Marty’s photo of the day #4772: Deb and I spent time in Spain while working on the Europe section of my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. This is Castillo de Albuquerque, which we discovered by accident while traveling the rural back roads.

I’m now reading The Last Queen, the second in a series of well-researched historical fiction novels by C. W. Gortner that cover Queen Isabella I and her daughter, Queen Joanna the Mad (late 1400s to early 1500s). Both novels are wonderful and demonstrate just how fucked up religion made people at the time. Imagine if religion created such violence, misogyny, and bigotry in modern times. . . . Oh, wait! It still does.

Now I want to go back to Spain and find some more castles. As I learned while researching Cool Creatures: Hot Planet, there are some 2,500 castles in Spain.