We woke to a less windy morning and a lovely sunrise. We chilled out a bit and made good use of the fantastic facilities, I.e. Sue had a hair wash. She then went to say goodbye to Estela and we bought some wine, and when she found out it was only 4€ she bought a bottle of white, which was only 3€…. Big spender. The wine came from the winery next door.
We then set off for Cuenca. This was our 4th visit in our lifetimes, and hopefully not our last as it is a magical place. We had decided to stay in a hotel and so found a place to park the van at the bottom of the gorge. We could have stayed there in the van, but we wanted to be up in the old town. So we parked up and tried to work out the route to the hotel. A workman eventually told us the way and we set off with our overnight bag up the lovely gorge walkway which led us underneath the hanging houses and to the bridge. Sue has a long relationship with this bridge and still hates crossing it after 42 years 🤣.
We saved the full bridge experience for later and went and booked into our hotel , Hotel Convento del Giraldo, formerly the Casa de los Albornoz. On the way to it we passed a statue of a local patron where we had previously taken a lovely photo of the boys. (Federico Muelas – poet, writer and pharmacist) I have photos of Cuenca from over the years and have/will do a separate blog post with them in. We were a bit early to check in, but they let us access the room early. We had paid an extra 10€ for a view, which wasn’t too bad. The building was peaceful with a particularly gorgeous stairway. We then went down and got an excellent set of recommendations for lunch.
We were in the old town, which has been declared a world heritage site. It was a little early so we went to visit the Abstract Art Museum in the Casas Colgadas (hanging houses). They are called this because their balconies literally hang over the Huécar gorge which skirts the city. The houses are really iconic, dating back to the mid 1400s. The museum was opened in 1966 And primarily showcases work from the 60s and 70s. Modern art is not really our thing, but it is free and really a marvellous installation, extremely well done, so here are a few examples of what we saw here.
We then went for a walk around the city and found a beautiful viewing point, the Mirador del Barrio de San Martín. The photo opportunities were endless! We walked uphill to a restaurant area recommended by our hotel. This took us past the Barrio de San Pedro church and past the old castle ruins. we chose a restaurant called El Panorámico which had an amazing set menu with three courses for 14€. Dave had Estofado de ciervo (venison stew) and I had Lomo salsa pimienta (pork in a pepper sauce). The view back down over the city was fantastic. I rounded off the meal with some chocolate ice cream but Dave tried a local speciality Torrija which was just like French toast.
We then went for a walk across the bridge – I was as nervous as I had been on all three previous occasions – I just focused and went across it pretty quickly without looking down too much!!! There were still a few rickety wooden boards along the bridge – I remembered these vividly especially from the time we took a school group as they had a lot of fun rattling the rickety boards as they went across!!! The stunning parador is on the other side of the bridge and is currently undergoing refurbishment. From there we had a beautiful view back across to the city.
We had read about the Torre de Mangana and wanted to visit this at sunset as it was on the right side of the city for the best views. It is a historic clocktower originally built during the Muslim rule of Cuenca. The area around the tower was also formerly the site of Arabic, Jewish and Christian buildings. They have now updated it and made it into a tourist area with some really good glass cases, showcasing some of the ruins of earlier architecture around it. We got chatting to a lovely Colombian lady who was equally keen on photographing the sunset. After that we strolled back into town in search of some dinner and finally rounded off the night with some garlic prawns and patatas bravas.
