Oliver’s travels #4

At Easter, we drove to a place called Alarcón, which is South East of Madrid, in Castille la Mancha. We went to stay at a castle, which was over a thousand years old, and had been made into a hotel. The castle was on top of a hill, with a river almost all the way around it.

The town of Alarcon was really old, too, with one skinny road going in to the castle and one skinny road going out. The roads are made of cobblestones, they are really old.

Our room was really nice, except it had only two really tiny windows because it was in the tower of the castle. I could sit in the bath and look out one of the windows, but no-one could see me, because we were five stories up.

The next morning, the weather was disgusting. It was pouring with rain, icy cold and very windy. We got in the car, and drove to Cuenca, which was about one hour away.
At Cuenca there was the Casas Colgadas which means Hanging Houses. They are called that because they are built over the side of the cliffs which means that they are hanging over a gorge.

We walked across a long bridge, which went across the gorge, a long way down. The bridge was swinging as we walked across it! We didn’t like that much!
When we reached the other side, we walked a bit further up the hill to get to a tunnel which we walked through to get into the town.
The town is very very old, with lots of old buildings and churches.
The weather was so horrible, we soon went back to the car.

On the way back to Alarcon, we stopped to look at some old Roman ruins, which were over two thousand years old! We couldn’t really tell what buildings they were because we didn’t have a guide, and none of the books were in English. The weather was getting worse!! So we went back to the castle.
We walked along the road from the castle until we found a little restaurant, which had a big window all along one side or it, looking down to the river. There was lots of nice food, and the guy that owned it was really nice, and looked a bit like our landlord. We liked the food so much we went back there for lunch the next day!

The next morning, the weather was sunny again. So we went down the hill and went for a long walk through the bush, following the river around the castle. The water was a beautiful greeny blue colour, and we saw some big fish in the river. We walked up a steep hill on the other side of the river to a tower, that had been one of the lookout towers when people used to live in the castle. We were able to climb inside the tower a bit.

Then we went back to the castle, and then we drove home to Valencia again.

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