EuropeSpain

Southern Spain Highlights

Sevilla

I loved everything about this city. Of the larger Spanish cities we visited (Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla), this was by far my favourite. From the beautiful Moorish architecture, to the Flamenco dancers at Plaza de España and the gardens at the Alcazar – this city was a photographer’s playground.

I even felt safe enough to venture out on my own after we put A down for the night to capture some sunset photos around the city.

That was probably a very stupid feeling given that we were there on the day of the Catalan Independence Referendum and there were many violent protests going on around the country.

There was also some other … ceremony… happening right outside our window

After copious amounts of Googling, we still couldn’t figure out what this was about.

Casares

Sunrise over Casares

After seeing a postcard of this beautiful white village, I was determined to get there in person. It turns out there are at least 12310983 “white villages” in southern Spain, and finding that exact one is like finding a needle in a haystack. After many hours of searching and reverse-image googling, we finally found it! And drove there for the day. Only to realize it was the wrong village (Frigiliana). Which was also quite nice.

Once in Frigiliana, we found a local who was able to tell us the name of the village in the photo. So the next morning we headed there for a very picturesque sunrise. I would highly recommend seeing it at sunrise. I would highly NOT recommend doing so with a 9month old who hates sitting in a car seat, and apparently, sunrises.

Ronda

There’s not too much to do in Ronda, but the bridge is definitely worth a quick visit if you’re driving through. There’s a short hike that takes you around and under the bridge, and is fairly easy to do with a baby strapped in. We only spent about 4 hours total in Ronda, and felt like we saw the whole town. There’s also a bullring that you can check out, but it had to be with a guided tour so we decided to skip it.

Frigiliana

This was the village we confused with Casares and ended up visiting by accident. It was beautiful regardless and A had a lot of fun wobbling around the cobble stone streets. We also had some delicious Tapas for lunch here

Granada

The main draw for visiting Granada is the Alhambra.

Despite this being on the itinerary, we didn’t actually make it here. I found out the night before that just like the Alcazar in Seville, you need to buy tickets in advance if you want to get into the Alhambra. Although there were some tricks you could do – like line up at 5am to get the handful of standby tickets they give out each morning – we decided to cut our losses and spend an extra day exploring Malaga.

Getting around

One way car rentals in this part of Europe are just shy of $239458729348 Euro, and when you convert that to USD, that’s a crapload of money. So we opted to bus and train for long distances between cities, and rent cars locally as needed to see the sights. Driving around Southern Spain was actually very easy, and the speed trains were much faster than driving (assuming there are no sights you want to see along the way).

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