The Andalucía Bucket List

Most Andalucía lists are lists of buildings. The Alhambra, the Mezquita, the Giralda — all magnificent, all on every list, and all essentially the same experience: you queue, you walk round, you photograph it.

This is a list of things that happen to you rather than things you look at. Twenty of them, with the month we'd do each one.

The big five

1. Watch the sun come up from a hot air balloon

Best: April–June, September–October

Meeting in the dark, the roar of the burner, and then an hour of silence over the Serranía de Ronda or the cliffs of Arcos de la Frontera. €200–€225, and the most reliably overwhelming thing on this list.

2. Fly over Ronda's gorge

Best: March–June, September–November

A paramotor is the only aircraft that can take you directly over the Puente Nuevo and down the line of the Tajo. Fifteen minutes is €100. The photograph is the one people put on the wall.

3. Stand inside the Mezquita of Córdoba

Best: March–May, October–November

A forest of 850 columns and red-and-white arches, with a cathedral built in the middle of it. Go at opening time; in the free early morning slot it's nearly empty.

4. See Semana Santa

Best: late March or April, dates change annually

Thousands of people in robes carrying tonne-weight floats through medieval streets at 3am, to drums, for a week. Seville and Málaga are the famous ones; smaller towns are more moving. Nothing else in Europe is quite like it.

5. Walk the Caminito del Rey

Best: October–May

Three hours on a metre-wide walkway 100 metres above a gorge. About €10 and it sells out weeks ahead — here's how to get a ticket.

Landscape

6. Drive the Zahara–Grazalema pass

Best: March–June · Sixteen kilometres of hairpins over the Puerto de las Palomas at 1,350 m, between two of the best white villages. The full route.

7. Ski in the morning, swim in the afternoon

Best: March · The Sierra Nevada is open to late April and about two hours from the coast. It's a gimmick, and it's a genuinely good day.

8. Walk into El Torcal

Best: any month except August · A limestone plateau eroded into stacked discs, at 1,300 m near Antequera. Free, strange, and half an hour of walking gets you away from everyone.

9. Kayak the Maro cliffs

Best: May–October · Sea caves and a waterfall dropping straight into the Mediterranean, east of Nerja.

10. Sleep in a cave house in Guadix

Best: October–April · Thousands of people live in cave dwellings cut into the clay hills, with the Sierra Nevada behind. Several are rentable, and they're a constant 18 °C year-round. There's a balloon flight from here too, at €200.

11. See the Doñana wetlands

Best: February–April · One of Europe's most important wetlands, between Seville and Huelva. Flamingos, deer, and — with considerable luck — an Iberian lynx.

Food and drink

12. Eat in a 19th-century market

Any month · Atarazanas in Málaga or the Mercado Central in Cádiz. Standing at a counter, pointing at what you want.

13. Drink sherry where it's made

Best: spring and autumn · Jerez de la Frontera, an hour and a half west of Ronda. A proper bodega tour ruins supermarket sherry for you permanently.

14. Taste Ronda's wine

Best: September (harvest) · Around twenty small bodegas in the hills around the town, most taking visits by appointment.

15. Learn to make a real gazpacho or salmorejo

Best: summer, obviously · Cookery classes in Málaga, Seville and Marbella, usually about three hours including eating it.

Culture and nerve

16. Sit through real flamenco

Any month · Not the dinner show with a set menu. A peña in Jerez, Seville or Granada, late, with thirty people in the room. It is not comfortable and it is not entertainment, and that's the point.

17. Carnival in Cádiz

February · Satirical singing groups roaming a city in fancy dress for ten days. The funniest thing in Spain, if your Spanish is up to it — and a spectacle even if it isn't.

18. Go into the Alhambra at night

Best: April–June, September–October · The night visits to the Nasrid Palaces are limited, cooler and far less crowded than daytime. Book the second tickets are released.

19. Climb or via ferrata at El Chorro

Best: October–April · One of Europe's great climbing areas, in the same gorge as the Caminito. Guided beginner days from around €60.

20. Fly a paraglider over the white villages

Best: March–June, September–November · Thirty minutes of silence above Algodonales or Teba, with the villages as white dots on the ridges below, from €100. It's the view that makes sense of everything else on this list — from up there you can see how the whole region fits together.

Putting it into a trip

And one piece of advice that applies to all of it: don't stack more than two fixed things into a day. Andalucía rewards the afternoon you didn't plan far more than the itinerary you did.