Day trip to Cuenca

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to take a day trip to the city of Cuenca, as well as a stop at the Enchanted City. This was all possible through a great organization called Be Madrid. Be Madrid is here for students who are studying and working abroad, and they help to set up event, trips, and activities to help students meet new people and get the most out of their experience abroad. I am particularly thankful for being introduced to Be Madrid because they have been a great asset, offering trips every weekend that are pre planned, with transportation, for a very reasonable cost.

Now onto the real part of the story. After meeting at one of Madrid’s many plazas, a group of about 50 boarded a bus for the two hour trip out to Cuenca and the enchanted city. Once we arrived at the Enchanted City, myself and four friends embarked on the walking tour path to take us around to the various rock formations that were there. These formations are extremely old, and have been weathered by wind and water into fairly recognizable shapes today. Some of the formations looked like boats, a dog, a human face, and even an elephant. I really enjoyed this part because it was almost as if we were on a mini-hike and the rocks themselves did actually look like real things, rather than formations that you really had to force your mind to believe looked like an image.

After that, we headed down the mountain, and up another one to Cuenca. This tiny town was once the home to a rather large castle, and now boast one of Spain’s top museums of prehistoric paleontology. Part of our excursion included a tapas lunch near the central cathedral which was a spectacular sight. After that, we ventured out on our own for a little while and stumbled upon an awesome lookout where you could see for miles, out to further towns, and down to the river below. From there, we met back up with our group to go on a guided walking tour of the city, Our guide was able to provide us a lot of information about the city, including various battles that were fought there, and notable artists who had lived or worked in the city. Our last stop of the day was s short stair climb up to the top of one of the walls of the old castle, where we had a 360 degree view of Cuenca and the cities beyond. this by far was the highlight of the entire day because we could see the whole landscape of the town, we we discovered and learned about piece by piece earlier in the day.

I really enjoyed the setup and structure of this day trip, not to mention the city of Cuenca itself. With that being said, tomorrow I will be headed to Toledo for another day full of exploring!