Travelling dolls: Albarracín

This post was first published on themonstercrafts.blogspot.com. If you see it published anywhere else, it has been reposted without my consent. 

Hello again! It's been a month since my last post. Like I mentioned then, I wasn't sure if I would be able to post anything until we came back from our little holiday. Mr. Monster has been on holiday, so we've been both busy running errands and doing paper work, so I've barely had any time to come in here and write a post. And then we went away for a few days, so I haven't even been reading your posts. But, since I did take some doll photos during our holidays, I thought it could be a fun idea to share them and talk a bit about what we did. 

When we thought about going away this summer, we didn't feel comfortable going to another country, so we decided to travel somewhere in Spain. We love the interior and the north of Spain, because their food tends to be delicious, and the weather is slightly cooler than where we live. We looked at different options, and we finally chose to visit Albarracín, in the province of Teruel, Aragón.

Albarracín is a small mountain town, elevated 1.100 meters over sea level. It is a very small town, with a population of roughly 1.000 citizens, located in Teruel, one of the least populated areas in Spain. It recently started becoming quite a popular destination for rural tourism, as it is considered one of the most beautiful towns in Spain. It's not a way of speaking, apparently is an official thing.

The old part of town, is the most interesting part, as most of it was built in medieval times. The streets are paved with stones, and the houses have either stone walls or are painted in this characteristic reddish tone. They have this particular color because they used reddish clay to cover the exterior of the houses. But even some  newer buildings made with current materials were painted in a similar color to mimic the traditional materials. 

The origin of this town goes way back. The name Albarracín comes Al-Banu-Racin, which I believe could be translated as something like "(the town) of the sons of Razin". The Razin family were the ones that ruled this area during part of the muslim-ruling period of Spain. Many towns in Spain have a name that either starts with Al- or Beni-, which means it has an Arab origin.

There's also a river next to the town, called Guadalaviar in this area, but Túria in the Valencia area. There's a route you can do where you go around town but following the river. It's around 2 km long, which you can do in around 40 minutes, however the view is very beautiful, and we did take our sweet time there taking photos.

The route itself it's not too complicated, but there are a few places that you need to be careful and watch where you step, as there's no paved way, just stones. I'm not a particularly fit person and my balance is close to nonexistent, and I still managed to do it. You also have to cross several bridges, one of which you can feel bouncing as you step. It's safe, and it's not terrifying, but it just gives a weird sensation.

Nearby, there's also an area called Pinares del Rodeno, which is a 6.829 ha pine tree forest. "Rodeno" is both a type of pine tree (pinus pinaster) and a red stone (sandstone), which you can both find in this area. There are several routes you can do here, but we did one that was the circular one that was 3 km long. It was amazing, and so quiet. During the entire time we were there, we only saw 3 other people. 

I'm not the most outdoorsy person, but I really enjoyed the route. Not just because the landscape was lovely, I also liked that it was so quiet. For the most part, this route was very accessible, as it has a paved way that takes you to the top part, where you can see this beautiful view. 

On this route you can also find several prehistoric paintings. I'm not gonna lie, most of them were barely visible, but, in some of them, they provided with high resolution photos of the painting when it was in better condition. This one with the archer was the most visible one.

While I wanted to take the chance to take doll photos, I didn't want to get too anxious about taking as many photos as I could everywhere to the point I didn't enjoy the trip. Yes, I did want to take the opportunity, but I also wanted to enjoy our time there, take personal photos and also enjoy the delicious food. This is a typical dish from there called migas del pastor or migas a la pastora (which I'm going to translate as "shepherd style crumbs"). It consists of gently fried bread leftovers, regional sausages, grapes and a fried egg. 

Overall, it was a lovely but short trip. The interior of Spain is so underrated, in my opinion. Their food is delicious, the landscape beautiful and not as crowded as coastal places. The coast is also beautiful, but it is often too crowded, and sometimes I feel it's a bit overrated, and this includes my own hometown. 

I hope you enjoyed this post. It's a bit different from what I usually do. For a while now, I had wanted to do a post that mixed dolls with some other topic. Barb (My little doll corner) often writes this very informative posts that I always find so fascinating, and I wanted to do something similar. I'm not great at history, and there were a couple of things I didn't know how to translate, but I hope you found it somewhat interesting. 

In other unrelated news, I did finish the test for the sofa cover. It does fit, but I did such a sloppy job sewing it. I didn't have time to write a dedicated post, and now I don't feel like it, so I might wait until I make a second and better looking version. I'm going back to school in September, so I would like to start working on some craft projects before that. I know I won't have as much time to post here once school begins, so I might focus on shorter form content, or break longer posts into two parts. As for now, I want to try an idea of some crate furniture I had a while back but haven't had the time to execute it yet.

I hope you're all doing well, and I'll see you as soon as possible.

Monster Crafts