Day 6, Sunday

Today, we visited Ronda, a beautiful city just northwest of Málaga. We started off the day taking an hour and a half bus ride there and immediately meeting our tour guide for the day, José. We began by walking through the city and hearing a bit about the history of Ronda. Ronda was named as a World Heritage Site and is protected by UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). Another particularly interesting fact that we learned about Ronda was that Ernest Hemingway used to spend a lot of time there during the summers, and often wrote about the beautiful city in his books. Our tour guide brought us to a ledge overlooking the Guadalevín River, and from there showed us three bridges which cross over the river, the "Puente Romano" (Roman Bridge), the "Puente Árabe" (Arab Bridge), and the "Puente Nuevo" (New Bridge). These three bridges are some of the main attractions in Ronda, because they are so beautiful and very impressive. We then continued to walk through the city and see the beautiful cliffs that drop down to the river and learned about many important palaces and churches in Ronda. Another of the main attractions of Ronda which we saw were the "baños árabes", or Arab baths, which were ancient bath houses that are very well preserved and very impressive for their time. Next, we visited the "Plaza de Toros de Ronda", which is the oldest bullfighting ring in Spain. The arena also had a museum in it filled with information about the history of bullfighting and many artifacts, including "trajes de luces", the suits which bullfighters wear. We then sat and ate lunch with a beautiful view of the river before returning to Málaga to go back to our houses. Overall, Ronda was a beautiful city with a rich history, and we all learned a lot!

Olivia