Lost in La Mancha

Don Quixote was a total fuck up. I love him. (Now I just gotta finish the book—way too heavy to carry around on this trip though.) And I kinda love La Mancha, too. It's hot and dry and the scenery is repetitivee and the cities are mostly nothing special, but it speaks to me the way things sometimes do. I really like the scenery: the wheat shines golden in the sun and the fields alternate reddish and gold and green (karma, karma, karma, karma) and there are mountains in the background. There are some really pretty river valleys and we saw waterfalls and almost went rock climbing in flip flops but I chickened out. Got mildly accosted about speaking English by cell-phone-throwing idiots whom we weren't even talking to, but that's part of it, too.

We decided we're in the Cleveland of Spain. I've never been to Cleveland specifically, and I'm okay with that, but someone who's only been to New York and Boston and San Francisco can't really claim to have seen the US. I want to see Spain, all of it, and it's not all museums and beaches and aesthetic appeal.