The Hanging Houses of Cuenca

I've skipped a few days by now, but nothing extremely exciting happened this week. We started classes again, which was crazy. It was a little hard to get back into a normal schedule after so much traveling, but also felt pretty nice. Traveling definitely takes a toll on my energy level! On Monday the 7th, I wrote in the good ol' blog, rested, and Skyped. Tuesday evening, we went to an activity with the Young Single Adults from the Alcala ward. They had a presentation of a spiritual lesson, then attempted to teach us a little bit of Romanian because one of the guys, John, is leaving soon for his mission in Romania. Learning Romanian in Spanish is a bit difficult I might add... On Wednesday evening, we went to the church house and played "futbol" with the Young Single Adults and most of the people from our group. Fun times!

Next day, Thursday the 10th, we headed out on another adventure to Cuenca. Cuenca is famous for its "hanging houses" which I didn't really understand until I saw them for myself. First, though, we stopped for a detour at the Monasterio de Uclés, which was explained as being a monastery, or basically a school, for boys. Our guide, Antonio, was saying something about "knights of the round table" or the "knight's templar" or something along those lines, but it was a little hard to understand him. We stopped, took a brief tour and learned some facts from Antonio, ate some traditional donuts, took some pictures (of course!) and loaded back on the bus to continue on our way.

Next stop: Cuenca! Luckily, this trip wasn't jam-packed full of things to do, so I wasn't completely exhausted by the time we got there. However, the weather finally started to get nice, so the heat was stealing our energy instead. It's just best to fight through it! Cuenca, along with its hanging houses which I'll be explaining in a little, is also known for its cathedral. Like all other trips, of course we got to take a tour!

The art museum was cool, but I suppose I'm not extremely deep and reflective, so I got through the museum pretty quickly. There were more important things to see, in my opinion! Just outside of the museum, we walked down a hill to a big bridge over a gorge and had our first prime view of the "hanging houses."

They're known as hanging houses, because literally, they were built on the very edge of the cliff, and they hang off the edge of the cliff. If you were to jump out a window, you'd fall hundreds of feet to your death. :) Nice image, I know. I was wondering why they chose to build so close to the hill, because you could tell how much erosion had affected the town, but I never found that one out.

Really, the best way to demonstrate this city is with the pictures. Words can only take me so far!

After the museum tour and views off of the bridge, we all had a couple of hours of free time to explore the city before we had to be back for our cathedral visit. I went with my friends Logan and Katie and Logan for a hike down through the gorge. Let me tell you, I was in really flimsy sandals, so it's kind of a miracle that I didn't die by tripping over a rock and falling off a cliff! Ha! We really had a lot of fun, though. We explored a bit of the city on our way, saw some beautiful lookout points, and went places that no one else in the group got to see. I was really glad we did it!

On our way down, we came across the ruins of a house that had some really cool graffiti inside. It looked like it would have been absolutely beautiful back in its day. I was sad it was destroyed now!

Next was the cathedral, but I wasn't allowed to take pictures, so I can't post any! Basically, though, it was very similar to many of the other cathedrals we've been to. After the cathedral, we walked up the hill back to the bus and drove home. Gotta love the day trips!