Our hotel should be renamed 'Hotel Ok', as that just about sums it up, the place is ok, the room is ok and the breakfast was ok. In fact, the breakfast was going to be labelled as crap, but we found some strawberry yogurts that lifted the rating.
One fun thing was that the glasses didn't fit under the drinks machine properly, so you had to tilt your glass to get it under, then press the OJ button and it would automatically fill it to the top. The problem then was that when you tilted it to get the glass out, the ok spilled everywhere. Good design chaps.
We left Hotel Ok and took a few turns leaving Valencia as our turns were being shepparded by buses pushing us from one lane to another. Before long though we were on the motorway to our next destination.
Luckily there was good 4g connectivity along the way so that we didn't need to listen to Oasis again for the next 2 1/2 hours!
As we turned off the motorway, rain hit, which was a shame as the roads were ace. This was the one time we were glad to have been in a car.
We arrived in Albarracin at around midday, it's a very pretty town, often described as Spain's prettiest. We checked into our hotel and took the steep walk into town climbing hundreds of steps which would through the narrow streets.
At the top the were some castle ruins so we climbed further up to explore these. It's easy to see why the town has such a reputation, the pictures just don't do it justice.
After climbing down we walked around the bottom of the town which had a natural moat amongst some trees, again, very pretty and easy to see why no one successfully managed to invade this place. We were knackered and had enough trouble finding our way and the gates were open with no one shooting at us.
We decided to go back to town and find the police station so that we could pay the parking fine we got a few days ago. What's worth noting is that there is only one policeman in this town and he finishes work at 2pm. So after donning our helmets and visiting the bank we went to the bar to spend our loot.
We had another awesome meal, mainly made up of steak and pork, and we thought how none of our meals here ever contain vegetables. You know it's getting bad when you start to crave vegetables!
Because we hadn't done enough walking today we went back to the hotel and drove to a nearby waterfall so that we could walk around there. In true Spanish style, it was signposted from 40km away and then never mentioned again. Good ol' Google sorted us though and we were soon clambering to the base.
The Spanish had build a nice convenient viewing platform to view the waterfall from, but failed to notice that you can't actually see the waterfall from it! Around the corner they did the same, so we risked life and limb on the slippery rocks to get nice and close for some pics.
Afterwards on the way back to the hotel we saw lightning in the distance, so opted to go to the hotel and chill for an hour before finding food.
At the bar, we concocted a plan. Spanish bars and restaurants are either full or empty, no inbeteeen, and we figured that once the rain came, everyone out sight seeing and everyone outside would dash to the nearest bar. Therefore if we went into an empty place now, it would be full soon and we'd have both good seats and atmosphere.
This worked a treat, and worked instantly. We picked a place and the rain started after 5 mins and within another 5 it was full. Our food order was already placed, and we had a great seat at the bar.
The thunder was pretty fierce and lasted for a couple of hours. We left for a change of scenery and got chatting to some Belgium guys. They were all smashed, one was asleep on the bar and the others were propping each other up. They were on a walking holiday and had just arrived and spent about an hour walking today to warm up. Tomorrow they had a 35km walk planned, good luck with that, with a hangover, in 28c heat, and with hills which don't exist in Belgium. Bet they get a taxi.
We made our way back to the hotel stopping for a nightcap at a place run by a German speaking Italian living in Spain who was moving the Central America; who told us his life story whilst necking grappa. Got to love Spain.
No comments:
Post a Comment