We are staying right near a plethora of bars and restaurants, but that could be anywhere in Ronda.

We had noticed that many of the bars did not open until 9pm, and the locals appeared soon after in swarms, filling the walkways and tables and chatting and drinking and eating tapas. So of course, we needed to join them. This photo of Mick shows our apartment behind him, across the road on the top floor. How’s that for handy? Or dangerous?

I spotted this bottle on the shelf and asked for a glass of it with ice. It is made in Ronda, or at least has the name of the town on it. The fellow behind the bar tried to talk me out of it as it is 55% spirits, but I was keen to try this Spanish aniseed (flavoured) drink to compare it with ouzo.

At €4 a shout – it was fabulous. We sat and sipped our drinks for over an hour and enjoyed watching the local families, young and old, come in and enjoy the food and drinks. We went there a few times while we here.

This photo was taken about 10.30pm!

We found this place that sold craft beers and Mick was very happy.

We arrived at opening time the evening we went, 8pm, and were the only ones there at first. They had over 100 different beers from all over Europe, including lots of IPAs. Mick and I tried an Andalucian beer each, and they were both very good.

One was enough for me though, and I then tried a local Vermouth (vermut) with a slice of orange. I may have found my new drink! We found out that there is a well known bar in Córdoba that sells and makes craft beers, including one of the ones Mick tried. He has already found it on the map, and it’s only 900m from where we are staying. So we will definitely investigate it next week.

One evening we went to the local wine interpretation centre. We had already paid for the tour on our combined ticket and when we went there we were asked to pay €2 extra each if we wished to taste the wines. We paid of course. We had the briefest of tours for our €5 ticket we bought from the tourism office, basically we were told to read the signs on the way around. We were given a glass each and a jug of water and told to help ourselves to the wines, eight in total. There were taps in the walls for the four wines, and the fortified wines were in casks.

Mick was thrilled – there were two whites, two reds, three sherries and a Muscat to try. We definitely got our €2 worth from this tour.

We had our photos taken by one other group just before they left at 6pm, and from then on we had the place to ourselves until almost closing time – 8pm.

While the wine was nothing to write home about, and it may have benefited from being chilled, we had a ball.

We needed something to eat and found a beaut tapas bar where everything cost €1. So we tried snails, liver, raw anchovies, octopus salad and pork scratchings.


Dinner cost €10 including two small beers each. We were happy.

We then headed off for a flamenco show – but more of that in a separate post.