Cuenca

On my last excursion in Spain, I went to a medieval town in central Spain called Cuenca. Ariana, who was in Spain for a week after her study abroad trip in Greece for a month, was here so we wanted to take a trip to somewhere a little off the beaten path to check out a more typical Spain. If you would like you can check out her blog about her trip at http://arianaingreece.blogspot.com/. We found out the hard way that there were repairs in progress on our train ride to Cuenca and that we would have to take a bus for part of the trip, which turned out not to be too much trouble even though we were both somewhat confused for a little while. Once we arrived in Cuenca I remembered how hot it gets in the Castilla-La Mancha area of Spain. Think of the weather in Raleigh in summer compared to the weather in Boone in summer. Yeah, the difference between there and Valencia is like that. Our hotel turned out to be pretty nice except for the problem we had with our air conditioning the first night. It turned out the hose was blowing the hot air into the room and not out the window as well as blowing no cooler air out. Now imagine Florida during the summer...

The tourist spots in Cuenca were great. They have several Casas Colgadas (hanging houses) that literally hang over a river gorge. They are very picturesque and are self standing even though they aren't touching Earth at all points. The architecture of the cathedral in Cuenca was very interesting too. It has two open holes near the top of it that allow light to come through when you are looking at it from the front which is very different from the other designs that I have seen so far in Spain. Another cool sight there was the Tower of Mangana, a clock tower that has a wonderful view from in front of it over the city and countryside. Castilla-La Mancha has many plateaus, hills, and mountains so the views there were breathtaking. You can check out my pictures from Cuenca in my photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/joshfisherncsu. Once I get Ariana's pictures from her I will upload those to my album also.

In order to take advantage of the scenery, we decided to take a hike up a mountain that is located across the river from the "old town." We were so glad that we did too. The views from the top of the hike were awesome. Being able to read the info at various points during the hike made it even better because we understood some of the history of the area. Ariana didn't quite share my enthusiasm but I thought the best part of the hike was the map they had near the top that showed the distance and direction from our exact location to various parts of Spain and other large cities in the world (there is a picture in my photo album).

The food so far in Spain has been fairly good but I thought the food was better than normal in Cuenca. Ariana tried her first tortilla española (potato omelet) and I ate some empanadillas that were pretty good on our first night. The next morning we tried hot chocolate and churros (a Spanish tradition) for breakfast which was great but probably not meant for a hot day when we were about to start a hike! The other meals we ate were great too but those were the most notable.