Arcos de la Frontera, Spain - October 28-30

Arcos is one of the more famous Pueblos Blancos and was a destination I was very excited to get to. The old town of Arcos rests on a vista surrounded by mountains. There's a lot of uphill walking and its easy to see how it was a good strategic location for centuries. My friend Brandon had recommended a hotel called La Casa Grande which he said had amazing views. He was right. This picture basically sums up our time in Arcos:





We were only there two nights, but we fell into a pattern I really think I could get used to. Both days we walked around the city, went to a restaurant called La Carcel for lunch, took a nap, went out to the store to buy jamon, cheese, and wine, went to the pastry shop to get sultanas (big macaroon-type sweets), and went back to the room. Then we set on those chairs, drank our wine, ate our jamon and cheese, and went to sleep. That easily turned into a full day.

This is the view from the parador in Arcos which is also perched on a cliff. Our balcony is I believe just behind the yellow building.



Both nights at 5:30, a big flock of sheep was herded down the path along the riverside just below the cliff. This made us curious about what was down there so we decided to take a walk down to the valley below and get a little different perspective.



That white building in the middle next to the smaller non-white building was the hotel. It was quite high up.

Unfortunately we aren't very smart and decided to do this walk to kill time for lunch...which meant we did it around noon, the hottest time of the day. The walk back up was steep, hot, interrupted by a snake crossing the path, and left me looking like this:



That night we repeated our jamon, cheese, and wine plan only to be interrupted by an incoming storm. It made for some great scenery, but forced to head inside.



We were followed by a little grasshopper that flew around as we tried to corral him and lead him outside.



Eventually we caught him and ushered him outside. It says a lot (in a good way) about Arcos that that was the most exciting thing that happened on both of our nights there.