A cold day in Cuenca, Spain

Oh, how I love finding great day trips from Madrid that don't involve the words Toledo or Segovia! When my dad had an extra day to spend in Madrid in November, I insisted that we do something out of the ordinary.Queue Cuenca, home of the hanging houses! We took a train east from Madrid's Atocha station and arrived in Cuenca about an hour later.To be honest, it isn't very easy to reach the center of the city walking... we thought about trying it, but we were frozen and the lure of the taxis successfully tempted us.Once we got to the center, we wandered around the hilly, windy streets admiring the pastel-colored buildings wondering where exactly those hanging house were hiding.And after a left turn, a hike up a hill, a coincidental run in with some other flight attendants from my dad's crew, we finally found the "casas colgadas."  And they're just as captivating as everyone says.This UNESCO World Heritage site was constructed on the edge of the canyon's cliff overlooking a little ravine below. Believe it or not, some of the houses hang with up to ten stories!As we continued to freeze, we continued to wander. We hiked as far as we could, wind whipping us around and our teeth chattering. But we were soon rewarded with yet another fabulous view of the whole city below us.Cuenca is an ideal day trip to take from Madrid. Its stunning landscape is far different than anything I've ever seen before. And unlike my experiences in Toledo and Segovia, really the only other tourists we saw were the flight attendants we were so surprised to run into! However, you should keep in mind that we visited on a frigid November day in the offseason...Oh, and did I mention it was also Thanksgiving? Although this color pallet was the closest thing I had to Thanksgiving food that Thursday, it was a day well spent with one of my favorite travel partners.