Where I live: Ciudad Real, the Royal City!

I didn't know where I was living until 12th August last year, and when I looked at my language assistant nombramiento, which states where and how many hours I'd be working, I saw that I was going to be a language assistant in Ciudad Real. Ciudad Real you say? Royal City? Where's that? This is exactly what I thought! I knew it was in Castilla-La Mancha (also known as La Mancha), because I chose that region, but other than that I didn't know anything about it. I immediately looked it up on Google and then Google images, and found out that it's a small city (75,000 inhabitants), near the bottom of La Mancha, around an hour and a half from Toledo,  just over 2 and away from Madrid, and also around just over 2 hours away from Córdoba. Most people fly to Madrid airport then catch the train or the bus to Ciudad Real to get here. You can also fly to Málaga and catch a train up to Ciudad Real, but there are lot more ways to get from Madrid to Ciudad Real than there are to get from Malaga to Ciudad Real, and Madrid is closer.

Now I have to explain some things about Spanish geography here, for you to fully understand where Ciudad Real is placed. So you have Spain the country, and then you have the comunidades autónomas (autonomous communities): Andalucía, Aragón, Asturias, Las Islas Baleares, El País Vasco, Las Islas Canarias, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Cataluña, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra,  and La Comunidad de Valencia. Within each comunidad autónoma is a provincia (province or region). In Castilla-La Mancha, which is a region famous for windmills, there are 5 provinces: Guadalajara, Cuenca, Toledo, Ciudad Real and Albacete. And finally, in these provincias there are cities, towns and villages. I live in the capital of the region Ciudad Real, which is Ciudad Real . There are other cities my region like Daimiel, Almagro and Valdepeñas. I was initially confused about this because someone told me that a city I was visiting at the time (Alcalá de Henares) was in Madrid, and I thought 'how can a city be in a city?', but then they explained to me that the province is called Madrid, and Madrid is the capital city of this province.

Windmills in Consuegra, which is in Toledo

So geography lesson over, right?! Well, not quite. I'm going to continue the geography lesson a bit more by talking about the weather in Ciudad Real- how British of me! I first arrived in Ciudad Real in late August, to check it out and to look for a flat to live in so that I got everything sorted out early on, and guess what? It was 43 degrees when I arrived! Yes, 43 degrees. I came from Madrid, which was about 30 something degrees when I left it, so another 10 or so degrees killed me. I may live in Castilla- La Mancha, which is in the centre, but Ciudad Real is at the bottom of this region and basically has a similar climate  to some of the southern cities. It was terrible walking in the streets and I needed to carry a bottle of water with me everywhere when I first arrived. However, it still gets cold here in winter, which is terrible when you compare it to how hot it gets - my friends and family think I lie about it being cold here because they see Spain as being always hot. It never snows though. You'd have to go up North for that.

Iglesia de San Pedro

What's the city actually like then? Well, it's quite normal. It's not really pretty like other Spanish cities such as Salamanca, Toledo or Segovia and there aren't many places of interest to visit, but it´s in an ideal location to visit other places. The main sites would be the Iglesia Parroquial de San Pedro, a Gothic style church which is the most photographed monument of the city, another Gothic church called Iglesia de Santiago, which is the oldest church in Ciudad Real (the capital) and the Museo de Don Quijote, which is near a nice little park called Parque de Gassett. Did I tell you that the character Don Quijote, from the book Don Quijote written by Cervantes, is from La Mancha? In the book he travels through Castilla-La Mancha, Aragón and Cataluña and you can actually follow the route he followed in the books here in Spain. I've seen signs of "La ruta de Don Quijote" when travelling in La Mancha, but haven't tried it yet, and haven't actually gone near it. Plaza Mayor is also an important place to visit, and is where a lot of people meet up to go for tapas. The cathedral is also a main sight - I didn't know it existed until last month, even though I was stood in front of it the first time I came to the city. I don't know how I missed it because it has the second largest nave in Spain! There are other sights to see such as the Museo Manuel Lopez Villasenor, the Museo Elisa Cenderos and a water park called Playa Park. 

Parque de Gassett

Plaza Mayor

Although I would have preferred to live in a bigger more historical city, I don't mind Ciudad Real. There are quite a few advantages of living in a small city. For example, it's easy and doesn't take very long to walk to the main places. There are also two supermarkets that are 10 minutes away from my flat, and another one that´s 15 minutes away. Plus, it takes me 10 minutes to walk to the school I work at, and I love this because I get an extra few minutes in bed, whereas I know people who live in bigger cities who have to get up a lot earlier than I do and have to also catch the metro, the bus or the train. That brings me onto my next point. It's insanely cheap to live here. I don't have to spend any money on catching the bus to get around the city and  the rent's much cheaper than it is in bigger cities. The tapas are even given to you for free with your drink here (you can actually go out for tapas and get a cheap dinner), and when I went to Seville, which is quite a large city, you had to buy your tapas separately.

Anyway, I'm glad I was placed in Ciudad Real because it's in a great location, which has allowed me to travel to so many places in Spain,  and I get the chance to discover an unknown city. Not many people I know can say "I've visited Ciudad Real."