Wednesday Walk: Through the alleys of Albarracín

Hello dear Steemians and photography enthusiast,

Today I want to share with you my wednesday walk that I did with my girlfriend through the small streets and alleys of the old village of Albarracín.

^{The Church and old stronghold of Albarracín seen from above.}

Albarracín is considered to be one of the most beautiful towns in spain. So I decided to take you for a walk through the narrow alleys and up the steep hills to show you the town through my camera lens.

We started the walk from the main parking. On one side it's bordered by a natural stone wall. In front of this wall, there are growing a lot of different plants with beautiful blossoms and I took a quick shot with my camera of a rose.

^{Beautiful how the pink blends into the white and the yellow...}

We headed up the very steep hill into the old part of the town. In this region, it's quite common, to decorate the houses with nice colorful tiles. Also the street signs and other stuff is often made out of these tiles. On our way we found one of these typical decorations on a window ledge. Only this time it was made out of small leftover shards of tiles.

^{Although the face of the house seems really run-down, the window ledge is beautifully decorated.}

^{And in another window they even used some shells in between the tiling.}

Further up the hill, there is one house with a blue facade. It really stands out of the rest of the houses which all have these red and brown erthy colors. Also in one of the highest window, they have set up a cute little scarecrow.

^{The scarecrow is watching us walking in between the houses.}

^{A picutre of a saint painted on a canvas of tiles.}

On a neighboring house, we found another good example of the art of tilings. If you have a closer look, you can see, that they intentionally changed the tiling pattern in the second row. Because they didn't wanted the head of the saint to be splitted between two tiles.

After a few more meters, the ground got less steep and we left the narrow alley behind us and stepped onto the main square in the old town. There is a bar where we had dinner before and from one place you have a nice view over the rest of the town. In the evening the people of the village gather on this place and talk and drink. I really like this, because it feels much more alive than any village I've seen in germany.

^{The sign for the Tavern of the town. Again painted on tiles.}

^{Looking over the roofs with the typically colored clapboards.}

^{The church tower dominates the silhouette of the town, and can be seen from the main square as well.}

We decided to take a different path down agian, because we've never walked this way. From above we discovered a small public garden through which we walked.

^{My girlfriend already went ahead into the small garden.}

We arrived at the bottom again just a few hundred meters from the parking where we started. The entrance of the street we came down was equppied with the biggest "drive through prohibited"-sign I have ever seen.

^{My girlfriend in comparison. (She is 1.85m) :D}

At the same spot we could have a look at the tunnel of the town. It's not that long, but it runs directly underneath the main square and some more of the old town. I think this is really incredible, but unfortunately I had only my 50mm lens with me, so I wasn't able to capture the tunnel and the buildings on top in the same frame. So I used a nearby convex traffic mirror to get a somewhat distorted wideangle.

^{The tunnel underneath the town.}

^{Maybe with the distorting mirror you can get an idea of the scene.}

The street back to the parking was lined with nice street lamps. Usually I find street lamps not a good subject to photograph because they mostly look boring on the background of a blue sky. But here the valley is so deep that the cragged hills served as the background and made the picture more interesting.

^{One of the street lamps with all the flourishes.}

Back at the parking I stopped again to marvel at the beautiful roses and had to take some more shots.

^{A yellow rose...}

^{...and some more pink ones.}

Hope you enjoyed my entry for this weeks wednesday walk,
if you did please let me know in the comments :)

Have a good week and see you next wednesday!
Constantin