We woke up in the palace this morning and went down for breakfast, unfortunately it wasn't quite up to scratch as the mini croissants were served still in their packets, we wasn't sure whether to eat them or clean the toilet with them. We were the only ones there for a while, then half a dozen builders turned up but they wisely avoided the food and got straight on the beer at 9:30am.
As we were packing up, some bells in the church next door started ringing, we checked the time to find out that they were the daily 10:22 bells. Why ring bells at 10:22, were they signalling the milk man or something?
We got on our way and immediately missed the bikes, the roads were fantastic, twisting around the mountains. At least we had the stereo though, steve had about 40 albums on his phone for us to listen to. Unfortunately, half of these were Oasis, and the other half were Liam Gallagher. Mark now speaks in a Mancunian accent, Steve is wearing a Parker and we spent the last 30 minutes arguing over City vs United.
We were soon driving through a stunning national park, and ended up having a photo shoot for the car every 10 minutes. We stopped for lunch in the middle of a forest but the place only sold crisps, so we fed those to the birds and got back on the fun roads to finish off what was left of the clutch.
After a few hours we were in Cuenca, a city built around an old medieval town on a rock. We found a parking place and checked in. The receptionist explained that they had no parking except for the parking and that it was free until 5, then after 5 it was free. Made sense. She started telling us about the sights to see, but said that they'd all be closed. We asked why things were closed and she said about the festival, we enquired about this then she told us that we should probably go to that as the entire city is closed for it, there's bull running, and so on. We think she should probably have started with that info!
We took a walk up to the old town, what a place, amazing views, especially across the old bridge into town. We explored for a bit then waited in the town square for it all to start.
The mayor led a parade to a podium where everyone waited for him to make an inspiring speech, only for him to do the Spanish equivalent of "oggie oggie oggie" and walk off.
The bull run started bang on time for Spain, 50 minutes late, which saw a poor bull chase some Mo Farrah wannabes down the street. It was no Pamplona, and being veterans of that we sat at the bar in the street instead as the bulls ran past. Steve did find his doppelgänger though:
Afterwards we walked through the town as the parties kicked off, there were hundreds of bars and we were given some free drinks as we walked around. People would just help themselves to barrels of sangria and pretty much the whole town was smashed.
Being old, we found a nice bar to settle in, and Steve was at home as they had bits of Vespas stuck on the walls. It was a social place and people kept coming over to hear our story being as we were the only non-Spanish people in the town.
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