We recently took a road trip to the city of Cartagena, Spain, to meet up with Ang’s parents, who were on a Mediterranean cruise. We wanted to stop halfway between Seville and Cartagena, and the town of Guadix looked like an interesting spot to spend a couple of days.
This town in the province of Granada has pre-Roman history, and was an important city of both the Roman empire and the Moors. Nowadays, it’s mostly known for its historic cave homes. Yes, cave homes!
An entire area of town is a residential neighborhood where families have been living in houses dug directly into the rocks sticking out of the ground. It’s a total trip, but also very interesting and scenic.
That said, we decided to go ahead and rent one for ourselves! After all, how often do you get to stay in a cave home?
Our rental in the troglodyte neighborhood of the city.
Walking around, there are some people who have opened up their homes to tourists, and some who will just invite you in to check them out. Many people here are part of families that have lived in these same homes for generations, and they’re very proud of their unique living situation.
There’s also a viewpoint in this neighborhood that gives great vistas of the city and the cave homes. All of those little chimneys belong to individual houses.
While this neighborhood is probably the main sight in Guadix, that’s not all the town offers. It’s quite a small city of about 18,000, but it has a very cool and historically important alcazaba – Moorish fortress – directly in the center of town.
The problem is, it was totally closed for repairs and preservation while we were there. D’oh! So, even though we walked the entire way around its walls, we never actually got to go inside and therefore got zero pictures beyond the panoramas we took in previous photos.
So, that wasn’t very cool for us, but we did take plenty of walks around town to check out the cathedral, city hall, and other historic attractions.
The cathedral…
The square around city hall…
A stop for coffee and come roscones…
The totally dried out river through the city, which I would assume and hope does get water at some point during the year!
Oh, and food! Some traditional sausages and fried eggs for dinner at a local spot near our cave house…
Some non-local crema catalana – similar to crème brûlée – for dessert…
A stop at a somewhat hidden, but crowded, local tapas bar for some Sunday patio time and tasty treats. Chicken skewers…
Grilled pork…
Fried shrimp and fried eggplant, which was totally amazing…
…and a beer!
Before heading out of town, we stopped for some breakfast. Ang had a tostada con jamón y tomate, I had some churros con chocolate…
And, there you have it! Another wonderful couple of days in a new city, exploring what it has to offer and eating plenty of its yums. If you’re in the Granada area, we highly recommend you swing through for a couple nights to experience the cave homes and the city itself.
Check out our other Spain posts right here.
A very special thanks to our hosts and all the nice folks of Guadix!
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Have you ever been to Guadix? If so, what’d you think? If not, what say ye? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Everything looks so pristine! They must be very proud of their city. The homes were fascinating!
I didn’t even think about that, but yeah it was quite a clean place!