Ronda

 Back to vacation—Ronda is the cutest little town I’ve ever seen. It was a nice break in between all the cities I’d been travelling to. Ronda’s main attraction is a gigantic rocky gorge that encircles the town’s historic village. The first night’s scenery was breathtaking-we met up with the guys from our group who had been traveling on a slightly different itinerary (actually they copied our itinerary and just moved some train times around…so original), and had an amazing dinner overlooking the gorge as the sun set over the rocks and surrounding hilly farmland. It was a picture perfect moment.

 Ronda was also nice because we stayed in a hostel that was actually a converted bed and breakfast. Compared to our hostel in Madrid where we slept in a cramped room that fit twelve people, we instead shared hotel-room-esque doubles. Not to mention we got a discount eating at the hostel’s restaurant. And the staff was so friendly, like all the people in the small town of Ronda. Our last morning there, we had to leave at 6:30am before the hostel breakfast started to catch a train to Granada. The owner prepared us a sack of oranges and yogurts for the road! So adorable.

After the first night in Ronda, we of course we had to hike down into the gorge and see the beautiful scenery. At one point the trail split, and we took the narrower fork that led to an area I’m pretty sure most tourists avoid, as the paths were about two feet wide and only permitted walking in single file, not to mention the fences stopping us from falling down to the bottom of the gorge were weak at best and mostly broken. (Oh well, YOLO!) We hiked all the way down to the river at the bottom of the gorge and saw some old city water station/shack that for some reason had not yet been removed. We also made sure to take the famous “bridge photo” looking up at the gorgeous stone bridge connecting the historic village with the rest of Ronda through the gorge.

Another night, we gave in and stopped at McDonald's, the one fast food restaurant in the town,for a late night snack. I hand't eaten McDonald's in a few years, and the french fries tasted amazing even in Spain. The funny thing is, American commodities are really expensive in Spain, so the typical 2/3 dollar burger was around 10 dollars instead. Kind of a rip off McDonald's. Ronda is tied for my favorite place I visited on vacation, with our next and final stop: Granada.