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Published: October 15th 2010
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Our last morning in Granada was spent with a luxurious breakfast. Yes, a luxurious breakfast for the taste buds. We splurged on calories (not on the wallet) and got Churros! We all even got our own mugs of chocolate to dip them in (no issues with double dippage here). YUMMY! This was the start to a fantastic day.
Back on the road again… leaving our parking space in Granada was a challenge. I drove backwards down a steep hill for a few hundred feet and didn’t hurt a sole. Did I fail to mention how I hit a tree in Marbella? Oops… parking in Spain isn’t always that easy! Anyhow…we start our journey for the night to a freakin Bull Ranch! Yes, we headed to spend our day and night with the bulls. They are raised at this ranch and they host bull fights. This is located about 2 hours North of Granada near a town called Vilches. The name of the place is called El Anadio (feel free to google it and listen to the music - click on more than one page - hilarious).
We stopped in a sleepy town called Ubeda for lunch. We ate at
a Parador which is a government run chain of hotel. Their restaurant at the Parador was highly recommended. Overall… a waste of money and way too much food for me! The drive was a windy road surrounded by thousands among thousands of olive trees. The smell of olives was overwhelming. Some of the roads were so narrow I was shaking that someone would come around any curve any minute and we would be forced to be with the olives permanently. I couldn’t wait to get back to a main road. Once we did, we had to find a mile marker to locate our ranch.
Mile 11.9 on the 301 is what we were looking for. Somehow, we found it. Our GPS, named Rhonda got us as far as she could. The roads to the ranch were non-existent in her database. WHOA was the initial start of this trek. First, we have a Mercedes… not a 4×4. We kept bottoming out these dirt roads with rocks. Oops again! It took about 30 minutes around this road to actually make it to the ranch. We hit a huge rod iron gate. It took 2 of us to figure out how to
open the darn thing. Straight up a hill we continue and come face to face with the first of many bulls. Sheri freaked out, a lot. I started laughing out of nervousness and Leslie was focused on the road as she got the afternoon driving shift. Finally, we arrive at the ranch! Within 2 minutes, I completely forgot about the drive there. I was in awe. They had hundreds of acres of land. The bulls were everywhere (of course they were fenced off once you were inside the perimeter of the estate). There were chickens, roosters, calves, dogs, cats, birds, it was just brilliant! Our room was lovely with high ceilings and a renovated bathroom with an amazing tub. Our view from one window was some bulls and then the back window was of the calves on the ranch.
We spent the afternoon by the salt water pool drinking sangria. We were decided what activities to do. Leslie decided on horse back riding. Sheri and I thought relaxing time sounded marvelous. There is an option to fight the bulls - cost 900 Euros! Crazy!!! We strolled along the property before our 9pm dinner. We checked out the private bull
ring (one can only imagine what takes place here), all sides of where we can get pretty close to the bulls and the cottage area that was beautifully decorated. Our host, Ramona didn’t speak a word of English. We never actually ordered dinner, but she cooked a 3 course meal for us. Did I mention we were the only guests at the entire ranch? In general, the ranch has 8 rooms all together. It was a treat to have the whole place to ourselves!
Dinner was lovely. We started with pate, followed by spinach and egg casserole. The main course was a delicious fish. We all assumed that because of where we were - no doubt we would have eaten beef. Hmmmm - we were wrong. This worked out well as neither Sheri nor Leslie eats beef. During dinner we can here the bulls play. They knock their horns into one another. It was pitch black - the only pictures I got at nighttime were of their eyes… creepy.
Off to bed. Knowing the bulls were just on the other side of the wall - Amazing!
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