Thought I would post our wonderful experience in Andalucia June 12-21. We began in Madrid, day trip to Toledo, next day flew to Seville (1 hr on Iberia $33/each).
Hotel: 3 nights @ Las Casas de la Juderia. Great charm, rooms nice, very spacious bath (recently remodeled). GREAT location! Highly recommend.
Restaurants: La Isla & Enrique Becerra. Both great food. Becerra had a fun & lively bar scene & restaurant - excellent service and food!

Drove from Seville (an experience all in itself getting out of town!!!!)
to:
Sanlucar de Bararameda (ok but I think we couldn't find the "cute" area and the water was very murky that day)
on to Arcos. Arcos was a nice "white village" with steep, narrow streets and small cafes.
Left Arcos on A372 @ 5pm for Ronda. Arrived Ronda about 6:15.
Ronda:
Lodging: Ronda Parador: great views from the spacious room!! Worth the price for the view of bridge and gorge! Room was very nice with large bathroom. Nice terrace for drinks in the afternoon. Pool are was very nice also.
Restaurants: Great restaurant across the gorge from Parador into the old village area. Go across bridge from Plaza de Espana to the first street & turn right & look for hotel plaque a few doors up - has terrace dining/cocktails (5 tables) and indoor dining (floor below) with same spectacular sunset views. (I'll post the name when I find it!) We ate there both nights -excellent! Great food, great service. Best view in town. (Parador and restaurant are across the gorge from each other)
Day trips from Ronda:
Zahara de la Frontera - a must stop!!What a beautiful, charming village. The Moorish castle was a blast exploring! No tourists or tour bus crowds - we had the place to ourselves. Our favorite little village!
Ate at a little outside cafe for fresh fish and many cool drinks! A great time watching the locals take their afternoon drinks at the bar across from us! Drove from Zahara on the much talked about mountain highway CA531 to Grazalema. The drive itself was an amazing experience. Very narrow. Very steep. Unbelievable vistas!! We stopped at the peak lookout point and could see forever. Best seat in the house! (I felt like twirling around & singing like Julie Andrews!)A truly memorable experience! (uh, not my singing)
Then stopped in Grazalema: another quaint white village with a few cafes and shops. Charming place.

Next am drove from Ronda to Granada stopping in:
Marbella: (1hr15min on A376 & then toll road - pull into credit card lane its much faster)It's a busy touristy marine town. Hard to find parking. Couldn't find a parking spot where we wanted so we missed the ritzy Puerto Banus area. Ate lunch at one of the other beaches. LOTS of people on the dark sand beaches.
Took Tollway to Nerja. Had lunch/drinks at the Balcon de Europa which is at the cliff area over the beaches. Much smaller than Marbella with a small beach-town feel. A quiet beach area was west about 5 minutes outside of Nerja with a small restaurant. No big crowds. Would like to go back - 2 nights min.
On to Granada:
Dropped our car off at the train station (after driving around for 1 hour looking for our car rental company. I e-mailed ahead and they gave me bad info!) Driving in Granada - don't do it!! Take cabs. (Same for Seville)
Lodging: Alahambra Palace - had great views of this very large city. Dark, moorish decor. Nice hotel and good location on the hill.Warning: while we were unloading our luggage from the trunk of our cab a car with 2 fellows pulled up next to us & sat there watching our luggage & waiting for us to turn our backs - the security man came over and they sped off! Be careful - we were in broad daylight in front of the hotel!! A cab is about a 5 euro ride into town for dinner & well worth it - wouldn't do that walk up the hill after dinner. Walked around the Parador and it is beautiful! I can see now why it is so difficult to get a reservation. Wel worth it, though. Also, Hotel America looked very quaint with a great location within Alhambra area.
We wanted a lazy day so we had a wonderful 2 1/2 hr lunch on the Parador terrace overlooking the rose gardens and Generalife gardens. Then wandered the public areas of the Alhambra to aquaint ourselves with where we needed to be in the morning for our 8:30 entrance. After seeing the huge crowds the first appt @ 8:30 is well worth the effort. Bought our tickets online with no problems. Get to the ticket counter at 8:00am for 8:30 appt because there will be a line to pick-up reserved tickets and then a 10-15min walk to the Nasrid Royal Palace entrance. Take the earliest entrance time - after 9/9:30 there are tons of tour buses and people & also, its very hot! It was a 3 hour tour with gardens (and we rushed it)
Restaurants: Cunini - best fresh fish ever. Sea Bass baked in salt crust. Fun & lively tapas bar. Restaurant had indoor or outdoor seating (have your hotel make reservations).
Best Restaurant: Huerto de Juan Ranas at the St. Nicholas viewpoint. You could fall in love with a toad here with the view of the Alhambra at night. BUT the food was as spectacular as the view. Beautiful presentations and great gourmet food - what a great rec from our hotel. If you've seen the pictures of the Alhambra at night - that was our view at dinner. Unbeatable. They have a casual terrace that is street level and a nicer, smaller terrace and indoor dining below. Doesn't look like a restaurant is there - more like a house from the street. Highly recommend.
Final comments below.

Last minute words:

Wouldn't miss:
*Zahara de la Frontera for the quaint white village experence (& Grazalema)
*Seville for everything - tapas, late-night, cathedral, wandering aimlessly through the winding streets
*Mountain highway between Zahara & Grazalema (CA531)
*Granada -Alhambra, Generalife & Parador terrace dining, San Nicolas viewpoint
*Ronda terrace dining & Parador views
* ham over melon appetizer, olives, and any wine they recommend with dinner

Don't:
*Drive in Seville & Granada
* try to navigate by map walking in Toledo - you'll drive yourself crazy!

**Buy the Eating and Drinking in Spain (dictionary for menus)
and all the car insurance they offer (the roads are very narrow!) (p.s. great price w/travelocity for car $35/day for Xcera (sp?)

The most fun was pointing the car in a direction and getting lost in the adventure! (hey, I saw my first cork tree that way!)
In town walking around, like another reader said - let the streets take you on a journey.

Thank you Maribel, Olga, and everyone one else that helped make our trip to Andalucia one that we will never forget and one that we are anxious to do again soon.

Sheila

Thank you beachgirl for a wonderful trip report! We're going back in Nov. and I have a few questions.

I can't find the village you loved (Zahara de la Frontera) on any of my maps! I don't have the good Michelin one yet that Maribel recommends (was planning to buy it once we got there--can't find it in the bookstores here), but was wondering if it could be the same place as Jimena de la Frontera on my map? What other places is it near. It sounds wonderful and I'd like to try to see it.

Great report - many thanks. I hope to head there next year. Could you see yourself spending a whole week in Nerja? That is our plan - doing our white village day trips from there as well as a trip to Granada from there. What do you think?

Gotta' second your suggestion not to drive in Seville or Granada. My DH and I still laugh about our driving adventures on our honeymoon. We drove around and around in Granada and could never get close to our hotel due to the one-way streets. We finally double-parked, hubby jumped out and went into the lobby for directions, and one of the bellhops came out and drove the car to the garage for us!

Lissetmac, I have to laugh at your posting. In Seville, we drove for an hour to get to the highway, which if a Sevillian, would have taken 10 minutes! We were so frustrated we could do nothing but laugh! Part of the fun of traveling!!

Hi Artlover, how fun to go again - we are talking about our next trip there already! You can find Zahara just 6 km south of A376 which is the main highway between Arcos & Ronda. Jimina is much farther south. However, we took A372 from Arcos and the scenery was great. (Roads were great) Went through beautiful mountain areas with white villages speckled about the area. The map is available on amazon.com along with Eating & Drinking in Spain( Highly recommend if you can't read a spanish menu) - I got the map early so we could plan where & how far things would be.(Also, updated version is coming out in July) Buying it early saved us from running around trying to find it on vacation time in Spain.

Hi Bashful, Nerja is a fun town and definately would spend a couple of days for R&R but I can't see using that as a base for "white village" day-trips. (Maribel & others - what do you think?) It was a busy drive between Ronda & Nerja & not really close to the villages. There is Frigiliana up the road from Nerja about 10 minutes but Zahara and Grazalema and others that are recommended are closer to Ronda. It was a short drive to Zahara (if we didn't stop every 10 feet for photos!) Non-stop probably 30-40 minutes. I can't see staying in Nerja for a week. Just not that much to do and not close to white villages that we were told about. Granada is a good choice - it would be a short day. but I think Granada deserves a night or two - Alhambra - day and great restaurants/tapas for night (besides the spectacular view of Alhambra at night) If you haven't already I would do a search on Maribel's low-road postings. They was a wealth of info in getting the most out of our trip.

Hope this helps. Its a wonderful place!!
Sheila

....I mean, there was a wealth of info..

(Sorry, I'm still a little groggy - still recovering from the time change!)