Watching the sunrise in the comfort of our room’s balcony was wonderful. The colors changed dramatically within a short period of time from shades of pink and blue to orange.

After the sunrise, we got ready and ventured out the new part of Ronda for breakfast as breakfast was not included in our room rate. We walked through the shopping street, Carrera Espinel, and the majority of the shops were not open yet except for a few cafes. The street was decorated with Christmas lights already but they haven’t turned it on yet, I am guessing probably toward the end of the month. It would be a lovely atmosphere here in Ronda for Christmas!

We saw a plaza with very nice buildings so we walked in to check it out. I love the hanging gift boxes! This beautiful building is the Parroquia de Nuestra Señora del Socorro.

We continued our way to our breakfast cafe – Cafe de Agata that opened at 8 am, most of the breakfast places are open at 9! The cafe decors are very cute, even the cup, doesn’t it match my dress? LOL! I ordered mint tea and it wasn’t as good as the ones we had in Morocco!

We ordered crepe for breakfast and joked that it cost us $30 to have a similar crepe in Moorea, French Polynesia. Jason ordered the Hawaiian toppings with ham and pineapple while I ordered ham and cheese.

Both were freshly made, flavorful, and inexpensive. Our breakfast of 2 crepes, 1 croissant, and 2 cups of tea cost less 16 Euros. After the filling breakfast;  I couldn’t even finish my crepe, we went back to the hotel to join Sokunna and Brian where their room rate included breakfast. We walked over the bridge to Palacio de Congresos de Ronda to see the gorge underneath on the other side of the bridge. You can see the hiking trail leading all the way down to the bottom, Brian said he went all the way down there last night.

It is fascinating on how people chose this location to build the town. Imagine waking up every morning with a view like this?

Next, we walked around the Old Town to take photos and admired their architectures.

This is Museo Lara, a museum of historic weapons and instruments.

More Christmas lights on this side of the town:

Not much souvenir shops are open yet so we decided to head back to our hotel and get ready to leave. Almost forgot, a photo of the hotel!

Souvenir shops that haven’t open yet:

We checked out, Brian went to get the car, and we left passing Ronda’s Bullring.

On our way to the next white village – Frigiliana, we had a lunch stop at Nerja; Brian wanted lunch with an awesome view of the beach as we were along the coast so we found Chiringuito Torrecilla 3. Parking was tricky in the big town and luckily we found one up on the street so it was a short walk to the beach. The beach was not spectacular nor its water color but the idea of having lunch right on the beach at the end of November was quite special. The weather was so nice, actually, it got very hot sitting out having our lunch LOL!

Being on the coast, we had to order seafood!

The mussels were big and fresh:

The razor clams were good but not special like the ones we had in Porto, Portugal.

Look at how happy those two seafood lovers were!

For the main course, Sokunna and I ordered the seafood spaghetti and it tasted AWFUL! The pasta wasn’t even cooked right, the sauce was nasty worst than canned sauce, and the seafood was like frozen for years not fresh at all! Both of us were very disappointed with our pasta, it was not edible grrr! Even worst, they do not accept credit card, luckily, I brought leftover Euros from previous trips! The bill was 72.50 Euros!

Next stop, Frigiliana, the beautiful white village on the hilltop. We drove up the hill and passed a street with all white houses; we thought that is the center of the village. We parked our car at the parking garage (it was pretty cheap like 2 Euros) and there are public restrooms! We were trying to walk back to the center of the village but then we thought to stop by the visitor’s center to save us time to locate the beautiful street we saw online. The visitor’s center is located on the left side on this split road:

We got a map and the lady in the visitor’s center was very helpful; she circled all the beautiful spots on the map for us! The beautiful street that we were looking for was actually the street we walked through to get to the visitor’s center but without the flower pots so it didn’t look as pictured. We found out that the center of the village is actually on the other side of the hill, not the street we drove past!

The center is located up on that street up the hill:

This is the only operating sugar cane factory:

We walked up the hill via that street and reached the real village center, wowwwwww so beautiful! It reminded me of Greece – the white houses and flowers. On the right side of this picture is a souvenir shop where we found cute ceramic houses (candle holder + oil diffuser). If you are in Frigiliana, don’t forget to check out this shop for nice souvenirs!

After our mini souvenir shopping, it was photo time!

We followed the walking path on the map to get up for the panoramic view.

Such a cute hilltop village!

The color combination of this flower is so nice!

There, we found another postcard photo location!

A very nice house decorated by flowers.

It really reminded me of Greece!

According to the lady in the visitor’s center, there are “tunnels” that are open to the public so don’t be afraid to walk in to check it out.

But then those doors reminded me of Chefchaouen, Morocco.

The village is quiet and there are some tourists but not crowded at all. I love to walk around pretty villages and take photos!

No matter how small a village is, there must be a church 🙂

The door with those metal flowers design:

We followed the map and into this hidden alley, if it wasn’t the lady circled this way, we’ll never find this way ourselves!

We made a loop out to the main street and turned back. We saw a grocery store with a fruit stand…..fruits!!! We bought sweet and juicy grapes and pears as our dessert for tonight 😀

Frigiliana is such a beautiful white village that worth a stop to explore for a few hours!

I have never seen a historical theatre before like this one where you insert the money and it’ll have a small play.

We walked back to the parking garage and left for our next stop: the Aqueduct of El Aguila in Nerja…..this aqueduct was very lame!!! Thee was a small pullover area that you can pull over and walk to the bridge for the view. No idea why they painted like that! The aqueduct is pretty new so not ancient Roman aqueduct like the one in Segovia, Spain.

Then, we drove back to Granada to pick up our Alhambra tickets that I had purchased months ago. Note that recently, they have changed their online purchasing system so that you can now print the tickets directly from home without going to the offices in town to pick it up, much more convenient! Afterward, we drove back to the airport to return our rental car and traffic was horrible!!! We asked the guy in Enterprise to help us call a taxi to bring us back to our hotel. The taxi driver was very nice, even though he barely speaks English, he has the Google Translate App to communicate with us. He told us that traffic is so bad because everyone is out to shop at Black Friday! We didn’t know Europe has Black Friday too! He said it was something that spread from the USA and now people are crazy shopping. Normally, the taxi ride from the airport to town shouldn’t cost more than 30 Euros, our ride ended up being 40 Euros! It wasn’t as bad as I expected as the traffic was bumper to bumper! We tipped him 5 Euros and he thought we overpaid him so he was handing back the extra 5 Euros until we told him it was his tip. He is a good guy but not a good driver LOL he drove crazily and almost get in an accident twice yikes! Perhaps, local people here drive that crazy as well?

The hotel we stayed in was Rusticae Gar-Anat, a boutique style hotel in the center of town, walking distance to restaurants and shops. It was so cold inside due to its open courtyard style like the riads in Morocco. More photos of the hotel later. Once we checked it and settled down, we walked to El Pescaito de Carmela, the highest rated seafood restaurant in Granada, for dinner. We were there when they open so we were able to get a table without a reservation.

For the appetizer, we had mixed fried seafood, they were all fresh and lightly battered which is what I like! Interesting, the mixed seafood plate also included fried vegetables!

Another appetizer we ordered was the fried shrimp cake, it is very different than the shrimp cakes we had before. This one like a thin layer of crispy cracker, I do like it.

Jason and I ordered a lobster rice in soup to share and it was large enough for all of us! The ingredients were for sure fresh but the taste was too salty for our Asian taste buds. I much preferred the Portuguese version of it.

Sokunna ordered a seafood paella, I warned her that it’ll be salty and sure it was salty!

Brian ordered a steak and it was super salty LOL!

Our dinner bill was 111.05 Euros although not bad for the amount of food we ordered for 4 of us but all we remembered was salty! When we were done with dinner, it was almost 11 pm when we got back to our hotel and we didn’t forget to have the fruits we bought earlier as our dessert 🙂 The grapes were juicy and sweet!