The map shows the route we took in southern Spain. We rented a car for a total of 9 days and made overnight stops in Malaga (2 nights), Ronda (2 nights), Seville (3 nights), and Cordoba (2 nights).
Malaga - We left Granada in our newly rented Volkswagen Polo heading to Malaga, but on the way we stopped in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada for a hike. We chose the Cahorres hike in Monchil, which takes you to an amazing gorge within the mountain range (check out this article for details on the hike).
By the time we finished our hike, stopped in Nerja and got to Malaga, we were exhausted and didn’t do much our first night. On the second day, we made our way back to Nerja so we could do the Nerja river walk along the Chillar River. This hike takes about 6 hours if you go all the way through. I would venture to guess that 5 of those hours are spent in ankle high water and sometimes deeper. By the time this excursion was done and we got back it was around 5:00. This meant we had about 4 hours of daylight to walk around the city of Malaga. As a result, we don’t have a lot of feedback about Malaga. But what little we saw, it seemed like an excellent city with a lot of hidden gems on the small side streets. The city also appears to be a frequent stop for cruise ships. If you don’t want to spend a fortune on food/drinks, find out where where the ships dock and avoid those areas.
Beach in Nerja.
Ronda - The next stop on our trip was Ronda. It’s not exactly the most lively city in Spain but it’s going to be hard to find a more beautiful city. For all of you Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones fans out there, Ronda is a must- primarily because of Puente Nuevo. Puente Nuevo is a bridge that separates Ronda and stands at 390 ft. tall. The bridge started being built in 1759 and took almost 35 years to build. Not only does it look the part of a GOT scene, at one time the room at the top of the bridge was used as a torture chamber and people were thrown from the windows.
Our AirBnb looked like a castle room
Our main suggestions for Ronda:
Hike down the gorge a bit to get a better view of the bridge. You can’t really appreciate the size of this bridge and how difficult it must have been to build until you look at it from the bottom. We found this blog to be the best in describing how to get to the best spots in the gorge.
Hit up El Lechuguita for tapas. It’s a very small space and if you want a table, we suggest getting there before it opens at 8:30. It’s a self service tapas restaurant. This means you receive a sheet of paper with all of the options, you fill it out and then take it to the bar. Every tapas on the menu was 0.90 Euros, so you can try many and not break the bank.
Seville - The next stop was Seville. We/I intended on stopping in Grazalema but that didn’t go so great. I typed the town name into Google maps and the app did its job and took us directly into the center of the town. The streets in this little town are very narrow, many one-ways and do-not-enters, many blind turns so sharp that you’re missing the walls of the houses by mere centimeters…Caitlin wasn’t real pleased with me as she was driving down these glorified sidewalks. MY BAD. A better experience after, was when we stopped along the Rio Majaceite and did a 3 to 4 hour hike, which was an easy but fun trek (if interested check out this very helpful blog). Next it was onward to Seville.
Grazalema. It was still cool to see, even if Caitlin did hate me for making her drive in the actual city.
TIP: Seville parking is miserable so we parked outside the city at a metro stop (Blas Infante) for free and took the metro into the city. We would highly recommend this strategy.
Seville is a beautiful city and I think it deserves at least a couple of full days as opposed to some of these smaller cities that you can see pretty much in one day. Our main suggestions for Seville:
Catedral de Sevilla - This sounds spoiled, so I’ll just apologize now. When you see a cathedral in every city you go to like we have, they start to blend in with each other in your mind. The churches that stand out usually have something specific that sets it apart whether that be on the outside or inside. In the case of Catedral de Sevilla, it was the tomb of Christopher Columbus. As you can imagine this is where the majority of people were gathering.
Tomb of Christopher Columbus
Royal Alcazar of Seville - Another incredible palace that deserves a visit. We thought the palace was more impressive at The Alhambra, but we were more impressed with the gardens in Seville.
Plaza de Espana - This giant landmark/plaza was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 which almost sounded like a World’s Fair type of event. There’s not much to say about it except it was awesome and they filmed one of the crappy (in my opinion) Star Wars movies here.
Parque de María Luisa - HUGE park in the middle of Seville that you can spend hours. Some of the more impressive buildings are in this park and were also built for the Ibero-American Exposition mentioned above.
Not so great things:
Las Setas De Sevilla - I am putting this on here because I was cranky when we saw it and mad that they charged money just to go to the top of it (one story).
Flamenco - Everything says you HAVE to see this live dance. Well it’s crazy expensive to see this live dance. So on the recommendation of our host we went to La Carboneria for free flamenco dancing. As suggested, we got there an hour early and found a seat. Unfortunately, the show was like 30 minutes and it was one guy by himself, the woman never made an appearance. Maybe it’s a ‘you get what you pay for’ type of situation.
Where to eat:
Los Coloniales - Another great tapas restaurant that is affordable and tasty. If you get there later, they write your name on a chalkboard and yell it out when it’s your turn.
Cordoba - The last stop on our road trip was Cordoba. This review is not going to be very long because there’s not a whole lot to do in Cordoba except visit the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba. As you can tell by the name, it’s a pretty unique place because it has switched back and forth between a Christian cathedral and Muslim mosque a few times. Luckily neither of these groups came in and demolished everything, so it’s really interesting to see the effect both religions had on the structure. Other than that we didn’t do much. We didn’t even eat out, since we bought groceries!
Summary - If able, we would definitely recommend getting a car if you are wanting to see this part of Spain. The roads are nice and except for an occasional round-a-bout or narrow city road, nothing should confuse you. Keep in mind that automatic cars are hard to come by and a LOT more expensive than a manual. The only thing we would may have changed would have been to skip Cordoba and go south to Gibraltar and maybe even take a day trip to Africa.
