We took the ropeway up and hiked down, via south side. It was an awesome route and we walked back through town to Hota station, such a cute town. As far as what order while you're there, be prepared that no matter the order, you're going to go up and down something like 2,639 steps, and then up and down a lot of them again. If this sounds tiring (it is, but totally worth it!) you might want to take the ropeway down as well. I should note, I had weaker lungs from a medical procedure, and was still able to do this, I just took it a bit slow. Which I recommend planning at least a half day for this to really enjoy it all and take in the many sights. You can grab a map of the grounds when you pay your entrance fee, and look at your best order options from there, that minimizes your flights of stairs to conquer! The reason we hadn't taken the ropeway back down is I wasn't feeling like I had it in me to climb all of those steps back up, to get to it. So we decided to take the stairs down. Which there ended up being many more stairs down, than there would have been going up. If you are okay with going down, then it shouldn't be a huge problem. You can rest along the way, it's beautiful no matter where you stop. And there were only a couple of people we passed along the way, on our way down.