The Tudor Fair Blog
Nerja Caves Should be on any Andalusian Itinerary
Today we drove two hours to Nerja, a sleepy town about 40 minutes north of Malaga. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t think about going there. They have a pretty cool bridge, but it doesn’t have much on the bridge in Ronda, close to where I live, so it wouldn’t appeal…
An American in Andalusia: A Legal Residency Saga
As most of you know, I currently live in Andalusia, in southern Spain. What I’ve never really written that much about was the paperwork hoops we had to jump through in order to become legal residents. If you are an American and you want to move to Spain, you will…
Cordoba: The 11th Century’s Most Cosmopolitan City
If you were looking for the hippest place to be in 11th century Europe, you wouldn’t go to Paris. Or London, which was an outpost badgered by centuries of Viking invasions, and was about to be conquered by the Normans. You wouldn’t go to Berlin, or Florence, or even Rome.…
Teba: A Spanish Castle with a Scottish History
A crumbling castle in rural Andalusia with a Scottish history? And you can go wander around for free, and it only costs like €2 to get in to the building itself? Say what? Yep, that’s the Castle of the Stars at Teba. Teba itself is a pueblo blanco (white village –…
Travels in Spain: Gaucín, My new Favorite Place
This past Saturday I discovered what might become my favorite place in Spain so far: Gaucín. Gau-huh? Yeah, you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s a teeny tiny town of about 2,000 people in the mountains, all whitewashed, on the road from Ronda to Gibraltar, the A369. Apparently it used to be…
How to have a really crappy day in Seville (hint: it involves not being able to find parking)
So. We went to Seville this past weekend. It’s about a 2 hour drive, and I hadn’t been there before. So we piled into the car, had screenshots of the directions saved (since we don’t have good data plans on our Spanish phones), and we were off. Getting to Seville…
the Ronda Chronicles: Palacio de Mondragon
To be added to the “Things to Do in Ronda” series: yesterday we went to the Palace of Mondragon, which, according to legend, was the palace of the son of Morocco’s sultan. The last Arab governor, before the fall of Ronda in 1485, also lived here. It’s an amazing building,…
The Alhambra: a Trip that Wasn’t (aka Traveling with a Toddler)
It’s not every day that you get to push your babygirl in a stroller around a 9th century Arab complex on a hill in Granada. La Alhambra, which was a massive fortified city with splendid palaces and gardens from the 13th century, and the last fortress to fall to…
Ronda Explorations: Arab Baths and Roman Ruins
I posted last week about the history of Ronda, the town where I’m living right now, and how its history spans pre-Roman Celtic times, through Christians, Moors, and back to Catholic with the Reconquista. Over the weekend I dove deeper into two of the epochs, Roman and Muslim. After spending…
Ronda: How one city is Celtic, Roman, Moorish and Christian all at the same time
Ronda is the closest big town to where we live, it’s where our Spanish school is located, and where we do most of our shopping (when we don’t want to make the drive to Little England aka Gibraltar). It’s jam packed with history, and the architecture is a constant reminder that…
The Week in Books (and I’m back!)
Ok, so I didn’t drop off the face of the planet before now. Those of you who follow my personal blog as well will know that I broke my shoulder in Chicago at the end of January. I had a nasty surgery with another fracture during surgery when my bone…