After our wrong way, steep hill, narrowly avoiding death drive into Morella (ok, it wasn’t that bad, just that stressful) I congratulated myself on having insisted on a hotel at the bottom of the hilltop town of Albarracin. That’s our hotel at the bottom of the pic above, with the first layer of the old town visible above. I took the photo from the easy access, large level parking lot just across the street.

And then we decided to go exploring. Up the stairs. And up, and up, and up, through tiny cobblestone  “roads” and passageways. Over 100 steps just to get to the lower part of the old town. My thighs and lungs were questioning my hotel choice.

But eventually we got above the town to the walls. From there we could see the oldest castle and wall parts off to right–originally Arabic and built around 900 AD–and to our left the new walls, built around 1600 AD by the Christians. In between, in a vaguely kidney bean shape dictated by the river gorges, the town.

Eventually we made our way down and back to our 2 two star but very comfy hotel El Meson de Gallo. (Very grateful for the enthusiastic radiators. Went down to 32 each night.)

After a brief respite, time for dinner. Back up the stairs again, though this time we found a route with only 54 actual steps and the rest a steep cobblestone road. Not much was open (mid-week during the off season), but we landed in a delightful tiny 4 table bar, where the waitress was kind and the food basic but tasty – an excellent ratatouille with an improbably huge fried egg on top; a big mound of patatas bravas – and the walls and ceiling covered with penned in names of anyone who had ever visited.

Back down the hill and to bed.