La Platera to Úbeda

We’ve been to Úbeda three times before on various trips and seen only the totally uninspiring polígono industrial as we’ve rushed from the EuropeCar rental office (to return the car we’ve driven from the Madrid airport to Andalucia) and the bus station (so we can get to the mountains and start walking). This time, we are staying right in the city center so we can see this UNESCO World Heritage site.

Oh my, what a difference! We used a well-annotated city walking tour track we found on Wikiloc, and it had 21 waymarks for sights to see in just the first three kilometers! It took awhile to adjust to being in a city after the deserted villages we’ve been in for the past month, but then the wonder of the spectacular Renaissance buildings around every corner took hold. It’s such an incredible collection of nunneries, towers, monasteries, palaces, churches, noblemen’s homes with balconies just waiting for Romeo and Juliet, universities, narrow pedestrian streets, parks, gates, and city walls that it feels like being dropped into the middle of a ten-acre museum. Thank goodness we have another day to see the rest! Then it’s on to Cordoba to visit friends, and then to Madrid where we fly back to the US a week from today.

Today’s Wikiloc track:
https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/ubeda-loo…Read more