Day 28: Cáceres

Another day, another UNESCO World Heritage site! Today we woke up, got ready and hit the road around 11am, heading north to the town of Caceres. It's notable for the extremely well-preserved Old Town, surrounded by walls and towers which we were keen to check out.

The drive was only about 40 minutes so not strenuous, and it's a small city so we were able to find parking without much difficulty. Walked over to the main plaza and into the old town to have a look around. I did some filming with the new selfie stick I'd bought, and then my phone popped out and crashed onto the stone floor, putting a crack directly across the sapphire lens covering. Supposedly those things are indestructible, but I guess not! I'm very lucky though, because the crack is just adjacent to the zoom lens, and the only negative effect seems to be slightly odd white balance and reflections when using the zoom lens. So most of my videos will be OK.

The old town is actually quite nice, everything well preserved in stone and again very little evidence of modern life. Unlike other places we've visited it's not just a few buildings in various areas, it's the entire centre of town. Though the commercial centre these days seems to be elsewhere.

There were a few restaurants fronting onto the main square and although they looked like tourist traps, we chose one and dived in. We both opted for the menu of the day (12 euros including 2 courses, bread, dessert and a drink) - I had chicken & seafood paella and Shandos had a jamon and cheese platter for first course, while we both opted for a pork loin with wedges for main. Dessert I had a brownie with ice cream while Shandos had chocolate mousse, and then afterwards they brought us out an extra free dessert for some reason! No idea why, and my broken Spanish isn't good enough to clarify!

Bulging from our enormous meal, we headed back into the old town for another look around. We spent a good couple of hours here just wandering slowly, taking photos and filming, and letting Schnitzel enjoy himself as well. Only annoying thing was that, aside from very little English information, the few buildings you could go in (church, university etc) all charged a small amount separately. There wasn't one overall ticket you could buy to allow access to every building. Annoying!

Eventually I relented and bought a ticket to the cathedral for 4 euros, mainly so I could climb the tower and have a good vantage point. 90 steps to the top was a climb of sorts, but a good view! The Islamic era of the city (800-ish to 1492) left a lot of short, boxy guard towers around the place, and 30 of those are still standing today. The cathedral tower was a good place to admire everything from!

Back down where I recovered from the climb, just as the bells rang out - glad I wasn't up there when that happened! Feeling like we'd seen most of what Caceres had to offer, we headed back to the car and paid up our parking, before driving back to Merida. Stopped briefly on the way as we saw some ruined castles from the freeway, but on closer inspection turned out to be hotels.

Brief trip to the park with Schnitzel followed by a visit to the supermarket to pick up a pizza for dinner. Another evening of video editing, blogging and football watching!Read more