To get from Sevilla to the pueblos blancs, we rented a car from Auto Europe (company was Europcar) we have never purchased comprehensive insurance in the past and thankfully, this time we did. The drive through the mountains was beautiful but not for the faint of heart. The highways were narrow with no shoulder. We stopped and enjoyed Arcos and then Zahara, which we REALLY enjoyed. Our inn was in lovely Grazelema at La Mejorana. HIGHLY recommended, beautiful inn and location and charming and helpful hosts. We were not too fond of driving in the white villages. We parked just out of town center for Arcos and Zahara, but had to get deep into Grazelema for our inn. I do not routinely drive manual transmission and the roads are extremely narrow and steep. We ended up nicking a side mirror once and scrapped a the side of the bumper. Given we had the insurance, we weren't too concerned. We would stay at la Mejorana and Grazelema again in a heartbeat. We also visited Ronda. It's large and very touristy though the river gorge shouldn't be missed. Unfortunately for us, much of the lower gorge and bottom were closed due to heavy rains/storm.
We returned the car in Granada. Just before we arrived to town we stopped for gas. We were dreading this because we always seemed to have difficulties in France getting gas with credit cards and attendants not being particularly helpful. (Side note, people think the French are rude and we have not found this to be the case. However, the Spanish, are more than polite and extremely helpful and we felt went out of their way to help tourists) The pump said to pay inside. I went in and greeted the attendant and asked if he spoke English. Nope. He grabbed an orange vest came out, showed us how to open the little door on the car which was not terribly apparent, pumped the gas, pointed out the snow in the mountains and then brought us back inside to pay! The Europcar location at the Granada train station is not obvious when you drive in. (It is more obvious when you leave the station) and there was no apparent parking. I parked in front of the station (in a no parking zone) and ran into the office and got directions for parking which was in a ramp off a busy street a couple blocks away. We got there about 45 minutes before "siesta", there is a box for the keys but we would have never found the ramp had the office been closed. If you have a one-way rental, be extra sure about location for car return. We had asked and were told it wouldn't be a problem.
We liked Granada but not as much as the other places we visited, but it has the glorious Alhambra which is a MUST SEE. We got tickets 3 months in advance online using a Mastercard. We arrived at around 10, and I didn't look into it much but it seemed that the lines for day of tickets were short. So if you don't have tix, I would still give it a try. However, we did talk to some people in a bar that said they had gone back to the Alhambra again and bought tix for just the garden. So maybe only garden tix are more easily attainable. We did a lot of walking around Granada with Rick's walking guide and I pieced together some other walks. We had a bit of time the morning we left and walked in the Albacin again and then up to Sacromonte. There was the more quiet "quaint" area of Granada I was looking for! The views of the Alhambra were great, too. Probably better than the San Nicholas viewpoint.
From Granada we went to Cordoba. The Granada train station is under construction and there are no trains. It is buses to another city (Antequera). It's not terribly convenient or efficient, but it was fine and RENFRE handles the transfer well. I tried to use the time to purchase tix for a couple short trips at the RENFRE station but they didn't speak English and they assured me I could buy tickets day of for Madrid-Toledo RT.