The White Villages

Mountains of SW Spain

We picked up a rental car and some cafe con leche at the Seville train station and navigated out of town to the city of Ronda, some 120 kilometers to the southwest. Traffic was light because of the Good Friday holiday. Easter week is one long celebration and series of daily processions.

After checking into our new little rural hotel and some more cafe con leche and tapas we drove though winding back roads of the Andalusian mountains to see a few of the White Villages.

We saw groups of young people lugging pine trees up and down the road. I think it has something to do with Easter or Good Friday, but Google revealed nothing.



I've analyzed my blog traffic. It appears that most of my traffic on my 400 plus blogs are referred from a single blog from the Google Images search site. I get over half my hits from an obscure Frank Lloyd Wright blog I did a couple of years ago. By naming the pictures in that blog, which I usually don't do, people gravitate to that blog in large number. From now on, I'm naming all my pictures...no more a pathetically unread blogger will I be.





This is the patio outside our room. It's a small rural hotel about 4 kilometers outside Ronda. The hotel is run by an English couple, Ian and Elaine. There is a river behind the balcony, a library, a garden of fig trees and a pool. They serve tea in the afternoon. We wish we had a couple of weeks here instead of three days. The hotel is called the Hotel Rural Molino del Puente Ronda. We love it. Stay here if you get a chance. We had a great dinner last night in the hotel restaurant. Elaine recommended a local red wine.





Mrs. Phred and I stop in a little White Village bar for two copas of white wine and tapas made from artichokes.



I think I've got Mrs. Phred convinced that we should take the scenic drive to Gibraltar today. I'd like to take the ferry over to Algeria and trace Rommel's 1,000 mile retreat along the Northern coast of Africa and then see Isreal, but Mrs. Phred remains skeptical.