First Few Days in Spain

After sleeping late to get our time clocks in sync, we spent our first day exploring Rota, a seaport on the SW coast of Spain. This is a deep water harbor, and our Navy has an agreement with Spain for its use and that of the base where we are staying. We spend American dollars on the base and euros in the town of Rota. Rota has narrow streets, a moorish castle, cathedral and small boat harbor. Liberty Call would fit just fine here. Had our first tapas (appetizers) at a Rota bar on Tues. That's about all the energy we had before it was back to the room for a nap.

On Wednesday we took the ferry across the bay to the city of Cadiz. Cadiz occupies a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic. This spit of land has been occupied by Phoenicians, Romans, Moors and Spaniards. We hopped aboard a topless, two-decker bus and had a tour, with English translation via earplugs, thru the town. After the tour, I did the walking tour and returned to the Roman Theatre, a ruin that has only been discovered in the past few years. I'm beginning to get the feel of Europe and its long history of various cultures occupying the same ground. Had our first paella (saffron rice with seafood) that is a typical dish here.

On Thursday our real adventure began. We took off in our rental car for a self-guided, White Hill Towns tour using Rick Steves' Spain 2008 as our guide. We got to the first destination just fine. Ronda is high up in the mountains, with the old Moorish town on one side of a 360' deep gorge and the new town on the other. A bridge built in 1750 (the new bridge) spans the deep, narrow gorge and is a spectacular sight. The old Arab bridge is upstream. The scenery here, as in all of the white towns, is awesome.

We drove thru the Sierra de Grazelema Natural Park to get to the next town, Grazelema. The blacktopped road twisted thru the mountains and we only saw a few other cars the entire way. Our last stop was in Zahara, where we had Spanish wine, aged cheese, and lamb chops for dinner. The restaurant overlooked green hills, orchards and mountains beyond where hang gliders floated the entire time.

Now the real adventure. We've learned a few lessons. Don't travel in a strange place after dark. Thought we'd figured this out in Boston when we got lost there. Well, we got lost again going back to Rota. Spent about an hour circling thru a city before we made it out the other side. The other lesson: I can't read the roundabout signs fast enough . . . especially when they are hidden behind a tree or other obstacle. We circled a few round abouts more than once trying to figure out where to turn. We didn't get home until after midnight, just about when American Idol was coming on.

We are taking today off to do laundry and relax. Tonight we're going with a group from the base back to the town we got lost in. We'll have tapas, dinner, drinks and see authentic Flemenco . . . which originated in this part of Spain. Someone else is driving!