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Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Ronda, or Middle Earth  People tell me skydiving is scary. I've gone skydiving, and it didn't produce nearly as much fear in me as staring straight down the gorge in Ronda, Spain. Ronda is an old town built on a plateau--two, actually--separated by a sharp, 330-foot drop. The fear reaction that looking down from Puente Nuevo (the "new bridge" that took 40 years and 50 lives to build) produces is a visceral one--people do sometimes fall to their deaths, but much of the space any normal person would wander through is walled off or enclosed with iron grates. We weren't normal. Lauren, Jason, and I climbed down the slippery stairs that went down to the bottom of the gorge and wandered away from the more standard path to one winding directly underneath and through the bottom section of the bridge. (I don't think most tourist sites in the US would ever leave the path we took open for fear of lawsuits.) The path offered amazing views (the photo on the right was taken from it), but at any moment it would have been a little too easy to trip and fall--most of it was only two feet wide, with a long, sheer drop on one side and perhaps a shorter drop on the other. There were some railings, but they were flimsy (a single line of wire, rather than actual rail, just thick enough to grab, but of dubious help if you actually did fall, and a couple of sections had chain-link fencing), but many of the fence posts and attachments were loose or had fallen off.  There were a good number of beer and pop bottles even further down than we went (read: where there was no path at all), so I suspect that the town's teenagers (who all apparently frequent one otherwise intriguing Arabic-styled cafe) must run up and down the rocks. Ronda's beautiful, but there wouldn't be a lot for a teenager to do there after a couple of weeks.The town itself is amazing--it was Roman, Moorish, and Catholic all in turn, and pieces of each conqueror reflect themselves in its architecture. From one point, you can see the old Arabic bridge (which is still used), the Roman bridge (also still used), Arabic baths and mines, a castle, and a palace. Walking through it, especially near Puente Nuevo, feels like walking into Middle Earth. ^ Top | 11:25 AM | | | 
Sunday, December 28, 2008 Madrid and Winnie the Pooh  Winnie the Pooh is stalking me. One of my first sights in Madrid after getting out of the Metro at Sol was Winnie the Pooh handing balloon animals to small children. Cute, right? Well, a little later, I walked into Plaza Mayor and there he was again. However, this time he was joined by two of his friends: Chewbecca and Yoda!* I was much more excited to see them--Spain immediately won points for satisfying my geek tendencies. Chewie and I did a little dance, but I think he was actually trying to get me to hug him (believe me, it wasn't obvious--I only figured this out when a little boy ran up to Chewie and hugged him. He must be used to kids just running into his arms). Hours after leaving Plaza Mayor, after I'd explored a cathedral, peeked into Museo del Jamon ("Ham Museum"--hilarious name, but really a small restaurant chain with a ridiculous number of dried Spanish hams hanging from the ceiling), and wandered through parks, Winnie the Pooh appeared again at a street market in a totally different section of town, still handing out his balloons. Three times was getting a little scary, but none of the other tourists found this disturbing at all. Then again, many of them were wearing neon wigs with foot-tall hair and deconstructed Santa hats that turned into spirals at the top, so I'm not sure they could really be trusted to notice anything strange.Random fact: The EU ban on smoking is totally ignored in Spain. I'm not convinced that it's possible to find even a cafe that doesn't get smoky. * Lucasfilm is rather overprotective of its copyrights. I wonder if the street performers paid licensing fees for their costumes? ^ Top | 10:03 PM | | |
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