Aragón: Mallos de Riglos

After the blazing heat of Seville, the rolling green hills and cool temperatures of Aragón in the foothills of the Pyrenees seemed magic.  We came for the Mallos de Riglos, but loved the whole area, and could easily have stayed longer.  The 2hr circular hike through the 300m high conglomerate 'mallets' was spectacular, and probably the best thing we did in Spain.

We saw quite a few climbers, maybe 20 different groups. All French. The rock is conglomerate, and looked scarily bad, but I guess with enough traffic the loose chunks will have mostly been pulled out. As this climber says:

We now feel a little more confident climbing on those potatoes encrusted in the walls. The first day I felt like I had to test them all. And indeed some of them sounded hollow or cracked. But they stick to the wall anyway. So after a while you pull on anything that has chalk on it without a second thought.

I was sorely tempted to try and organise a guide and hire some gear to climb here, but it would have left Em at the bottom of the cliff with a baby to entertain, and we had lots of other stuff to see. There is a great climbers bar in the village with maps of all the routes on the walls, they also have some basic rooms to stay in.

Two climbers topping out Mallo Puro, the spike on the front of Mallo Pison.  According to their friends it is 6 pitches at around 6b

We stayed in a fantastic B&B that had some of the best food we ate in Spain and a fantastic view of the Mallos.

View from our patio

Sevilla: Too f***king hot

We went to Seville in the middle of some unusually hot weather - the average for May was 26°C but we had forecast temperatures of 36°C, 38°C, and 36°C.  To be honest, it pretty much ruined our enjoyment of the city.  It was barely cool enough to go outside even in the evening, on the hottest day it was still about 37°C at 9pm. But we struggled on anyway. E was surprisingly OK with the heat and we made sure she was well hydrated, sunscreened, and shaded as much as possible.

So, what to see? Surprisingly there is an Alcázar and a Catedral. But first, some drinks.

View of the Cathedral from a terrace bar in Hotel doña Maria

Tomb of Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) inside the Cathedral - some debate as to whether all of him ended up in here... 

Alcazar - Seville's answer to the Alhambra.  Not quite as grand, but still very beautiful

I jumped in this fountain at Plaza de España with a bunch of other tourists to cool off

This is at 4pm, we saw this sign display 40°C one day.

Costa de la Luz: Zahara de los Atunes

To combat all the mad rushing around we headed for the beach.  We decided on the Costa de la Luz as the less touristed option, and from Manuel's google map, decided that Zahara de los Atunes sounded perfect, and it was.  Great beach, even by Australian standards, essentially zero non-Spanish tourists, good places to eat, and a nice hotel right on the beach.

The only way it could have been better was if it had been 10 degrees cooler.  Mid thirties every day meant it was too hot for E on the beach for most of the day, especially since cooling off in the sea is apparently more scary than interesting at the moment. E also acquired a taste for sand.  Her preferred method was to find a rock, suck on it to get it nice and wet, dip it in the sand, and suck on it again.

Vía Verde de la Sierra: a great ride

In Antequera I happened to flick past a section of lonely planet that described the Vía Verde de la Sierra, an old railway that has been converted into a bike route 'greenway':

There are currently 12 of these greenways in Andalucía, but by popular consensus the Vía Verde de la Sierra between Olvera and Puerto Serrano is usually voted the most rewarding.  Aside from wild, rugged scenery, the Olvera Vía Verde is notable for its four spectacular viaducts, 30 tunnels, and three old stations-turned-hotels that are spread over a 36km route.

which is when our lazy strategy of not booking anything in advance paid off.  We detoured to Olvera and stayed in the Spanish equivalent of a country pub where the 5 locals in the bar all took a break from watching bull fighting on the TV to have a good long stare at me try to get a room and some food in my 2-year-old-level Spanish.

Great view from our hotel terrace, pity it smelt like manure from the farm next door

We hired dos bicicletas y el carro niño at 9am, as soon as the bike hire place opened, to try and beat the heat: it was going to be 36°C. With the help of some miming and our dodgy Spanish we got E installed in her carseat inside the baby trailer, and the number for a cab service that could pick us, bikes, and baby trailer up at Puerto Serrano, 36km away.

Beautiful, typically Andalusían scenery near Olvera, lots of olive groves  

650 m tunnel, that speck of light you can see isn't dust on the lens, it's the other end of the tunnel

Poppies and other wildflowers in full bloom

Peñón de Zaframagón, home to a huge number of  massive griffon vultures.  We saw 50 or so in the air.

Glad this one had lights.

The heat was brutal, but the terrain was mostly flat, and slightly downhill in our direction (Olvera to Puerto Serrano), and we were travelling west so E was shaded by her seat for the morning.  I would definitely recommend a head torch (wish I'd thought to take mine) or bike light, some tunnels have lights, but some of the long ones don't - a 650m tunnel gets very dark in the middle and it is quite disorienting riding in that - I kept thinking I was going to hit the wall.  There weren't any other tourists mad enough to be doing the whole ride, it was just us and a bunch of dudes in lycra :)  The taxi from Puerto Serrano back to Olvera station was expensive (50€ I think?) but he earned it: he loaded the bikes, and collapsed the trailer in the heat, and drove the 40km windy road back to Olvera.

I was very happy we got to do this ride, it was one of the coolest things we did in Spain.

Ronda: "it's a bridge"

We drove an hour out of our way to see a bridge.  Here it is.  It was pretty impressive, but still, just a bridge.

Antequera: Parador, El Torcal, Dolmens

To see El Torcal we stayed in a Parador: the Parador de Antequera, which was really nice. Not quite as spectacular as the Parador inside the Alhambra, but not as hard to book and expensive either. I can see why they have special promotions for 18s-35s in the Paradores - Em and I were 20 years younger than anyone else staying there.

View from the Parador de Antequera restaurant

El Torcal was an interesting place. We hiked out amongst the limestone karsts for a couple of hours (there are only two trails and we did the longest one) and got great views over Antequera.

We spent some time walking through Antequera, and despite the heat, hiked up to the Alcazaba for some great views.

Antequera Alcazaba 

Peña de los Enamorados, which looks like a sleeping face from some angles, viewed from the Alcazaba

On our way out of town we saw the Dolmen de Menga and Dolmen de Viera: two tombs built over 4000 years ago out of giant stone slabs, kind of Spain's answer to Stonehenge.

Photo from spain-holiday.com (ours were rubbish)

Granada: Alhambra, Albayzín

We started in Granada by catching the bus up to the Albayzín, the medieval Moorish neighbourhood, for some stroller-destroying cobblestones, cute whitewashed alleys (not as good as Córdoba, sorry Granada), and a great view of the Alhambra. We walked around for a bit, got destroyed by the heat, and headed for the Alhambra.

The Alhambra tickets were the only thing we booked in advance for the entire trip - they sell out quickly, and we talked to a number of people who didn't get to see the Nasrid Palace because it was sold out on the day we visited. The history is fascinating, the grounds are beautiful, and the palace itself is pretty spectacular: full of intricate carving, mosaics, and garden courtyards.  We spent 5 hours inside the Alhambra looking at everything, and it was only just enough.

View of the Alhambra from the Mirador San Nicholás in the medieval Moorish Albayzín neighbourhood. Snow covered Sierra Nevada in the background.

Alhambra Alcazaba

Generalife gardens

Inside the Palacios Nazaríes (Nasrid Palace)

Córdoba: "Don't hit the mosque"

We thought we were smart booking a hotel that was close to the World Heritage listed Mezquita that is Córdoba's major tourist drawcard. Turns out not so much. It was so close that was really really hard to get to, and our car, so useful to date, was a major liability.

We spent almost 2 hours within 2km of the hotel trying to solve the puzzle of tiny one-way streets, alleys, and construction road closures. After finding another hotel in the same chain we got some directions, which were mostly right, and involved entering a restricted vehicle area around the mosque itself by pressing an intercom button and getting a car barrier opened. I spotted our hotel shortly after that adventure (fun with limited Spanish), and getting desperate, tried to duck down a one-way street the wrong way, only to have a car appear in the other direction. Now I had to do a 1000 point turn, with the world-heritage listed mosque on one side, and a cafe full of people on the other. Fun times.

We eventually found the hotel and I nearly lost it when the tiny car park under the hotel was marked as full. Luckily the hotel had a couple of spots reserved, and even better Avis didn't charge us for all the scratches we picked up from other cars squeezing into the parks around us.

Drama over, the mosque was spectacular. It was founded in 785 when the Moors held most of modern day Andalusia, and in the 16th century had a Catholic cathedral plonked right in the middle, complete with a bell tower encasing the original minaret. The information inside the church makes a big deal of the Visigoth ruins that have been found beneath the Mosque: 'hey dude we were totally here first', which apparently justifies the Vatican's position of banning Muslims from praying inside the 'church'.

Outside of the mosque there were plenty of other things to see. The Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos (Castle of the Christian Monarchs) had some amazing gardens.

And those tiny little alleys that were so frustrating in a car turned out to be some of the cutest, most beautiful old cobblestone streets we saw in Spain.