I love you castle?

15 Oct 2011

Another Fulbrighter from Valencia visited us today, so we decided to finally make the trip up to the Castillo de Santa Bárbara (Castle of Saint Barbara)!

The Castle of Saint Barbara is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe! This castle was originally built in the 10th century by the Arabs. However, it was conquered by Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise) in 1248. It was named after Santa Bárbara because he conquered the castle on her feast day. Having visited the castle, I imagine the battle was intense! The castle is situated on a hill--approximately 544 feet high! On one side, there is a steep drop with the beach down below. Strategically, it wouldn't make sense to approach the castle from this side. The other side is a little less step, but you still have to contend with the fact that the castle is so high up.

Rather than take the stairs (because it's still pretty hot even though its October), we took the elevator up to the castle--which was a little nerve-wracking. We were all packed into the elevator, and I had visions of us plummeting to the ground from the top floor.

The castle was beautiful! Since it sits on top of a tall hill (or tiny mountain), it had a wonderful view of the city, and we were able to pick out different monuments around the city--like our apartments, the Plaza de toros, the sports stadium, the ruins of the other castle, etc.

View from the Castle! You can see the Plaza de toros in the middle and the sports stadium in the upper left corner!

Part of what made the visit unique was the group of about 10 Spanish children who followed us around. Once they heard us speaking in English, they started yelling out random phrases in English--such as "Hello. I'm Sergio." or "Happy Birthday!" At first, it was adorable to see them trying so hard to impress us. However, as they followed us throughout the castle, it started to get a little annoying.

 At the beginning of the trip, we grabbed a map of the castle in Spanish. Unfortunately, our castle-specific vocabulary in Spanish isn't very large. This meant that we did some creative guessing of what some parts of the castle were. For example, the picture below and to the left was the source of a couple silly guesses. We posited that it was the bath for the castle--which we immediately refuted because it doesn't look like it would hold water well. From there, the guesses only got more ridiculous--such as the idea that it held pizzas delivered to the castle. :) When we tracked down an English copy of the guide, we discovered that it was once part of the bakery!

What do you think this is?