We said goodbye to Barcelona this morning (although we’ll be back in two sleeps to return the rental car and to catch a train to Avignon). The car rental pickup went pretty smoothly, and we even were granted the elusive free upgrade to a small SUV. Still stick, of course, but Benton commented it was nice to be back to driving on the right hand side of the road.

We stopped for lunch in a little town called Ainsa just because it was a good time to stop and we were about an hour from our destination for the day. As we sat at lunch, we started scrolling through the sites in this little town and saw that Castillo y Casco Histórico de Ainsa—the ruins of a castle set within the stone walls of a medieval walled village—was a 9-minute walk away. It turned out that was 9 minutes very much uphill, but it was actually a pretty interesting excursion to check it out. Albeit a hot one. And, when we walked back down to the car, we realized we’d walked up via the least interesting and hottest route possible—we walked down through a bunch of cobbled streets and shops and restaurants.

From there, it was on to the Ordesa Valley—specifically Torla-Ordesa—to check into our AirBnB, which is a very cool little 2 bedroom / 2 bath flat in another cobblestone-streeted and stone building town. Our flat is actually reached by ducking down a small alleyway, which makes it feel a bit hidden.

We then caught a shuttle into Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido, where we had planned to do a 4+ mile / 2-hour hike. But, on the ride up, we realized that, tomorrow, the best hike to do would likely be an extension of that hike, so we instead hiked a couple of miles up to Cascada de Cotatuero and poked around there for a bit (we mulled over making a loop from there that would have been a bit longer…and then decided to be adults, recognize that we weren’t trying to hit some mileage count, and just return the way we came).

That got us back to apartment by 9:00, where we showered and then walked to dinner.

So, in theory, just a relaxing travel day, but we still logged almost 20,000 steps somehow.

An interesting/memorable experience of the day:

  • Benton: Having Tim tell him, on the upper level ledge at Castillo y Cisco Histórico de Ainsa that he was just going to walk to the end and go down the stairs that were there…except there were no stairs at the end and Tim had to backtrack.

  • Tim: Learning that Lucy not only falls asleep in any moving vehicle in less than 10 minutes, but that she shares Benton’s tendency to fall asleep vertically with her mouth wide open. Plus…the serendipitous find of the ruins in Ainsa—the beauty of not having a hard timetable.