Marbella & Ronda

Night was quiet, but short. I woke up at 7:40 and decided to walk around and take some pictures:

Then went back for breakfast. It was great. A good choice of cured meats, cheese, jams and all that classic stuff you can usually have for breakfast in hotels. And coffee. It was really tasty.

Finally we left the hotel and headed to Marbella. It was first time I used my Garmin 60CSX for serious road navigation. I have to say that Magellan Meridian was muuuuuuch better - Garmin user interface is crappy and you have to spend a plenty of time to do simple thing. If you take a wrong turn, it takes ages to correct your road to destination. Besides I can't find in Garmin the feature that searches a place by name nearest to selected location (not your current, but some other). It means that if you don't know the address of the hotel near Ronda, you can't find it on Garmin - at least I'm too stupid to do this. Using Magellan you can do it in 5 seconds and it's very intuitive. But ok - let's stop complaining about Garmin. After figuring out our way to destination Marbella, we arrived there about 10:30. It's not easy task to find a free parking space in Marbella even off season. Fortunately we found a temporary parking few hundred meters away from beaches and the lantern.

Short walk along the beach was a real pleasure for both of us and it was very hot, so we decided to go farther - Ronda. On the way to next location, we came across many nice villas and lands for sale. It became my dream to buy some piece of land here in the future.
At last we arrived to Ronda being very hungry. Just after parking our car in underground facility, we raised above the surface directly to the restaurant. They had Tapas Mixtas and some other staff that we immediately ordered. After literally 5 seconds everything was on the table! Service was really quick and food quality very good. Then we started roaming through the city. It's great city with plenty of old buildings and relics of the past. They've a lot of interesting souvenir shops . We've found interesting plates and castanets, but failed to buy them. Just lack of ability to take quick decisions.

After seeing everything you can see in the city, I insisted on taking picture of the famous bridge from the bottom. It wasn't easy to get there, but finally we found the way and I've taken few pictures. Hopelessly the weather changed for the worse and most of the pics are crappy:

From Ronda we headed to the hotel El Horcajo. Garmin showed it's weakness again - I couldn't find a hotel address. Probably because the address had a form of some KM on some road. Of course Garmin was not able to find hotel by name! Luckily my memory based on maps.google.com is reliable and after few minutes we arrived to the destination - El Horcajo...

Ronda

My trip to Andalusia is coming very quickly. And it's only two weeks ahead of the "Phototrip". I had to make some arrangements in Spain. We'll land in Malaga late evening, so I've made a decision to stay there for first night. Browsing the internet intensively I've found quite a nice looking hotel - Hotel Villa Guadalupe. It's reachable only by car, but I hope panorama of the city is worth staying there. Advertised price on Venere.com seemed to be really good - only 71 EUR for such a nice place? Of course it appeared later that you've to pay for breakfast separately. It's quite expensive - 6 or 8.5 EUR depends on what kind of breakfast you want.
I though over my plans for the farther trip. We'll not head to Gibraltar, but instead decided to see Ronda and pueblos blancos around. As far as I heard from my friends and read over the Internet, this city is definitely worth seeing - I hope to put here some pictures of it in the very near future. Because I want to have few hours to visit Ronda I've chosen "Hotel El Horcajo" for the second night. It's located about 20 km away from Ronda, but it's on the way to Jerez de la Frontera which is considered to be our next stop. Moreover this hotels costs only 60 EUR and price includes breakfast. It's really cheap and hope it's worth the money.

This picture of "Hotel El Horcajo" is very appealing:

Trip to Andalusia

As I mentioned few days ago I'm on my way to go to Andalusia very soon! I've just "bought" my tickets for miles and it's even sooner. We (I'll go there with my wife) will have 3 full days for visiting such a nice places as Marbella, Ronda, Gibraltar, Sevilla and maybe Cadiz. It's too much for such a short trip, but I treat it as a kind of reconnaissance. It means I plan to get back there in the future for a bit longer and maybe take my children with us.
Besides, there'll be a good opportunity to check some of the photo equipment before "Phototrip". Moreover Canon has just announced a photo competition called CANON, THE ASSIGNMENT and I've registered. It means I should have a good (or even better :) picture before 1st of May to upload and have a chance to win. It's not easy task, but I'll do my best!
It's also first time I should be able to report my daily activities from the trip - good try before "Phototrip". Hope I'll have Internet access en Espana. You'll see more pictures then, because now this blog seems to be a bit boring...

Below is the map of planned trip:

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