120 km/hour

I don’t know whether it was stupid or dumb, but it was a good decision. I rented a car to travel from Madrid to Granada, Córdoba, Mérida, and Sevilla. I bought a GPS before I left home because it would be cheaper and smarter in the long run, but I would be driving solo, so it promised to be stressful.

I walked to the train station to get my car (remember how I said after London that you should always get the car at an airport? Yeah, I ignored my own advice. Don’t do that.).

And then I spent the better part of an hour making sure I knew how the car worked and what buttons to push and if I knew where my GPS charger was and why did I think it would be a good idea to not remember where that went?

But, after asking for help because the car wouldn’t start and finding out that I just wasn’t pushing the brake hard enough, I was good to go.

Did you know that Madrileños use their indicators? It’s easier to drive in Madrid, not knowing a thing about where you are, than to drive in Chicago. Of course, one of the first things my GPS said was, and I quote, “Turn right at rtrtrtrtrplmbsrtsmz”. Well, it was easier to just change it to Spanish after that.

I didn’t get lost. I missed one turn, thankfully in a part of the city that followed a grid pattern, but the GPS just kept right on “recalculando”, giving usted commands and using the present subjunctive. I now know usted commands very well.

I was out of Madrid’s city center before I could do anything other than pay attention to the GPS. 

Then, once I got the hang of highway driving in Spain, I looped my camera strap around my wrist and turned up a Spanish radio station that finished a Spanish song and then played the theme from “Salvando a soldado Ryan”. 

Cruise control set to 120 km/hr, camera on and snapping here and there, air conditioning up so high I was actually starting to feel something other than hot – it was great.

A couple hours later, I was cruising along a country road at 90 km/hr. And then! I saw my first ruined castle. It was high on a hill since obviously no one with sense puts their fortifications in a valley, even if it did ultimately work out for George Washington.

About half an hour later, I saw my first Don Quijote windmill. 

I stuck my CD of the El Cid soundtrack in the player and turned it up. There was a reason for this: I was going to the castle that was used for the fortress of Calahorra in the 1961 El Cid movie. (The fortress of Calahorra itself is distinctly less castle-y looking, and besides, it's historically inaccurate to say that Doña Urraca ruled Calahorra, but it was the 1960s and I don't think they were too worried about it.)

Castillo de Belmonte is located in Cuenca, Spain. It’s been around for ages and will be around for ages more, since it was restored in the last 50 years. I had the run of the castle, pretty much, from the dungeons (probably a cellar, but a girl can dream) to the battlements. Isn’t it great?

The entrance to the keep

Notice the lowered drawbridge.

Entering the castle

Layers of walls and battlements

A full armor chamber!

The passages were cool and echoing.

The servants' quarters.

Either creepy dungeons or a cellar.

The gate looking toward the walls.

What a view! From the highest battlements accessible to visitors, I could see for what felt like miles.

Leaving Belmonte Castle by a small, little-used road.

On the road again - this time for 3.5 hours. I was tired - five hours of sleep the night before, four the night before that, little to no sleep on the airplane, everything seven hours off. So I stopped mid-way and got myself a sandwich at a little gas station. The locals (by which I mean the check-out lady) were busy fanning themselves with receipts and complaining about how hot it was.

Having finished the El Cid soundtrack, I started listening to other, more Spanish, music. And Bolero. Since it’s 15 minutes long, it was long enough to get me through about 7 tunnels and 30 bazillion miles of innards-squeezingly high bridges.

The most stressful part of the day came in the evening when I was trying to find my Airbnb. My GPS still doesn't know where it is, and my directions were very unclear, so Yvalis and Andrés (the hosts) came out to show me where to go. I took a shower while they were at the pool because I was practically manufacturing gallons of sweat by that point. Afterwards, I tried to sit on my bed to put in the wifi (pronounced wee-fee) password, fell over, and woke up an hour later, when I removed my laptop from my lap and went to sleep for another hour.

In one day I had traveled over 500 km, from Madrid in the center of Spain, to a point less then 100 kilometers from Africa. The terrain had changed; the culture had, too. Arabic and Spanish now shared road signs. Buildings had taken on a distinctly Moorish look.

So much of Spain is history, whether violent or peaceful. So much of it spanned centuries, a man's life come and gone between major occurrences. I never quite feel history at home, but here it's part of the air. It's sobering and exciting all at once.