Like the Midwest but with Castles

December 28

8:00 in the morning didn't used to seem so early. That was before I moved here, where things happen later and I have become, somehow, even paler. Granted, I have to get up early for work sometimes. But as they say, you don't work on vacation. And that's what this is. Three whole weeks of it. However, this day I had to get up. At a quarter to 8 the phone rang and we shuffled downstairs and into the street where a car was waiting to pick us up. Bea and her Dad, Jose, were there to get us, and we had to hurry if we wanted to see everything.

The drive was about an hour and a half into the heart of Castilla-La Mancha. We stopped about half way to eat some breakfast where I foolishly ordered a tortilla and a coffee; I even had to get help finishing the tortilla. It was a little chilly outside, freezing, if you're from Madrid. I couldn't have been happier to have finally seen a view without a building.

Our first stop was Segobriga, a well-preserved Roman ruin that used to serve as the center of a large communication network in the region. This info is thanks to a pamphlet, which I took in Spanish and Jose took in English, to practice.

Next came a little more driving. The first castle we drove to required some off-roading to get to, and unfortunately our little get-up just wouldn't have been able to make it. So I took pictures from far away. We could have walked, but the Madrid and California representatives were looking very comfortable in the nice warm car. The second castle, which is small but has an enormous wall extending from it into the surrounding town, was closed for repairs. So I took pictures of that one far away as well.

The last thing to see before the long day of eating ahead of us were the windmills of his home town, Mota del Cuervo. Mota del Cuervo is the biggest town in the area, as Bea's grandmother loved to constantly point out, and has, among other things, a pool and a doctor. Surely it has more than this, it has 6000 people, double the size of my old town of Watonga, which had more than one doctor and two pools to boot.