Arcos or Ronda

Ronda. Walking into the gorge at sunset to get a photo of the new bridge lit up is worth it. The last time we were there we stayed at Hotel San Gabriel near the new bridge. Ronda is close to both Zahara de la Sierra and Grazalema, and also Sentenil de las Bodegas. You you stop and see Arcos on the way to Jerez or Cadiz. We’ve never spent a night in Arcos; just visited it as a day trip. If coming from Jerez, you can stop at the ovrelook in Arcos for an hour or so and can continue on to drive the white villages ending in Ronda, all in the same day. The white hills towns are small and don’t take long to walk around if you decide to stop. There is a nice tower to climb in Zahara.

Arcos.

We liked Ronda. But we absolutely swooned over Arcos -- once the crowds of day-trippers all left before dusk. Being up in the high town as the sun set, watching the panoramic scenery, hearing the birds sing, breathing in the cool evening air, wandering the quiet streets -- deserted streets, actually: at night, it seemed we had the place essentially to ourselves and the locals....try looking for that in Ronda.

Don't get me wrong, we liked Ronda, we spent the night there, too, and yes, the bridge looks nice in the golden light of the setting sun...but Ronda gets way more tourists than Arcos, and it felt completely different to me. You will be sharing Ronda's charms with a lot of others, even in the evenings. But we felt like Arcos was ours alone once the crowds drained away, completely different than during the afternoon when there were plenty of tourists. After dark, Arcos was spectacular and magical, one of the highlights of our trip.

Maybe spend one night in each if you can - that's what we did. If I had to choose one to overnight in, I'd pick Arcos.

We didn’t go to Arcos, but we really liked our stay in Ronda. If you are interested in excellent guitar music:

We stopped at the Guitar Round House store in Ronda on Calle Padre Mariano Soubiron, so I could buy tickets. I’d read about Paco Seco (excellent credentials) performing a concert of classical & flamenco instrumental guitar in the back portion of the store. The concert was very nice - very talented!

I think geographically Ronda is more central and thus preferable. I've used it as a base twice.

I went to Arcos by bus from Jerez. The bus stop is at the base of the town next to a large car park. From there it's a steep walk up. There's also a free minishuttle. If you want to use it as a base, you'll want to stay up top with parking included. That means driving steep narrow streets and maybe a blind corner or two.

Yes Arcos is more scenic, but Ronda is flat and easy to drive in and out of. In any case, get full insurance !

Our RS Best of Spain tour spent a relaxing night at a wonderful inn a ways outside of Ronda, the property was an old olive grove and olive oil mill, as I remember. Beautiful rooms, lavish dinner, very nice breakfast. Would be an interesting base to go exploring, although I don’t think I would want to be driving right near there in the dark, kind of remote. Maybe someone else here will remember the name.

We stayed just outside of Ronda in Arriate - which was the perfect location for exploring the area. We stayed at the Arriadh hotel, which was a beautiful property owned by two Dutch gentlemen.

Two restaurants that I highly recommend in the area are El Muelle de Arriate - it's an old train station and the food is phenomenal! Another one that we absolutely loved and still talk about is Casa Maria in Ronda. You tell them what you don't like to eat and they just bring you a bunch of different dishes from appetizers to dessert - it's all fantastic and SO much food for such a reasonable price (I believe it was around €50 for the two of us.. and it could have easily fed 4 people).

Arcos was great - but a little harder to navigate by car (hubby almost got stuck and had to have locals help him back up)... so I'm not sure I would want to stay the night there unless the hotel had easy parking.

It's a tough question. I found Arcos to be more picturesque and perhaps less touristy, but not by much. Arcos downtown has some really narrow roadways, if you took a giant SUV for rent. Ronda is certainly an "overrun by daytrippers" location, but it has a nice lived-in feel. By that, I'm referring to the frequent desires of Italy visitors on this site who want to stay in a village that offers authentic early 20th Century local life. (Not saying that there is such a thing!) In fact, Ronda has luxury hotels and a civic bullring, so it's not exactly provincial. OTOH, we actually saw (and used) a very elderly Bogus Traffic Warden in Arcos, thanks to Rick's coverage of the Phenomenon.

We ourselves thought of "tour the hillside villages of Andalusia". But when we found how long it took to drive from Arcos to a view of Zahara (or was it Grazalema?), we didn't even drive the last long curvy miles to the town, because we had a room in Ronda waiting. I'm suggesting that you need a realistic PLAN to actually visit multiple White Villages.

We were really glad we stayed in Ronda, but we had a huge, comfortable, icily air-conditioned room in the Parador (parking extra). I don't know if Rick's "cave" nearby is still open, but that was a great excursion. We saw a lovely local resort/motel near the cave highway, but it did not look air-conditioned. We (unwisely, not recommended) did a daytrip to Gibraltar from Ronda, but I have to say that a daytrip is all Gibraltar needs. There have been summers when you could smell the river under Ronda, but that happens in Bruges, too! My vote if for Ronda.

Our next stop after Ronda was to turn the car in on arrival in Granada. Despite the distance, our drive from Seville to Granada, via Arcos & Ronda was the most scenic and enjoyable long drive I've had in Europe. No sense of superhighway or suburbia, sunflowers and canola fields, memorable. Hope it's still like that.

I am not suggesting that you treat it as equivalent or a substitute, but if you can possibly get to Carmona from your stay (?) in Seville, it has a nice local, but sophisticated, flavor. If transportation is convenient, I'd Tapas-Crawl for dinner in Carmona, although we did not. There is a Parador in Carmona, I think, if you don't want to sleep in Seville. We enjoyed having a sunset Sangria in a different place every night in Seville, however.

The Parador in Arcos is absolutely great if you can get a room that overlooks the valley. I preferred Arcos to Ronda, which feels larger, but not a strong preference.

For Arcos, two important rules to follow if you want a great experience:

1. Spend the night up in the high town. It empties out after dusk, ALL the crowds completely disappear, and it is absolutely magical (same as Toledo, only more so). If you're there at mid-day, you see it at its worst: full of crowds of day-trippers.
2. Do not attempt to drive up to, or within, the high town. Park your car in a free lot below the town, and take a shuttle or taxi up (and then back down the next day when you leave). It's far too steep to walk up, and there's no reason to have a car once you are up there -- a car in the high town would only be a headache (limited parking, and many "streets" too narrow to drive through) -- it's quite compact, everything is very walkable...and delightful.