Limestone town

Here we are......Cuenca. 

We stumbled across this town while on our way to El Chorro, and heard it had lots of rocks. It looks like we were right. We also learned that there are a couple hundred routes surrounding the city that you can climb!

Time to explore...

Which made Joey very happy.

Through all the excitement, Joey found a very interesting picture within the bars of a door... He had wondered off and came back with a huge grin on his face. This made me very curious. I asked what he was up to and he responded with, "Oh, don't you worry, but you are going to love it." So, we continued onward. Going through the pictures tonight revealed the mystery. 

As you can see, I thought it was hilarious.

The city of Cuenca, pronounced 'kwenka, has seen multiple regimes. It was founded by the Moors due to its defensive advantages (sweet limestone walls surrounding the city). Around the 12th century the city was taken by the Christians led by Alfonso VIII. Due to this history, there are many significant cultural sites and the city is even a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. It earned this recognition because it is one of the most well preserved medieval towns in the world. 

                                                                                                                                                                  Here I am overlooking the city and exploring an ancient walkway/aqueduct.

There are an abundance of ruins in Spain, so of course we would run into one during our stroll. This one has a particularly funny story. Joey happen to be pretty afraid of these orange fellas. 

So we had to get a little closer and maybe a little more scared!

Up close these guys were so real looking, they even had knuckle creases/wrinkles. 

Here you can see the walkway/aqueduct that we were walking on. We saw the orange crew from there.

We also had a chance to explore the city at night and found a nice Christmas market, tons of bread, some sweets, but no good places to eat. So, of course, we just ate bread and pastries for dinner because we are adults and don't need veggies anymore.

Yum.

We also had to tell Santa what we wanted for Christmas... Santa reminded Joey of his parents because of how many coke cans he had.