First a disclaimer - I have to leave in about five minutes for our day of meetings with officials from Zaragoza and a tour of ENDESA (one of the largest electrical companies in the world), so this has to be brief.

On Sunday, ten of us went on a stupendous tour of the Monasterio de Rueda - an 18th century Cistercian Monastery. Left empty for several decades, this gorgeous building and its grounds were recently renovated and reopened to the public - complete with high-end hotel and exclusive restaurant.

I'll log-in and offer up details later, but suffice to say that these monks were clearly far ahead of their time when it came to innovation. Beyond the fact that the very construction of the building has lasted as long as it has (something not all that unusual in Europe but certainly rather unique coming from an American perspective where our freeway systems have crumbled after far less time), these monks had an incredible sense of creativity when it came to how they leveraged the environment around their monastery for their needs.

As with so many of the sites we see in and around the Aragon region of Spain, the monks took full advantage of the river near their monastery creating an incredible set of aquaducts and throughways to provide water for drinking, bathing and in one room they used it maintain the proper consistency for the ink they used for writing.

For now ... check out these sites for more details ... and stay tuned for details of our trip complete with pictures!

Si puedes leer Espanol this is a great site.

If you don't speak Spanish, here's a site for you!