Chasing Windmills

In the great Spanish classic, Don Quixote, the title character believes himself to be a great knight and goes on "noble" quests around Spain. At one point in the book, he goes out to chase and fight windmills, believing them to be giants threatening him with their long arms. Ever since we have lived in Spain, we have wanted to see these windmills. We have visited Toledo many times, which is in the region of La Mancha, where Don Quixote was from. So we knew they were probably close by, but we could never find any. Not that we've strayed off the main road to look, but still :-)

So on the way to Granada, there on the side of the A-4, there was a real Spanish windmill! It was sooo exciting! And then another few kilometers down the road, we saw some more. Some of them were fronts for cheesy tourist restaurants, but it was still exciting. We were driving later in the evening to Granada, so we didn't want to stop and get there after dark. But we made a note of the kilometer marker so we could stop and gawk on the way home.


So we stopped on the way home. We saw 3 up on a hill, but couldn't figure out how to get close to them w/o driving on a dirt road. :-) We took our pictures with the zoom and got back on the freeway.




A couple of minutes later, I looked out far to the side of the freeway and saw a whole line of windmills in the distance. So we decided to chase windmills too and go on our own Spanish quest. It took us a couple of tries to find a road that seemed to be getting close to them, but we kept trying. Finally we found the road that drove through a little town and right up next to the windmills!! There was even an old castle at the end of the row.







I feel like there aren't words to tell how exciting this was. :-) They were so beautiful and it was such a thrill to be able to get up close to so many of them. We felt so Spanish - just like Don Quixote!! Even the countryside around was so beautiful to look down on! We were so excited to have this Spanish adventure!