Arcos de la Frontera, Pueblo on a Cliff-Top

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We spent an evening and day wandering around the maze-like streets of Arcos, the streets so narrow between the white buildings in this town perched upon a cliff top that we wondered how cars (and full sized garbage trucks for crying out loud) manage to maneuver safely through them. They were built for horses, not diesels. Many of the cars here have completely mangled side-view mirrors, cracked, scratched, hanging by a thread. There is simply no room for error and if you’re a tourist and end up driving through the old town you’d better just hope to whatever higher power you believe in that that full insurance coverage is going to be enough of a safety net.

The streets, especially when the cars aren’t coming down them, are so charming they’re almost surreal. You feel like you’re on a movie set or in Disneyland. The layouts of these mountain towns is so far outside of what we have ever experienced that it takes a while to believe that this is a real place. Occasionally you come around a corner after walking through the maze and find yourself in an unexpectedly open plaza area, usually with an ancient mosque-now-cathedral at one end and a 500’ cliff drop at the other. It’s pretty wild and very picturesque. Nick, our host at Casa Blues has some nice pictures on his website. Fantastic place to stay, by the way.

Of course there are the local bars and eateries - you order two beers and get a pile of olives to go with them or a plate of marinated sliced carrots and little baggies of crunchy mini baguette things. You order your tapas and start to dream of going home and eating nothing but salads for days and days (vegetables come at a premium price here!) and you try for the life of you to get used to eating at 8pm. Not sure this trip is long enough for me to get used to that.

We did get some soccer (futbol) culture in our little locals hangout where 20 guys were hanging out, young and old, watching Barcelona playing, uh, well, someone else. It was fun to watch the place go nuts when Barcelona scored a goal and they all went crazy. We cannot possibly imagine what it must have been like when Spain won the World Cup. It must have been a nationwide complete and total losing of the mind. In a happy way. What could be better?

OK we're running out the door to head down to Cadiz today; I'm only 1 blog behind now! Going to hit publish so we can get out of here and accomplish something.

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Comments

[lucette]

architecture amazing
really enjoyed seeing the narrow streets,not any cars on them ,are they for walking only ?