For our last day and a half in Spain, we overnighted in Cuenca, about an hour and a half east of Madrid. This meant we’d easily make it to the Madrid airport for our late afternoon flight home, and could still see one more spot before departure.
Cuenca is a city built into cliffs, and is also a Unesco World Heritage site, known for its “hanging houses” – homes built off the edge of the cliffs and propped up with enormous diagonal wooden beams. The entire historical center of Cuenca is a stair-climber’s delight, you trudge up and up and up, then down and down and down. It is a lovely medieval city, but the majority of the historical area is comprised of souvenir shops, restaurants, and churches. This isn’t where you go to live where the Spaniards live. Still, we adored our short stay in Cuenca.
We rented an apartment right in the heart of the historic center, and it had enormous windows opening up to the walls of an old church and looking out amongst the cliffs, a furnace that crackled and hummed all night, keeping us warm, and enough charisma to charm any visitor. Our girls loved it, we loved it, and I’d return to Cuenca simply to spend an evening or two there again.
Our first afternoon in Cuenca we toured the city, browsing the locally-crafted ceramics (my youngest bought an adorable bird whistle for a painless 2€) and climbing the tower of the Iglesia de San Pedro to view the city from even higher up. Towards sunset we climbed towards the uppermost section of the city, then joined a half dozen others on the very hike-able nearby cliffs to watch the sun’s descent. Traipsing back down towards the Plaza Mayor, stray kittens captured my girls’ attention as we wandered through the winding streets.
The next morning I snuck out of my sleeping house for a brisk morning run. More like a fast walk up many hills, with some wheezing and photographing mixed in. But I was rewarded with a spectacular pink and baby blue sunrise over the mountains. This was my last run before we headed home to Copenhagen, and although it was neither long nor fast, it felt rejuvenating and rewarding. I headed back down to our apartment where we fixed hot chocolate and eggs and bacon for breakfast, and then we packed up for our drive back to Madrid.
thecloudsarelowerhere 