VIsit to Aracena

 

 

This weekend Jose, Cooper and I went and visited Aracena, a city in the Huelva province which is in the mountains and which we had passes by several times on our way to visit other places. I kept saying when we would drive by that I would like to visit there since it was beautiful. It is a typical pueblo with white buildings and a castle that sits on top of a high hill overlooking the city. It has twisting streets and stones instead of pavements. Since it is farther north it was a bit cold and we drove through a lot of fog to get there but the day was beautiful.

 

First we parked and walked with Cooper through the city center and up to the castle which was converted into a church. When we finally reached the top we ended up running into one of Jose's best friends and his wife. They had decided to do some local tourism as well. It is a small world. The photo above shows the arch you have to walk under to reach the castle and ruins themselves.

 

When we got to the top, Cooper and I decided to take a rest in the sunshine since it was quite a steep hike to arrive at our destination.

 



Later we walked back down into the city itself and ate our picnic lunch (have to save money where we can) in the plaza which every good Spanish city has.

After lunch we decided we had seen a lot of the city and drove to the next small pueblo, Higuera de la Sierra (which roughly translates to the Fig tree of the Mountain Range). We wandered around for a bit before having a beer at a local bar. It is hard to see in the next picture but the church in this small town had a storks' nest on it bell tower. Here in the south of Spain there are a ton of storks and they build their nests on anything high they can find. Often times this means churches and the towers that connect power lines throughout the countryside. In the U.S. we believe that storks bring babies. Here in Spain they believe the same thing but the babies themselves come from Paris. Funny.