The land of Don Quixote & Tablas de Daimiel National Park (Day 2)
The next day we woke up at 11, got ready had breakfast before saying our goodbyes to E & A and all the friends we had not seen in a while as well as the new ones we made.The next few days were going to be our full blast northern spain adventure where we would embark on a journey of food, wine, hiking in Picos de Europa and Pyrenees, patiently waiting in search of the endangered bearded vulture and meeting wonderful people, some of whom eventually became friends.
Before we went north we went south and spent our first night at Paradores de Almagro, run by the state owned the Parador group of hotels, within 30 mins drive of the Parque Nacional Tablas De Daimiel. This hotel occupies the old Convent of Santa Catalina, which dates back to the 17th century and was the city’s first Franciscan convent.
On our way to Almagro we drove through the lands of La Mancha, made famous by none other than Don Quixote and visited the windmills of Campo de Criptana, that we all have read about in the famous epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Only when we got a glimpse of those windmills perched high on hills in quaint little towns could we imagine what made protagonist of the story after reading so many chivalric romances that he lost his mind and decided to become a knight-errant to revive chivalry and serve his nation along with his witty squire Sancho. As we walked among the windmills we debated over the premise of this heroic story and its true meaning and eventually settled at a “local” Michelin star restaurant called La Musa for some tapas, wine and cerveza.
After a nice break from the hot sun and refreshed by wine, beer and fresh olives, we continued towards our next destination for the day: the wetlands of parque nacional Tablas Daimiel for some bird watching. Since it was still too hot and sunset was hours away we decided to check in and enjoy a few glasses of local wine before heading back to the National Park. We were expecting to find a lot of waterbirds but it was a hot and buggy evening so we just watched the sunset and was visited by a fox and few gray lag goose and a white stork.t A great dinner of local cuisine from La Manch meal with a few glasses of wine past 10.30 pm left a tired couple snoozing off to bed a little close to midnight.
