Peniscola Castle

Yesterday, we finally got brave enough to take the car out of the car park (an interesting experience all itself).  Since we are very much downtown in Valencia and there is limited street parking, most blocks have parking garages which actually take up the space in the very middle of the block.  Ours is just a few doors down from our apartment building.  The entrance and exit are very small and getting around in the garage is nerve-wracking (at least for the driver), but we made it out onto the street and headed north up the coast to visit Peniscola - not surprising, a peninsula out in the Med.   

Peniscola is a small fishing village which has been turned into a fairly major tourist attraction because it has an incredible well restored castle from the thirteenth century. It is also where the movie "El Cid" was filmed in 1961.  It is best known for being the castle where the renegrade "Papa Luna" (Pope Benedict XIII) was housed during the great schism with Rome.  He claimed to be the Pope but Rome didn't exactly agree.  It is about 90 miles north of Valencia, about half way to Barcelona.  It was very crowded as this is vacation season and this weekend is also a big national holiday in Spain.

The drive up was interesting and reminded us very much of Tucson, Arizona (that is if you didn't look to the right and see the Mediterranean).  It is very arid here and there are lots of mountains a little back from the sea and plenty of orange groves (which are irrigated).   Interestingly, whenever there is a town built up at the coast, there are many high-rises, even in pretty small towns.  We guessed that it was because it much cheaper to build that way.

The castle at Peniscola was very interesting.  It is a fortified old town and castle sitting way up on a tall rock surrounded on 3 sides by water. 

It was originally built by the Knights Templar who are among the worst examples of those who killed in the name of god.  They were vicious.  In the great hall of the castle there was an exhibit of the Templars - their unforms, they weapons, their prison techniques.  Scary!

The views from up on the castle were magnificent, despite the cloudy day (which eventually turned into a rainy day).  It wasn't quite as dreary as looking at the pictures would suggest, but it was cloudy.  The temperature was absolutely perfect with a light breeze.

The Mediterranean here is quite different from in Nice.  There are big wide sandy beaches and they are very shallow having been created partly from silt being deposited by the many rivers which come down to the sea here from the mountains.  The water color is also quite different - clouder near land and greener.  Out a ways, you can see the bright typical Mediterranean blue.

We drove back to Valencia on the local roads which are almost as good as the super highway and are free (It had cost about $15 to go the 90 miles on the way up!).

We have a quiet weekend planned with minimal sight-seeing.  I think we might be wearing out and need to recharge a bit.  Fortunately, our apartment is extremely comfortable.