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| Antequera |
From the splendours of Granada, we took the bus to sleepy little Antequera. It is actually a reasonable sized town in terms of population - it is actually the 22 largest city in Spain - and has thriving industries, but it feels very small, and the siestas seem to go on forever, with most of the restaurants closing too. One of the few that opened more of the time was Taberna El Rincon de Lola, and thankfully, they had good food.
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| Antequera |
Whilst Antequera may not be large, it is pretty, if a little steep to walk around. It is an old medieval town, and there are enough sights to keep you busy for a day or two.
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| Arch of the Giants, Antequera |
We walked up to the old castle ruins on the hill, and took a look around some of the churches. We rather liked the portable shrine of Tarasca, half woman and half serpent.
You can also see the Arch of the Giants, which was built in 1585 to honour the town's roman past.
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| Antequera |
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| Lovers Rock, Antequera |
The views are lovely from up here, and you can see the famed La Pena de los Enamorados, or Lovers Rock, in the distance. You can see it in the gap between the trees in the photo here. The story goes that the young daughter of the ruler was promised in marriage to the much older man.
She of course, was in love with a young man from a rival family, and ran away with him. They were chased by the soldiers, all the way up to the top of the rock. Rather than return and lose each other, they threw themselves off the rock to die together.
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| Antequera |
Back on solid ground in the city, you can visit old roman baths, or if you have a car, you can take drives out of town to see wolves, bronze age dolmens, or pink flamingos.
Not having a car though, we only took the one trip out, which was to El Torcal, a national park with fascinating limestone rock formations. When the rocks originally pushed up out of the earth, they did so with their layers staying horizontal. So when the winds and rain have gradually nibbled away, they have left what seem to be discs of rock stacked on top of each other.
There are a few walks that you can do, but unfortunately we had managed to pick a day to go when the weather was very misty and so there was hardly any visibility, meaning that it was only safe to do the basic route. There was even snow on the branches of the bushes.
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