A One Day Trip To Seville
Seville: romantic, lively, passionate and historical, and being located along a flat plain on the Guadalquivir River, the city is entirely walkable for a perfect day of exploration. Seville is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Andalusia. Its Old Town, with an area of 4 square kilometres (2 sq mi), contains three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Alcázar palace complex, the Cathedral and the General Archive of the Indies.
Beer in Andalusia, Spain
Beer. The world’s most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third-most popular drink overall (after water and tea). The Spaniards’ relationship with beer (‘cerveza’ en español) got off to a rocky start when Charles V arrived from Flanders in 1516 to rule and introduced his favourite tipple to the country. They hated him and his beer. Nowadays, Spain is Europe’s fourth-largest producer of beer and in sultry Andalucía they drink it with great enthusiasm, icy cold.
September in Andalusia
September in Andalucía: the kids go back to school, the flight prices fall, but the temperatures remain in the low 30s (high 80s Fahrenheit) and there’s still 9 hours of sunshine a day. For those seeking a late-summer getaway, Andalucía is an excellent low-cost, sunshine-soaked destination, and there’s always plenty going on in and around Ronda.
The Outstanding Olive Oil of Andalusia, Spain
Did you know that Spain is the largest producer of olive oil in the world? Accordingly to worldatlas.com, Spain produces 5,276,899 metric tons of olive annually and about 75% of the total olive production is concentrated around the Andalusian region. Yup. We have a lot of olive trees here, and the sight of their straight lines of twisted trunks marching across the golden hillsides of southern Spain have inspired many an artist. Van Gogh said that the “rustle of the olive grove has something very secret in it, and immensely old. It is too beautiful for us to dare to paint it or to be able to imagine it.” A symbol of wisdom and peace, both beautiful and beneficial to health, the olive tree is an intrinsic ingredient of life in Andalucía.
Andalusian Cuisine: Summer & Winter Recipes to Get Your Taste Buds Tingling
The peppered history of Andalucía and its peoples has occasioned a fusion of ingredients and cooking methods. The arrival of the Moors from Arabia and North Africa proved the greatest influence on food, but they didn’t only bring with them aromatic spices and herbs. They also introduced irrigation systems (the ‘huertas’) to the arid lands of the south. Andalusian cuisine remains fresh and simple, with leanings towards a peasant’s diet due to historical periods of abject poverty in Spain. Staples were soups, paellas and rich stews cooked for great lengths of time on ‘stove-tops’, called poyos. The poyos and the poverty may be long gone, but the dishes remain, and these are a few you can sample during your visit to Andalucía:
5 white villages in Andalusia perfect for a slow tourism experience
Dazzling in the bright Andalusian sunshine, the pueblos blancos (white villages) perch precariously on the mountainsides of southern Spain and are a delight for the discerning traveller seeking an authentic experience of the region. Tourist towns they are not, and wandering peacefully through their narrow streets with splashes of brightly-coloured potted flowers is a salve for the soul in this age of instant gratification and constant stimulation. Relax. Take a seat alongside the older town caballeros admiring the view and discussing the weather, and immerse yourself, slow-tourism style. Sample our five favourite interesting and lesser-visited white villages in the Serranía de Ronda: