"A Traveler Without Observation is a Bird Without Wings": Nature Calms Me

I know it has been about a week since I last posted, but honestly during the week not much happened. I got sick so I stayed in bed a lot in the hopes of getting better before the weekend. My host mom and my professor were both very helpful in getting me better! So then for the weekend I actually had plans!! So here is the recount of my Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday I went to a town called Ronda. It's about 2 hours by bus away from Seville. So Saturday morning me and a group of 5 others hopped on a bus and headed to Ronda. With just a two hour bus drive from Seville the scenery changes so much from (rather ugly) flat landscape to mountainous with valleys. Ronda in particular is known for having the oldest bull fighting ring in all of Spain and has a beautiful bridge. So we arrived and got a bit lost, but thankfully the people of Ronda are kind and pointed us in the direction of where tourists belong. Once we got a map from the tourist office we were good to go. Our first stop was a palace. I am actually still very confused by the museum but the important thing is that it had beautiful gardens overlooking the valley.

After our walk around the palace some of us (not myself) walked down to the bottom of the bridge. I did not because I was not wearing proper walking attire and really didn't want to get sweaty and gross so I stayed at the top and took some pictures! I also sat in a little courtyard and enjoyed the musical talents of a guitarist. It was extremely pleasant.

Here they come!

For the rest of the day we wandered around town. It was so relaxing, the weather was great. We saw yet another wedding (I see a wedding like everyday here!) We had some ice cream too, so that made me happy! Then on our bus ride home God blessed us with a beautiful sunset.

It got a lot prettier than that but with the bus window I couldn't get a good picture of it.

So then on Saturday I went for a hike. We hiked a total of 11.5 km (about 7 miles). Tell you what, I totally enjoyed being in nature again! I am soooo not a city girl, I find just being able to look at nature from the bus calms me. However, I would have enjoyed the hike much more had it not been over 90 degrees out. I am very sore today let me tell you! I didn't actually take many pictures because the scenery wasn't actually that pretty. It's a fairly desolate climate. But we did get to eat grapes and blackberries right off the vine. There were so many herbs out there, you could easily live out there (Or camp for a while). The one interesting was that there were these trees that shed their bark on the bottom and became orange. The guide said it was because they were naked and were blushing.