Spain 2011, The Plaza Mayor

We were staying at the Hotel Retiro del Maestre, a renovated old Spanish nobleman’s house on a street leading to the main square and we found it easily and left the car in the underground car park. It was a friendly family run hotel with spacious and comfortable public rooms, a large outside terrace basking in the sun and was a nice room for us with a view over the garden.

It was late afternoon by this time and with the sun beginning to dip we didn’t linger long but made our way quickly to the Plaza Mayor to find a bar. On the way we passed by the equestrian statue of the Conquistador Diego de Almagro and then entered the rectangular Plaza. At a hundred metres long and forty metres wide and flanked on both sides by arcades of Tuscan columns supporting overhead galleries all painted a uniform shade of green and fully glazed in a central European style this place is truly unique in Spain. These galleries were originally open and used as grandstands for public events, religious festivals and even bullfights that were held here until 1785, when they were finally banned by King Carlos III.

We choose a table on the sunny side of the Plaza, ordered beer and wine and just sat and watched the activity while we nibbled the inevitable olives. The bar owner shooed away some small boys playing football, telling them to play elsewhere and families began to arrive and the bar quickly filled up with chattering customers. Walking around the square was a proud grandmother pushing a young baby in an immaculate pram which matched her pristine outfit and she completed at least a dozen circuits, stopping frequently to chat and to show off the small child to anyone who showed the slightest interest.

The Plaza Mayor is the most important part of a Spanish town or city and I really cannot think of an equivalent in the United Kingdom where we have public squares but use them in an entirely different way. This is the place where people meet, relax and enjoy themselves; it is generally flanked with shops and restaurants and usually has the town hall and the main church somewhere close by. When we arrive somewhere new it is usually the first place we make for because sitting with a glass of wine and a complimentary tapas it is the best place to be to get a feeling for the town and its people.

In the search for real Spain (not the coasts and the Costas), in the past three years we have visited and enjoyed dozens of Plaza Mayors; Madrid, the largest, Salamanca, the second largest, Toledo, next to its towering cathedral and the tiled Plaza de España in Seville. We liked them all and we began now to compile a list with a view to choosing our top five favourites. We considered Ávila, Mérida and Valladolid, Cáceres and Santiago de Compostella in Galicia but after a lively debate weighing up the pros and cons and putting forward the case for each one in turn we finally agreed on the top five but could not reach consensus on the actual order.

So this is our list: Segovia in Castilla y Leon because of the Cathedral and the architecture and the little streets running away from it like spokes from a wheel, Trujillo, where we had been only today, because of its unspoilt medieval charm, the unpretentious and functional Ciudad Rodrigo, Chinchón with its open balconies and bullfights and although we had only just arrived we liked this place so much that we both agreed to include Almagro in the list.

After a second leisurely drink we paid up and left the square and strolled back to our hotel where we asked for some dining recommendations and the receptionist convinced us to go to her favourite just a couple of streets away so after we had rested and changed we took her advice and found the restaurant in a side street off the main square.

It was nice if not conventional and it had a modern menu with some new twists on traditional meals and I have to say that I wasn’t prepared for rare pork. The sight of a pork chop oozing blood really wasn’t to my taste at all and because I have always thought that anything to do with a pig should be cooked right through it almost spoilt the evening for me as I worried about food poisoning and salmonella and trying to remember the location of the immodium tablets in the suitcase!

Although it wasn’t especially late when we finished the meal, we were tired after a long day that had started three hundred kilometres away in Mérida, taken us to Trujillo and then a three hour drive to Almagro and we were ready for bed. We walked back through the Plaza Mayor that was lively in a subdued sort of way (if that makes sense) and then to the street to the hotel. About half way along we heard Spanish guitars and the clack, clack of castanets and we wondered where it was coming from and then through the pavement level window of a cellar we could see a dancing class in full swing. Some local people suggested that we should go inside and watch so we did just that and before the lesson ended we enjoyed fifteen minutes of genuine Spanish music played by a sort of flamenco skiffle group and a group of young people dancing in true Castillian style.

It was a great way to end the evening!

Spain 2011, The Cueva El Aguila

After an undisturbed night’s sleep in the quiet village we woke to a perfect blue sky and expansive views over the countryside and the surprisingly green fields sweeping down towards Talavera de la Reina and beyond that the Montes de Toledo rising through the gathering cloud. Breakfast wasn’t served until half past nine so we had time for a walk into town where we were expecting to see a market in the Plaza de Torres but we must have got our days mixed up because the Plaza was quite empty. We wandered around the streets that were beginning to stir into life and saw the same old men who had been there the previous night and clearly have nothing more to do all day in this tiny place than hang around the main square.

Breakfast at the El Cerro was excellent, just a simple affair of Iberian ham, manchego cheese and toast with olive oil and mashed tomato, called pan tumaca, but it was perfect and reminded us of our breakfasts in Carmona in Andalusia in 2008. One of the hotel staff was very friendly and spoke good English and was interested in our travels around Spain and intrigued that we picked out of the way places like Pedro Bernardo instead of the well known tourist places and we told him that we liked it this way.

We told him that we were driving to Cáceres and he became quite insistent that we should take a short detour from our route and visit the Cuevas El Aguila, the Eagle Caves, in the foothills of the Gredos mountains but we had a long way to go and were not sure if we liked caves enough to go to the trouble. When we checked out a few minutes later he reminded us again to make the visit and assured us that we would not be disappointed so it seemed rude not to go so we set off in the direction that he carefully marked on our map.

We drove out of the Sierra de Gredos which is a mountain range in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula, located between Ávila, Cáceres, Madrid and Toledo and has been declared a regional park. We were on the road to Cáceres anyway so it wouldn’t delay us to long to visit the caves and when they began to be signposted we turned off and irritated the satnav navigator who immediately insisted that we turn around – so we switched her off!

We followed a quiet rural road to a large but empty car park and parked close to the entrance and still not convinced that this was a good idea made our way to the kiosk and paid €7 each entrance and waited five minutes for the guide to take us inside. As soon as he appeared and escorted us underground we were immediately glad that we made the detour because this was an awesome underground cavern, over twelve million years old and inside a great hall of ten thousand square metres and a kilometre of pathway to walk through the great stalactites and stalagmites that rose in majestic multi-coloured columns throughout the cave.

The guide apologised several times for being unable to speak English but we reassured him that this didn’t matter because so much of his narrative would have been superfluous and we could imagine for ourselves what he was telling us. As usual in underground caves he kept pointing out natural sculptures that, with a lot of imagination, had a resemblance to familiar icons – the Madonna and Child (several times), Bulls, Matadors and famous Spanish Kings and Queens.

The temperature inside the cave is constant throughout the year, with an average of twenty degrees celsius and it was this that led to its discovery in 1963 by a group of children who noticed water vapour escaping through a hole in the ground caused by the difference in temperature of the caves and the outside. They crawled inside to investigate and discovered the Aladdin’s cave with all of its natural treasure and a year later the owners of the land, obviously sensing that there was gold in them thar hills, made it accessible and opened it to the public.

It took about thirty minutes to complete the circuit of concrete paths and various viewing platforms and when we emerged back into the daylight we were so pleased that we had taken the advice to visit because this was one place that was certainly worth a detour.

The original plan was to drive to Extremadura and stop at the town of Trujillo but the combination of the later than usual breakfast and the unscheduled visit to the caves meant that our original timings now had to be reworked so we decided to miss Trujillo and drive the two hundred kilometres straight to Cáceres instead. The drive was easy along a delightfully spacious motorway as we drove in a relentless straight line across Spain’s Central Plateau at some point crossing into the Province of Extremadura, the fifth largest in Spain.

Spain, Monday Morning Rush Hour in Madrid

It was an eleven o’clock flight from Madrid back to London Luton and Ávila is about one hundred kilometres from the city so I calculated that it would take at most two hours and that we should begin our journey at seven o’clock which would give us plenty of time to make the drive, return the car, check in and do a bit of duty free shopping.

We assembled in the lobby and after checking out walked to the car and this was my first misjudgment because I had forgotten to factor in that this would take at least fifteen minutes. It was a clear morning and the temperature had dropped below zero and the cars parked in the street were covered in white frost and in the distance we could see that snow had fallen overnight in the mountains. Thankfully our car was parked under cover so there was no problem chipping away ice and after we had loaded the bags we were soon on our way.

Although there wasn’t a great deal of traffic at this time in the morning most people were driving carefully on account on account of the icy conditions and progress out of the city and onto the N110 was quiet slow but once there the pace picked up and we drove easily to Villacastin where we joined the AP6 motorway heading towards Madrid.

My plan was to leave the motorway at Guadarrama and follow the route through the national park and then pick up the M40 motorway close to the airport but then things began to go wrong. We left the motorway as planned but ran immediately into a lot of early morning traffic with everyone choosing this time to go to work and the roads that had been clear of traffic on Friday morning when we had arrived were now congested with growling traffic and impatient drivers. To add to this Kim had some difficulty in interpreting the map so I considered it best to return to the motorway which at this point was less congested on account of Spanish drivers reluctance to use them and pay the tolls.

Even now there didn’t seem to be much of a problem but the closer we drove towards Madrid the traffic began to build up and at every junction the flow of traffic stopped dead as two sets of drivers came together and competed for insufficient tarmac. About fifteen kilometres out of Madrid all that I could see in front of me was a ribbon of brake lights snaking away endlessly towards Madrid and I cursed myself for not taking into account that this was Monday morning and probably the busiest time to get into Madrid with people returning to the city after the weekend to return to work. Then I cursed the Spanish highway authorities, BMW, SIXT Rent a car, Easyjet and even poor old Kim for not being able to read the map.

As we crawled along making only intermittent progress the clock on the dashboard started to speed up in the way that clocks do when you are late and struggling for time and I watched with horror as it passed nine o’clock which was the planned time for arrival at the airport. We began to wonder about another night in Spain and how much an alternative flight home might be the next day but then the road split in two and the crawling queue carried on for the centre of Madrid and we peeled off onto the M40 which was moving just a little more quickly now at tortoise rather than snail pace!

Travelling east the blinding sun was directly in my eyes but at least we were following signs for the airport now which made us feel a bit more optimistic but although there were signs they gave no indication of distance so it was difficult to make any mental calculations for an estimated time of arrival. At half past nine we could see planes landing and taking off but they seemed a long way away and we still had to refuel and return the car.

Eventually at a quarter to ten we arrived at the airport but had to find a filling station which meant a detour around a confusing one way system and a drive through three of the airport’s four terminals. Eventually we fuelled up but when things are going badly everything seems to be against you and the something about the BMW security system refused to allow the car to restart and things looked bleak again. After a bit of fiddling and guess work eventually the thing fired into life but then there was another problem trying to find the correct entrance in the car park to return the vehicle. Naturally I took the wrong entrance and ended up in the short stay car park so had to leave and drive around the complete one way system once again to get to the correct entrance.

It was ten o’clock with less than an hour until our scheduled flight time and as I parked the car and unloaded the bags I made a rash statement that I will never drive around Madrid or its airport system ever again but of course I will because we will be flying back there next May when we plan to visit the south west province of Extremadura.

Spain, Final Night Dining Disaster

Generally speaking we have been fortunate to have fine weather on our travels but the rain now was relentless so we had to find something to do for the afternoon. Fortunately it doesn’t rain in bars so we agreed that the best thing to do was to return to Le Bodega de San Segundo, where we were practically regulars now, and spend the afternoon chatting over a drink or two. It seemed that most of the citizens of Ávila had the same idea this afternoon because the place was full to overflowing as local people were enjoying Sunday tapas lunch whilst watching the final round of the 2010 formula 1 motor racing championship and keeping their fingers crossed for the Spanish driver Fernando Alonso.

The place was buzzing with sociable chatter and family lunches and it took a while before we could claim our favourite seat in one corner of the room and after Mark Webber won the title and denied Alonso we stayed long enough for the crowds of people to quieten down as disappointment set in and begin one by one to slip away and after an hour or so we practically had the place to ourselves. Each round of drinks produced a new plate of tapas and by late afternoon we decided that we would have to stop or else we would be too full to enjoy the evening meal.

It was getting gloomy and dark when we returned to the hotel but we had grown accustomed to the rain by now and we didn’t mind because this was our final evening and we were certain that we had another grand meal to look forward to later.

After a short rest I joined Micky in the lobby and we went to the underground bar to wait for the girls. Unfortunately the waitress with the short skirt wasn’t on duty tonight, which was a shame but we had a drink anyway and another plate of tapas and eventually Kim and Sue joined us but there was no sign of Christine so tonight the travel club was reduced to only four for evening meal so after a final drink in the bar we returned to the rain sodden streets and went back to our favourite bodega where we were shown to exactly the same table as the previous night.

We explained again that we wanted them to select the food and that we were quite happy with this arrangement but if possible we would prefer pork to beef because we thought Sue might prefer this. Sue, you see, is quite a fussy eater and we have had some gastronomic disasters along the way on our travels through Europe, the most spectacular being the sea food dining experience in Peso Da Regua in Portugal where she thought that a seafood salad looked more like a serving of demons from the deep! The waiter explained that last night we had had a typical Castilian menu which consisted mainly of meat and tonight he planned a more generally typical Spanish meal and we had no reason to doubt his judgment.

He opened an excellent bottle of Rioja and brought to the table a simple tapas starter and there was no problem with this at all but the next course was razor clams that Sue wasn’t going to touch with a barge pole and this was followed by a plate of regular clams that didn’t excite her very much either. Actually both selections were delicious and we were certain that things would improve for her with the pork main dish.

Not a chance! When it arrived it was little slivers of tiny deep fried cuts of meat sitting on a strong garlic sauce which we knew instinctively wouldn’t appeal to her. Micky is a butcher and knew exactly what part of the pig the meat had come from and I’m not but even I could identify bits of ear and nostril and quartered trotters. It was all rather tasty but forty-five minutes into the meal Sue hadn’t touched a single thing so Micky called over the waiter and ordered some beef – well done.

In Spain of course they consider it sacrilege to overcook a nice piece of Avileña-Negra Ibérica and when it arrived it was predictably pink and it had to go back for a nuclear blasting. Sue prefers her beef completely black and even when it came back a second time it was still not to her liking so it went back again and the staff looked on completely bemused. When it returned for the third time it was still pinkish in the middle but there was no point sending it back again so Sue nibbled around the edges and then started to push it around her plate trying to hide it under the salad leaves and I knew that it was time for drastic action and a reprisal of my role of mussel disposal man (Galicia, 2008) and the meat was discreetly wrapped in a tissue and I took it to the lavatory to get rid of it in a waste bin under the sink.

The food had been delicious but it had been a disaster for Sue so it was a relief when the sweet course arrived and she was able finally to tuck in and enjoy the chocolate coated strawberries, the filo pastry fancies and the delicious pastries and the night was partially saved. After the meal we congratulated them on a fabulous meal, said goodbye and returned to our hotel for a final drink before going to bed for the last time at the Palacio de Los Velada.

Spain, The Aqueduct of Segovia

When we had retired to bed the previous night there had been a clear sky so it was disappointing to wake up to the sound of falling rain and on opening the shutters a full examination of the weather revealed overcast skies and a rather soggy, looking sorry for itself, Ávila. But it was still early so we closed the shutters and slept on for an hour and hoped that it would improve. Sadly this was not to be and when we went down for breakfast it looked certain that this was going to be an umbrella sort of day.

Earlier in the year in Krakow Sue had overdone the alcohol one night and gone to bed feeling unwell but she was at least sufficiently recovered the next day to make it for breakfast but this morning Christine had had so much wine the previous night that she couldn’t face even a cup of tea let alone the fried eggs, tortilla and bacon and she excused herself from the breakfast room as soon as the plates were loaded up and started arriving at the table. The rest of us carried on and had another excellent meal and chatted like Methodist abolitionists about the evils of drink.

Even after we had finished breakfast an hour later she hadn’t begun to improve but although she was clearly unwell she decided that she would still accompany us on the planned drive to Segovia about sixty kilometers away and we all assured her that the fresh air would do her good and she was certain to start feeling better sometime soon.

It was still raining when we left the hotel and walked through the damp streets to the underground car park where we picked up the car and squeezed ourselves into the inadequate seats of the BMW but as we drove out of the city it started to brighten up a little and the rain thankfully eased off. To avoid the toll we took the national highway rather than the motorway option and this being a Sunday morning the road was almost completely empty and it was an easy journey.

To the south of the highway was the Sierra de Guadarrama and on the highest mountain in the whole range, the Peñalara, we could see snow covering the top of its two thousand, one hundred metre peak. The approach to Segovia was spectacular and still some way out of the city we could see it rising from the plain on a convenient outcrop of rock with a spectacular mountain backdrop and the Cathedral and the Alcázar reaching dramatically into the grey sky. The road dropped into the city and we found a convenient underground car park close to the Roman aqueduct.

The aqueduct is the most recognised and famous historical symbol of Segovia. It is the largest Roman structure still standing in Spain and was built at the end of first to the early second century AD by the Romans during their occupation of the Iberian Peninsula to bring water from the Río Frío about eighteen kilometres away and requiring an elevated section in its final kilometer from the Sierra de Guadarrama to the walls of the old town. This elevated section is supported by an engineering achievement of one hundred and sixty-six arches and one hundred and twenty pillars constructed on two levels. It is twenty eight metres high and constructed with over twenty thousand large, rough-hewn granite blocks, which are joined without mortar or clamps and have remained in place for two thousand years.

In the Plaza de Azeguego directly below the final, highest and most impressive section of the aqueduct there was a lot of activity as a band played and men in flamenco sombreros and black capes danced with local ladies and some of the locals and the tourist joined in. We weren’t sure what it was all about but it looked good fun and everyone was enjoying themselves despite the gloomy weather. We liked the Aqueduct and looked all round it from every possible angle. It is one of those structures that make you appreciate just how brilliant the Romans were. The fifteenth century professor at the University of Salamanca, Marineus, made the claim that ‘we should have no doubt that whatever memorable thing we come across in Spain is due to the Romans’ and although, six hundred years later, this can no longer possibly be true at the time it was probably a very fair assessment.

Spain, Le Bodega de San Segundo, Ávila

The sun was still shining so we returned to the walls and climbed them again to visit the shorter southern section which in the late afternoon autumn sunshine gave marvellous views of the barren boulder strewn plain west of the city and the mountains beyond. It didn’t take long to walk around this part of the walls and when we had completed the short route we returned to the cathedral square where the tall building was changing colour from granite grey to crimson red as the sun began to dip and bathed it in an warm rosy glow.

It looked as though there might be a sunset opportunity in a short while, which we calculated to be about an hour so while we waited we returned to the hotel and had a drink in a subterranean bar with an attractive waitress with the tightest shortest skirt in Ávila. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention of course but it was black and leather with decorative stitching around the hem and zigzag patterns around the waistband and sides and dainty silver buttons down the front and … then I was caught glegging so I’m afraid can’t go into any real further detail about the design.

We were right about the sunset but our calculations were not completely accurate because we had failed to take into account the effect of the mountains of the Sierra de la Paramera y Serrota that snatched the sun away sooner than we had really anticipated and we had to be quick to get to the elevated western side of the old city to get a good vantage point to enable Kim to take some pictures of the spectacle with her magic sunset camera and once the show was over we returned to the Palacio de Los Velada and our thoughts turned to evening meal.

After a short rest and a change of clothes we reassembled in the underground bar with the waitress with the short skirt and had a drink before moving on and returning to Le Bodega de San Segundo for our evening meal where a table was prepared and waiting for us. I think the staff were a bit perplexed by our insistence that they select the food and the wine and checked for a final time that we really meant it so we assured them that we did and the food began to arrive. First a creamy mushroom tapas dish and then a selection of ham, a plate of mushrooms and a mixed salad and by the time the speciality of the region and the house arrived we were on our second bottle of house rioja.

The speciality is Chuletón de Ávila, which is a large T-bone steak cooked to perfection and made from Avileña-Negra Ibérica, the indigenous black cow of central Spain and famous for the quality of its meat. Actually it was a bit too rare for Sue and Christine and Sue declined to eat it but Christine barely noticed because she was starting her fourth glass of red wine. If the main course wasn’t completely to their liking this was certainly not the case with the tray of shared sweets which completed the meal and the plate of pastries and local delicacies didn’t take very long at all to clear. It had been a good idea and an excellent meal so as we paid up we arranged a repeat performance for the following night and left replete and contented.

It was a dark night and we walked back the short distance through the city gates and the towering wall of the cathedral guarded by a row of stone lions illuminated by yellow street lights which gave an atmospheric waxy glow to the buildings and the cobbled streets. It was the end of a good day in Ávila and over a final beer and another red wine for Christine we made our plans for visiting nearby Segovia on the next day and I promised to set the alarm clock.

Spain, Tapas and Bodegas

According to legend, the tapas tradition began when the King of Castile, Alfonso the Wise visited a tavern in the town of Ventorillo del Chato in the province of Cádiz, and ordered a glass of sherry. There was a gusty wind, so the innkeeper served him his glass of sherry covered by a slice of ham to prevent the sherry from getting dirty. The King liked it, and when he asked for a second glass, he requested another tapa or ‘cover’ just like the first. This evolved into the practice of using slices of bread or meat as a practical measure meant to prevent fruit flies from hovering over the drink. The meat used to cover the sherry was normally ham or chorizo, which are both very salty and activate thirst and because of this, bartenders and restaurant owners began creating a variety of snacks to serve with sherry, thus increasing their alcohol sales. There are alternative stories about the origin of tapas but so far this is my favourite.

We considered staying longer but there remained lots to see so we left after one drink and returned to the walls and this time our intention was to see them from the top rather than the bottom. We paid the €4 fee and received long winded instructions on how to find the four separate entrances to which our tickets entitled us to go and then at the tourist information office climbed the steps to the top of the wall and began a steady walk around the eastern section.

From the top we could see that weather to the north seemed to be improving and there were some tiny slithers of blue sky making slow progress south and as we walked these grew larger and got closer and we began to grow optimistic about the afternoon’s weather. There were good views from the walls looking east towards Segovia and north to Salamanca and from the mountains in the west the pace of improvement in the weather began to gather an increased momentum.

When the city wall walk round out we climbed back down and once again left the protection of the walls and walked around the outside of the western section and as we did so the clouds as if by magic suddenly cleared, there was a blue sky and bright sunshine and the temperature leapt several degrees which led to the hasty removal of jackets and coats.

After about half an hour we re-entered the city at the Puerta de Santa Teresa which led to the Convento de Santa Teresa (Santa Teresa is important in Ávila) and we walked through the twisted narrow streets through the commercial centre and the market place and then deftly bypassed the shops back to the cathedral where we turned down the opportunity to pay and go inside in preference for staying outside in the sunshine.

Not for long however because it was time for alcohol so not being able to find a bar with outside tables we returned to the tiny bodega which was busier now with lunchtime diners but we squeezed into a corner and had local beer and generous plates of tapas. We liked it here and hit upon an idea for evening meal and arranged with the staff to return later where for an inclusive price they would choose the food for us and serve us a local traditional meal. For Sue and Christine this involved an element of risk of course but as we negotiated the price we did take the precaution of stipulating that there should be no fish because we couldn’t take the risk of something slimy from the bottom of the ocean turning up on the table.

Spain, Ávila City Walls

The agreement was to rendezvous for breakfast at half past eight so it was a bit of a shock when I woke up and checked the time and it was twenty to ten. We washed and changed and rushed downstairs and although the others had waited for some time for us to show up they had eventually given up and gone through without us. I was so glad that we hadn’t missed breakfast completely because the dining room was really special and so was the food. It was laid out on the tables and the choice was overwhelming; hot food, cold food, a selection of bread and fruit juices and local specialties as well. It was necessary to be really disciplined amount portions because it would have been too easy to fill right up with the first visit and not leave room for all the other delicious selections to follow.

Due to this oversleeping incident we were later than usual leaving our hotel to begin the sightseeing but this didn’t really matter because there was a disappointing start to the day weather wise and there was low grey cloud and a chill in the air.

First of all we walked past the serrated edged walls of the cathedral which was designed to serve a dual purpose, part religious and part military because the apse actually forms part of the defensive city walls and then we passed out through one of the main gates that led us to the Plaza de Santa Teresa, the Plaza Mayor of the city, which we found to be unusually quiet for a Saturday morning. What was also strange was that many shops were closed or had unusual and rather random opening hours and there weren’t a lot of people about at all. Micky and I skillfully avoided the main shopping streets and charted a route that took us to the Basilica de San Vincente and then back to the exterior of the city walls.

We walked for a while around the eastern side of the walls which are the best preserved in all of Spain and although they have had some recent renovation still capture the spirit of an impregnable medieval granite fortress. It is two and a half kilometres long with two thousand five hundred battlements, eighty-eight cylindrical towers, six main gates and three smaller pedestrian gates. Ávila was used in the 1957 film ‘The Pride and the Passion’ that starred Cary Grant, Sophia Loren and Frank Sinatra when a group of Spanish nationalists during the war of independence (The Peninsula War) lugged a huge gun up the mountains to attack the city and liberate it from the French invaders.

At the North gate we re-entered the city and strolled through the narrow cobbled streets and through the municipal fish and meat market back to where we had started and with no improvement in the weather looked for somewhere suitable for a later than usual first drink of the day. We came across a charming and traditional little bodega squeezed into the walls of the city in between two high towers and once inside found a table and ordered some drinks and were delighted to find that when they arrived they were accompanied by complimentary plates of tapas.

Spain, Palacio de Los Velada in Ávila

Having finished our tour of El Escorial we left and returned to the town of Guadarrama passing for a second time the Valley of the Fallen but this time not trying to make an uninvited appearance and then we took the quick route underneath the mountain via a tunnel rather than over the top and then a toll motorway towards the city of Ávila where we would be staying at the four star Palacio de Los Velada hotel.

Kim and I had stayed here before on a previous trip and it was so good we had wished it had been for longer than the one night stop over so we were pleased to be returning now for a longer stay. We parked the car in an underground car park outside the city walls and walked to the hotel which is in a perfect location right in the City’s Cathedral Square and we checked into our rooms.

It was about six o’clock and we needed some alcohol that was cheaper tan the mini-bar selection so while the others settled in I left the hotel in search of a mini-market. I walked an awful long way in an unsuccessful pursuit because although there were shops of all types inside and outside the walls I simply couldn’t find what I was looking for. I had almost given up all hope and was returning to the hotel and the overpriced mini-bar when I chanced upon a tiny grocery store and inside there were a few cans of the Spanish beer Mahou and some cartons of cheap red wine which I snapped up and took back to the room.

Where there was a shock in store because there was the most awful racket coming from somewhere in the hotel which filled the room with loud invasive music which made it impossible to relax. Kim went to complain and came back with the good news that the hotel would move us and she had inspected a quieter room in a different part of the hotel so we packed our bags, exchanged the room keys and transferred to the alternative room which just so happened to be on the next floor directly above the first room and, as it turned out, just as noisy, which I found extremely amusing and gave me a good laugh at her expense.

Later we met in the hotel lounge which was the old Palace open courtyard but covered now and laid out with white furniture on a black and white tiled floor and with the two storeys of the hotel surrounding it on all four sides but with running balconies making it feel open and spacious. We stayed for a drink or two and then rejecting the expensive hotel restaurant walked out into the streets in search of somewhere to eat.

It was quite cool outside because Ávila is over a thousand metres above sea level and is the highest provincial capital in Spain. It is built on the flat summit of a rocky hill, which rises abruptly in the midst of a wilderness; a brown, arid, treeless table-land, strewn with immense grey boulders, and shut in on all sides by lofty mountains and this produces an extreme climate with very hard and long winters and relatively short summers.

Wandering through the main squares and back streets there were a number of places to choose from and we eventually agreed on a quiet place tucked into a corner of a small square where the staff seemed pleased to see us because I think we were the first customers of the evening. The food was adequate but not especially thrilling but at least we got through it without any dining disasters (no sea food nasties or that sort of thing) and when we had finished there were complimentary local liqueurs, which I always find very hospitable and then on account of an early start and a very long day we went back to the Palacio de Los Velada for a last drink and an early night.

Spain, The Search Continues

Since early 2009, as part of our own Grand Tour of Europe, we have been drawn time and again to the Iberian Peninsula in search of the real Spain and in November 2010 we returned once more, flying to Madrid and planning a short three night stay in the city of Ávila about one hundred kilometres north west of the capital city.

Spain was not, generally, part of the traditional European Grand Tour and until the twentieth century only caught the attention of the braver or more rugged of travellers and writers. For many it was too primitive, too mountainous and just too dangerous, prone to violent upheavals, inhospitable weather and without acceptable restaurants or decent amenities. ‘To travel in Spain you need three francs a day and a gun’ said one Frenchman who accompanied Alexander Dumas on a mid nineteenth century trip to the peninsular. For the sons and daughters of the English Aristocracy Spain did not have the sophisticated allure of France, the Renaissance treasures of Italy or even the ancient charm of Greece and very few people ever considered crossing the Pyrenees into a land perceived to be full of fanatical Jesuit priests and lurid tales of bandits and cut-throats.



What a pity because, as I have now discovered over the past two years, they were passing up on the opportunities of marvelling at Baroque Seville, the Hanging Houses of Cuenca, the walled fortresses of Ávila and Ciudad Rodrigo, the historic cities of Toledo and Salamanca, the numerous Royal Palaces that surround Madrid and the rich heritage of Roman and Moorish Spain with the largest remaining Roman aqueduct at Segovia and what was once the second largest Mosque in the World at Cordoba.

Right up until the 1950s Spain was considered to be a place for the courageous because it was different and mysterious with a hostile geography, haughty aristocratic grandees and destitute peasants, Romany gypsies and blood thirsty customs. Travellers and visitors were often inclined not to regard it as part of Europe at all and it was often considered, on account of its Moorish heritage, dark skinned people and unfamiliar customs, as part of Africa or of the east. The Spanish themselves understood this perception of their peninsular and in the 1960s “Spain is different“ used to be the slogan of Spain’s international tourism campaign.

Sadly, even today, for many, Spain means only a fortnight’s karaoke holiday spread out on the golden sands of the Costas with a bottle of sun cream and a jug of sangria without any real attempt to understand the geography, the history or the culture of the country. But for those with imagination and an appetite for an experience of real Spain then the airports of Valladolid, Seville, Santander and Madrid are the places to begin a quest to find the Spain of the shrines, the Spain of the Knights-errant, the Spain of the Mosques, castles and mighty cathedrals as well as the Spain of the real castanet clicking flamenco dancers, Spanish guitars and matadors and bull fights as opposed to the ersatz versions of the holiday resorts.

The Easyjet plane flew over the Spanish coast at Santander and we could see the snow capped Picos de Europa Mountains soaring majestically through the low cloud which then immediately closed in and smothered northern Spain and Castilla y Leon completely. The land was completely obscured from view breaking only over the peaks of the Sierra Guadarrama and briefly revealing mountain towns and villages, rivers and shimmering blue reservoirs. A few minutes later around mid morning we landed in a misty Madrid where the temperature was struggling to reach double figures and after the formalities of border control went straight to the Sixt car rental desk.

Since my complaint about Sixt and winter tyre charges in Germany earlier this year I have been in regular correspondence with the Company Customer Services Manager for the UK and this led to the issue of a Sixt platinum account which gives me certain privileges such as discounted prices, speedy pick up service and on this occasion an upgrade from a Volkswagen to a BMW and we were delighted when we took possession of a shiny white 1 series, left the airport and pointed it in the direction of the mountains and the sunshine.