Time to bring you up to date and conclude our meanderings through northern Spain. Anne has already addressed most of it in her musings so I’ll just add some personal observations and additional pictures. Upon leaving Avila, we stopped by the Royal Palace of El Escorial on our way to Cuenca. As Anne said, palace, monastery & cathedral all rolled into one and BIG; a little overwhelming, in fact. I do not understand, however, in today’s travel oriented society, not allowing pictures! Charge a fee if you must; no flash–fine, but having guards in every room monitoring for photos seems pointless. Hence the dearth of pictures. I must give special mention to the crypt, though. Room after room of identical elegant tombs of members of the royal family. The main crypt being octagonal in shape with marble coffins going up the walls with ‘King of Spain’, ‘King of Spain’, ‘Queen of Spain’, etc, etc, etc.
Cuenca was where we ran into problems with the Columbus Day holiday and were not able to stay for as long as we would have liked. Guess we’ll just have to go back another time! We did find a fantastic apartment right on the edge of the old town, so all was not lost. Cuenca is another World Heritage site and is known for it’s hanging houses. Like most medieval towns it was built on an elevated site; in this case a dramatic bluff overlooking a river gorge. And like all medieval towns, every bit of space is occupied. So what do you do when all the available building space is gone? Just build over the edge of the cliff, of course! While that’s considered the main highlight, we were also impressed with the cathedral for a town its size. Turns out when Phillip II captured the town from the Moors during the Reconquista, he commissioned the building of the cathedral in honor of the event. While not of the scale of the great cities, it’s still an impressive cathedral with a lighter, more open feel to it helped by very contemporary stained glass.
Because of the Columbus Day weekend, the only apartment accommodation I could find was in the little country village of Castelseras. This turned out to be a fortunate find. The apartment was the top floor of a newly built house right in the middle of the village which seemed unusual as every other house seemed to be either abandoned and run down or recently restored. It seemed sad in a way as one walked around the village, but it made for a quiet, relaxing weekend soaking up Spanish village living. Two of our best stops in Spain have been the two villages off the beaten path.
From Castelseras, it was on to Barcelona. This was for one reason only. We’ve been to Barcelona a couple of times before and love the city, but have seen most of the attractions. I did, however, want to see the progress on the La Sagrada de Familia cathedral. On our last visit, I saw the interior which had just been finished, but wanted to see the progress on the exterior which is racing ahead after so many years. This proved to be an example of the explosion of tourism over the past few years. Barcelona is one city being overwhelmed and looking to restrict numbers in some way and you could see why. During my last visit about five years ago, I stood in line for about 15 minutes for my ticket and enjoyed a leisurely visit amidst modest crowds. I did not anticipate that they now restrict the number of visitors and you have to book ahead. At the end of October, they were sold out two days in advance! The streets and plazas around La Sagrada were packed with people and tour groups, many of whom had been caught out as well. Fortunately, we have toured the inside and after seeing the crowds going in and waiting their turn, we weren’t all that upset. We were able to walk around the exterior and see the progress being made (especially with all that income coming in), but I still don’t know how Gaudi ever thought he was going to build that thing without modern construction techniques. It’s an amazing structure!
After Barcelona it was on to Figueres, but I’ll leave it up to Anne to fill you in on all things Salvador Dali: one of her favorite artists. Next stop, France again!
Be First to Comment