Finally we arrived at midnight in Malaga. We took a cab to Fuengirola to a hotel called Las Pyramides. It was about a 30 minute cab ride to the hotel.

We were meeting my mom’s friend Marion (well our friend too). She surprised us by booking a room for 4 nights as a birthday present and booked two excursions to surrounding areas. Holy moly, what a birthday present, and what a relaxing surprise. The hotel was super nice. We’ve been staying in small pensions and hostals that are decent, but not like this hotel. Our view is of the ocean and well, I think we may be spoiled after this visit.

We headed off to dreamland…

Day 1 – Excursion to Ronda

We had to get up, eat breakfast and leave for 7:20am. Woo that’s early. We had a long, beautiful bus ride along the coast and through mountains where we caught glimpses of Africa and Gibraltar.

We started our tour at the Ronda Plaza De Torros, or bullfighting ring. It’s one of the oldest stone bull fighting rings in the world. There we learned the history of how one becomes a bull fighter (you have to be related to someone who once was a bull fighter, then you have to say you want to be a bull fighter at an early age, and then train for a very long time….including watching bulls and learning the form of a bull fighter). Also, to become a bull fighter you have to be good looking….that’s what our tour guide said…I kid you not. We also learned that at the end of a bull fight if the bull fighter is given both ears and tail of the bull…he did the best job he could have done with his bull fighting skills. If he gets nothing he sucked.

Next we went to a church that was once Arab, Jewish and then Christian. We could see the different architecture changes over time….pretty cool.

Our tour guide also told us the name Christopher is common in Ronda since the town’s patron Saint is Saint Christopher the protector of travelers. I guess I’m protected since my last name is Christopher.

After the church visit we were free to explore on our own and found many interesting sights.

Some history of Ronda; the city began as an Arab community that was protected by a 90 meter deep gorge. It was impenetrable until 1485 when Christians invaded the town. Ronda still has its Moorish style with whitewashed houses, tiled entrances and nice wooden doors.

I took so many pics in this city and none do it justice.

We returned from Ronda and Peter and I looked for a laundry mat to do clothes (it has been a while since we cleaned our clothes….not in the sink at least). We found a place where a nice man did our clothes for us, so we went to grab a beer. This is where Marion told us how tapas got started in Spain. There are so many fruit flies (or gnats) people use to use old food…cheese, bread etc. to cover their drinks so the bugs wouldn’t get in…hence the word tapas….and with that history in mind we went on a search for tapas and found a place. We learned of the “system” as the lady at the restaurant called it. She brought out tapa after tapa and we grabbed what we wanted or declined until the next food run and ate. We collected sticks that were in each tapa and that was how we paid at the end. Some sticks were more expensive than others. We had so many tapas it’s hard to say what we ate. We even had dessert tapas.

With full bellies we crashed…because the next day we had to get up for another excursion, this time to Granada that left at 6:20am….eeeek.