while Katie played with Lindsay in the apartment, that was very cool. On the 21st, we packed our bags, went out for a traditional Spanish breakfast (yum!), and did a little bit of touristy shopping before we had to catch our flight back to Paris. We spent the night there, and then flew home on the 22nd.
And after we'd been awake and travelling for 20 hours, we arrived home to find this.
And we got stuck a mile from home. My poor little car couldn't handle the drifts, so we had to call our friend to come take us home, and Andrew plowed the car out the next day. We've been pretty warm the last 2 days, so there's hardly anything left, but we sure were sorry that we didn't bring our winter coats to the airport with us.
