We added Avila to our list of places when we were in Madrid. So this morning we were up early and crossed around the outskirts of Madrid to get to this beautiful walled medieval town.
We have seen some famous city walls in our trips around Europe, the two most impressive until today were Dubrovnik in Croatia and Carcassonne in France. But when Ton and I saw the walls at Avila we both went wow.
The walls in Avila are complete and well maintained. They are about 2.5 kilometers in total. We think they are the best walls we have seen. They don’t have the ocean like Dubrovnik which is probably why they are not as famous, but we were both surprised that this town is not higher on the must see places in Spain.
The old town is nice and has all the things you would hope to see in a medieval city. Luckily for Avila it has not been fought over for over 5oo years. Also, luckily for us it has not boomed since the walls were built so the town didn’t feel the need to knock the walls down to allow for bigger roads and stuff. While it did not boom, it did stay wealthy enough to continue to maintain the walls.
This lucky combination of factors gave us a chance to admire this feat of engineering up close. The city has done a good job of adding safety features that make it easy to walk without feeling like you are at risk. Some of the steps are irregular and steep, but there is always a good hand hold available to help you safely navigate the stairs.
When we were driving we had pretty much decided to pass on climbing the walls, but as soon as we saw them we changed our minds and went looking for the ticket office. We are glad we did.
After scrambling around the walls and town for about 4 hours we headed back to François with a bit of dread. Avila provides a really nice aire that has beautiful views of the walls. But when we arrived there was a huge traveling carnival set up in the parking lot next to the aire. We had to take a makeshift route to access the aire as the carnival had closed the normal way in. Our hope was that the carnival started tomorrow on Friday and not tonight.
Unfortunately, as I type this at 9pm I am being subjected to a thumping bass, horns, generator noise and whistles from different rides in the park. So as much good luck as we have had on this trip running into cool events unexpectedly, today we are paying back some of that good luck by running into a modern event that is not up our ally. It is not going to be an early nights sleep as the Spanish are notorious night owls so we have no idea what time this is going to shut down.