Peaches come in a can

Holy fucking christ it's hot here. (Here is Cuenca, in Castilla-La Mancha, in the middle of Spain.) The day I got here I saw a thermometer that read 52 degrees. Clearly that was wrong, that's almost 130 Fahrenheit and people weren't actually dying in the streets, but it didn't feel too far off. Luckily there are faucets and fountains with not bad water all over the place; I drank so much water my stomach hurt, but was still thirsty all the time. And if I carried my water bottle around for long without drinking, the water got hot. I totally understand siestas. It's a dry heat, but it's still really fucking hot. There's kind of a breeze, but it's only slightly more refreshing than a hairdryer. And apparently there's a heat wave that's hit the entire region except Cuenca, so I'm not even in the hot part of the middle of Spain. It cools off at night anyway, so there's that.

The old part of Cuenca is on this hill that comes up out of gorges made from two rivers. They're little rivers, I dunno how they made such deep gorges. Anyway, there are these houses built into the side of the cliff, casas colgadas they call them; when you walk onto their balconies you're over the gorge. There are good views if you walk across a long scary windy bridge that crosses the gorge. The bridge has a big construction sign next to it.

Back in the 1960's a group of Spanish artists was fed up that there was no forum for contemporary art in Spain and that the works of most Spanish artists were displayed outside Spain. So, led by this guy Fernando Zóbel, they started their own museum. The Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art is in one of the casas colgadas, and it's perfect. The house was built vertically so you keep going up and up and the rooms are small so the art fills them up without making them cluttered and there are views across the gorge and gush, gush, gush. It's really fantastic. And I love Fernando Zóbel; check him out if you like contemporary art that's not two-piles-of-dirt contemporary. And there I was, looking at the displayed book of Zóbel sketches, when what do I see but two pages of the Cambridge (MA) skyline. Turns out he went to Harvard. And they had this great Zóbel quote about how Cuenca is out of the way so only sophisticated tourists would come to the museum. I took it personally, even if in reality I'm broke and smelly.

Speaking of tourists, there don't seem to be any here. That can't really be true, because when I was making reservations a lot of the hotels were booked, but I dunno what the other tourists are doing. And there's no one around period during the afternoon. I'm all for siestas, kind of, but even the grocery stores here close for 3+ hours in the afternoon. Grocery stores are air-conditioned, what's the point of throwing the employees out on the street?

The hills around Cuenca are rocky and go up in steps with pine trees growing on their tops, making stripes of grey and green. The countryside is green and gold and brown with the occasional field of sunflowers, although both the fields and the sunflowers themselves are smaller and less intense than I remember from my first trip to Spain. They grow apples and peaches here; I was bummed that they apparently don't use the apples for sidra (hard cider, way better than what you get in the US), but I bought some peaches and omigod wowowow they are so good. So much better than any peaches I've had before, ever. Small pleasures. I bet you could make something sidra-like using peaches, and I bet it would be good.

On the bus ride out of Cuenca, the bus river pulled over and got out to buy a loaf of bread. I love Spain.