The first place for our inland holiday was Ronda, only about an hour away to the north, but we decided to drive Bob to Malaga airport first, which is about 110 km east of Gibraltar. We followed the coastal freeway most of the way, passing countless apartment developments, usually single storey places clustered together and mostly painted white. They must be owned or rented by people from the UK, Germany, etc. although it is hard to imagine that so many thousands want to visit southern Spain even though the climate is so much warmer and dryer than their home countries. Spain is about to pass a law that if you invest at least €500,000 in a property in Spain they will give you permanent residency, which means permanent residency for all of Europe. This will be a great incentive for people to buy in Spain because non-European residents can only stay in a European country for a maximum of 60 days without some sort of special visa.
Before dropping Bob at the airport we drove down to the beach areas to Benaldamena to investigate the marina, which looked very suitable as our next stop on the boat, and found a great restaurant (Taberna Arroceira) for lunch, right on the water's edge. It was extremely popular with the locals and our perfectly steamed mussels helped us to understand why.
The freeways around Malaga were too confusing for our Tom-Tom but we eventually found our way to the road to Ronda after going to the airport and arrived at our hotel late afternoon.
The Parador Hotel is in the most perfect location in the old town section of Ronda (originally a Moorish citadel), right beside the magnificent deep El Tarjo gorge and the 100 metres high Roman style bridge that spans the gorge and the Guadalevin River below. In the 18th C it took 40 years for stonemasons and labourers to complete it. During the Civil War in Spain prisoners were forced to jump to their death from the bridge!
Our room, with a balcony, overlooked the pool area and the gorge so although the hotel was larger than we expected it was worth staying there for the position. We especially appreciated this when we walked over the bridge to walk around part of the old town to look for a dinner spot and selected from one of the several nearby restaurants with balconies on the edge of the gorge, Casa Santa Pola. Ronda is at a high altitude, with hills all around, and our view was spectacular, with the white-washed houses on the other side of the gorge and the hilltops of apricot and mauve colours caused by the setting sun.
Specialties of Ronda are gazpacho soup plus meat dishes such as oxtail stew, suckling pig and lamb so we both selected the gazpacho and then the oxtail as a change from our selections for the past two months. We didn't eat at the hotel restaurant because it has no outdoor area. Parador hotels all used to be historical buildings originally serving another purpose, but have been renovated as hotels as a way to make sure the buildings survive. The Ronda Parador used to be the town hall long ago and because of its location along the gorge it has a public walkway around its perimeter, preventing the restaurant from having an outdoor area. The evenings are all balmy and warm now so eating inside was not appealing.