Jonesin’ to explore some more during our time in Andalusia, we decided to head out to the small, cliff-side town of Arcos de la Frontera, in the province of Cadiz. Once again, we were drawn by photos of the town and figured, ‘Hey, why not?’ as we’re wont to do.
Founded before the existence of time, Arcos got its name from a 13th century Spanish battle with the Moors. As is typical for this region, the town boasts a torrid history of Spanish-Christian and Moorish fighting, leading to an abundance of Christian building and style in the city. It is also home to a 15th century castle, which is unfortunately closed to the public as it is now privately owned. (‘Where do you live?’ ‘That castle up on the mountain.’ ‘Oh.’)
Being that only one bus heads from Seville to Arcos, we decided to take the quicker route via a train to Jerez de la Frontera, and then a 30-minute bus ride between the two. Piece of cake, and I think the bus cost less than two euro.
A couple hours later, and we saw this. Hello!
That’s not my picture. Mine would have been through a dirty bus window. Anyhow, sexy, right? (Picture via Wikipedia Creative Commons.)
After hopping off the bus, we found ourselves at a station possessing plenty of traits to suggest it was abandoned. It’s not; but come on people – let’s fix this place up. At least put the hands back on the clock. (No hands, no picture!)
Unfortunately, the bus station is at the bottom of town. Yay! We started making our way up this huge sandstone massif and into this white village that’s been around for over a thousand years. We were instantly taken by the narrow streets that weave in and out of Arcos. It’s crazy to think you can get so lost on top of a hill.
Turning right and left and probably going in a few circles, we landed at the Plaza de Cabildo, which is home to the church of Santa Maria, which holds things down with the old castle on one side and the fancy parador on the other side.
Not to mention this beast.
Quite a looker, eh?
Wandering around some more, we stopped off for a snack at an outdoor restaurant. Who can say no to a plate of scrambled eggs with potatoes, cheese, garlic, and chorizo?
Back at it, we kept on through some extremely small side streets, coming upon more churches, plenty of medieval architecture, and whaddya know…
The views from nearly every side of this plateau are spectacular, with the river, farmland, and rolling hills in all directions.
We originally thought we’d spend a full day exploring the nooks and crannies of Arcos de la Frontera, but we ended up pooped and ready to move on by early afternoon. Honestly…for all the tourists we saw here, the town was extremely sleepy and didn’t make for a full day.
While it makes for a good partial-day visit and has plenty to offer in the way of views and churches (if any are open), I’d have to say that we were a bit disappointed overall. Maybe that’s just us, but we were hoping to be wowed, awed, and jaw-dropped like we were when we visited the town of Ronda.
Instead, we were happy with our visit and used our remaining time on the road this day to hop a bus to the city of Jerez. More on that in another post!
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Have you ever been to Arcos de la Frontera? Any thoughts about our visit? Let us know in the comments!
Love all your pictures, but the last one is truly magazine worthy and frameable! (Is that a word?) Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Ma! That photo is by Ang.
Looks like quite a stunning village. Those cliffs are spectacular! Hopefully I’ll make it to this neck of the woods someday.
Thanks for reading! We highly recommend the whole region…but we tend to recommend everywhere since everywhere has its own special goodness. Hopefully you can get there sometime soon!
Thanks for this-a half day it is then; Jerez is more my scene, so looking forward to that post.
Anytime! The Jerez post will be fairly short as we only had a couple hours there. I can tell you that I think it’s worth quite a bit more than that, though. Thanks for stopping by!