Day Trip {Arcos de la Frontera}

For our first mini road trip, we stuck close to home.  Arcos is about an hour drive out of Rota so we felt comfortable venturing out and seeing the area.  This town is one of the many pueblos blancos (white villages) that are part of Andalucia (the area of Spain that we now live in).  It is perched on a cliff overlooking a river (can't remember the name) which makes for gorgeous views but very steep walking!

We planned our drive to Arcos around Serafina's first nap -- this way she could sleep in the car and enjoy the town when we arrived.  We had no problem getting to Arcos, parked easily and we were off. We opted to bring both our stroller and Ergo because we weren't exactly sure what to expect.

Our first order of business was to get up the very steep hill to the church and the town square which is literally at the top of the hill.  We had gorgeous views on the way up.  We put Serafina in the stroller just because it was easier for us, but pushing the stroller was a lot of work.

When we reached the top we (of course) took more pictures and also let Serafina roam around in the town square.  The Spanish love children so all the old Spanish people had fun watching her and trying to get her to wave at them.  She has started to figure out that "hola" means hello -- it's pretty cute watching her wave at all the people!

We also went into the church which was actually very cool.  Trevor and I were very impressed with the intricate details of the various alcoves within the church (we didn't take any pictures -- sadly pictures don't usually turn out very well in dark churches).  Serafina wasn't too happy to be held while we were in the church and so we quickly went back outside!  

For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered the streets of Arcos and just let Serafina walk.  She wanted to hold onto Trevor's hand the whole time which was adorable.  She had way too much fun waving at all the people, walking on cobblestones and taking in everything.  She babbled the whole time she was walking and could not have been happier!

We then timed our drive back to Rota with Serafina's afternoon nap which actually worked in our favor big time!  On the way back we took a slight large detour almost all the way to Sevilla!  The road signs aren't exactly the easiest to understand so we thought we were on the right road... But we quickly realized our mistake so we figured we'd just get off at the next exit -- nope! We happened to get on the express highway to Sevilla and there were literally no exits until you got about 10 minutes outside of Sevilla.  So we got a lovely tour of the area and had a nice two hour drive home!

{Turns out this mistake is sort of a "right of passage" here among the Americans in Spain.  We were telling our friends about it and they immediately knew what we had done because they have done the same thing -- along with many others.}

It was a wonderful day and a great way to get to know our surrounding towns (and get out of the hotel).  We are already trying to figure out where to go this weekend!