Andalusia Travels

I thought I'd share a photo of the countryside around Ronda in summer. As you can see everything is very dry, the grass is golden or brown, except for the olive trees, which retain their green color throughout the year. This is something that is quite common around Andalusia.

Recently I've been helping a couple of friends from the UK organize their trip to Spain, giving them a bit of advice on places to visit, places to avoid, and since they don't speak a word of Spanish, phoning or emailing a couple of hotels to arrange a room for them.

Here in Andalusia there are a lot of English or expat owned hotels, a fair number of top rated restaurants owned by expats, and most of the private houses for short term rent seem to be owned by expats or foreign residents.

My friends wanted to find somewhere authentic, a hotel owned by a Spanish family, somewhere they can see how Spanish people are different or the same as themselves. My friend's wife has a really healthy attitude to experiencing foreign cultures; put yourself in a place where you don't feel at home, but at the same time feel welcome, and in this way you'll to experience something new and exciting on holiday.

Of course staying in English owned hotels isn't necessarily a bad thing, remember that most have Spanish staff, but it does mean you're likely to meet a higher percentage of other guests from outside of Spain, whereas many smaller Spanish owned family run hotels wil have greater numbers of Spanish guests.

If you choose to stay in a private home for a week or two, chances are you'll never see the owners, so picking a property to stay in based on ownership doesn't matter much. Instead, pick a home that is central to where you want to stay so that there is a chance of getting to know the neighbors and experience the culture of Spain first hand.

Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind I seem to recall writing about the manhole covers of Spain, each town or village having their own pattern that makes them distinct from their neighbouring towns. A week or two ago I went to Antequera, which is a slightly larger town than Ronda, and about an hour away by train.

I went to take a few snapshots, see some museums, perhaps the bullring, and generally soak up the atmosphere. It was a great day except I went on a Monday when all the museums and other tourist attractions were closed, and the weather was OK but not spectacular.

So, I spend the day hunting for manhole covers and saw pretty much the same designs in Antequera as everywhere else, you know, a round cover with concentric circles, and instead of Ronda, or Jerez, or Sevilla, I saw the word Antequera. I still needed to photograph these, but then I hit paydirt. An entire manhole and cover that are designed to look good together, not just the cover on its own. Check it out, can you see why I got excited?

Last week we decided we'd had enough of the cold Campo around Ronda and headed inland to Sevilla, Spain's fourth largest city, and the capital of Andalucia. The city is home to about 1.5 million people, most of them Spaniards with a small sample of foreigners thrown in.

Our goal was to just get out of the house and see something different, and Sevilla is only one hour fifteen minutes drive from Ronda so not to strenuous a drive, although as per usual we had to deal with any number of impatient people who didn't like me staying at the speed limit.

We parked the car in one of Sevillas many underground carparks, actually right next to the tram line and a few hundred metres from the cathedral. First stop was a toilet, that last coffee before we left home was making itself felt. I'm glad I research tourism websites for Spain, otherwise we'd have never found the carpark.

McDonalds was the first working toilet we came across, oops, didn't mean that the way it sounded, we bought a coffee and muffin each and sat streetside so we could do some people watching. Somewhere around the old own in Sevilla there must be a university or college, most of the people looked like students.

Very different people watching in Sevilla from Ronda, as I said a lot of students which we haven't seen since living in Germany, Berlin to be exact. Ronda doesn't have a university or college so you tend to only see working people. Other than students we also saw regular Sevillanos out and about, and it's amazing how different their fashion sense is.

We both agreed that people in Sevilla must be more open to trying different colours and styles, whereas Rondeños are way more conservative.

Across the road from the McDonalds is the river that runs through the centre of Sevilla, known as the Guadalquivir it is navigable down to the coast and barges still cruise it's waters. Back in medieval times it was possible to sail right through to Córdoba, but the river has silted up now and there is little likelihood of it being dredged to allow this.

A short walk further down the river you see the Sevilla tower (Torre del Oro) originally built as a look out in Moorish times, and until the 19th century still used for this purpose. These days it's a maritime museum.

After painfully trying to get a great photo of the tower, sunny days in winter don't exactly give great photos in Spain, we decided to head back to the cathedral area,and then spent a couple of hours wandering the streets looking at the shops, the people, the architecture, and somehow avoiding the cyclists who seem to be everywhere in Sevilla.