Cuenca. Say it. It's fun.

My conversation with my sister went something like this:

Monique: Let's go to Cuenca (pron. Kwen-ka). It has the best name in Spain.
Celina: Splendid. I am endlessly easy going and carefree. And what is there, dear sister?
M: Hanging houses. They hang from trees.
C: Hang from trees you say? That sounds implausible and troubles my powerful mind. How could such a thing be so?
M: No, it's true. My friend went there. They like hang from Willows or something.
C: I trust you implicitly.


And so we went to Cuenca, with visions of houses hanging from trees dancing like sugarplums in our heads. And this is what we found. 'Suspended from willows' apparently sounds very similar to 'slightly overhanging from cliff faces' to some people. Monique later remembered that noone actually told her that houses were suspended from large fauna. She had, in fact, made it up at some point and forgotten that it was all her own big fat lie. She had been rather nervous on the 3 hour bus ride there.

But all was not lost in Cuenca.

It was in fact rather amazing. The kind of place that you would imagine medieval Spanish cities were like if you ever imagine medieval Spanish cities. All tilted terraces and dark crumbling alleys and nonsensical flashes of colour. And not another English speaking tourist. Not a single American twang. Glory, glory.

And we just wandered and wandered. All day. Well, not all day. We collapsed into siesta at some point. Picked a nice lookout and lay down. People actually climbed around me to get a view. I probably looked really rude, maybe even American, - especially when a mother lifted her child up so he could stand at the small slither of seat left at my propped up feet - but I was taking a stand for siesta. Everyone should be lying down. We all had things to do, let's not get crazy.

After we got rested up we got all intrepid. Pine wood fences no barrier for us. Not the Ribeiro girls! Ha! We laugh at your attempts at public safety Spain! And we found ('found', like we discovered Tutankhamen's tomb) these old ruins. We didn't know what anything was - I have this great aversion here to reading any kind of information guide, it's not the Iberian way.

But it was one of those times when you just had to keep saying 'wow' and breathing out slowly. And laugh because all you can say is 'wow' and you sound like an idiot. And just try desperately to suck in everything through your pores the way you do when you know you'll never be in a place again.

And then swearing, but all with great, great reverence.

Most levels of hatred towards us are entirely understood. Welcome, even. Honestly, courted.