Category Archives: 2021

14th December 2021: Navilandia (Guadalajara, Spain)

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Back when I visited Torrejón de Ardoz in November, they were already preparing their Christmas display, which is famous in the area. In a smart way to curve attendance though, this year the town hall decided to charge non-locals to enter. Towns around quickly noted this and decided to organise their own magnificent displays, and in the case of Guadalajara, give a hand to the people who live off the carnivals and fairs, as most regional summer festivals have been cancelled for the last two years. They called it Navilandia (Christmasland), the biggest “Christmas Theme Park” in the region.

The “theme park” is divided in several areas. The first one is the palace Palacio del Infantado, its gardens and the adjacent square. The Palace features the same Christmas tree as last year, and the gardens have been decorated with lights, Disney characters, a Zeus sculpture, music and… dinosaurs. I have no idea what dinosaurs have got to do with Christmas, but you won’t hear me complaining about dinosaurs. They are called the magical gardens Jardines Mágicos del Infantado. There is also a small flea market.

A gothic façade with a Christmas Tree made out of green and gold lights in front, along with some more decorations: Felices Fiestas, another tree, a reindeer made out of light

As I walked up Main Street I saw the traditional Playmobil Nativity they always set in one of the shops. However… I’ve never been able to spot the actual Nativity scene here. It is rather cool, though.

A Nativity made out of Playobil figurines, the stable is on the left and a bunch of toys are coming towards it through the desert. There a lots of dromedaries.

The second “Christmas hotspot” is the town hall square Plaza Mayor had a tasteful light decoration, a childish representation of the Three Wise Men, and a very beautiful – and lit up – carousel. I really wanted to ride it, but there were too many toddlers. It would have looked… weird. I need to find out when it closes so I sneak in after the kiddies have gone home (≧▽≦).

A caroussel with bright lights on in a square. Hanging above the square there are lots of lights and stars in gold colours. There are also four Christmas trees

Third spot was half-closed but that is okay. The square Plaza de Santo Domingo hosts another flea market, that was not open – they are setting three rotating markets there, basically one each weekend, and we were between them. There was a big walk-in Christmas tree and the “monumental Nativity” there.

Collage: A Christmas tree made out of eye-shaped lights in blue, purple, red and yellow. A picture of the classical nativity with realistic figures. The Holy Family is illuminated in white - Joseph is placing the Child on a crib that Mary is holding.

The final area extends along the parks Parque de la Concordia and Parque de las Adoratrices. The entrance is flanked by two nutcrackers; it hosts a talking tree, lights, food trucks, yet another flea market, and rides that again… are only Christmassy by name. There is another Nativity, this time an “abstract one”, a cute train and a “Polar Express” ride, some lights and… a “talking tree”, which broke into telling some tales out all of a sudden. Then, there was a bunch of rides, but they looked like your average travelling carnival rides, and I was not going to go onto any of those, so I made my way back. Also, I was strong and did not buy any cotton candy nor similar treats, though I was tempted to get some roasted chestnuts.

Bizarre Christmas decorations and motifs in the park: A giant nutcracker / soldier, an abstract nativity, some gingerbread-house-shaped shops, a Polar Express mini train, and a... something that looks like a tree with a face on the trunk and leaves made from green lights.

It was weird because for the second time in a couple of months I’ve been asked if I’m an actual photographer. True, this time it was a drunk guy who then proceeded to yell fascist slogans. I decided it was the right time to call it an evening and go home for the day…

11th & 12th December 2021: Final Fantasy Remake Orchestra World Tour, Barcelona (Spain)

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11th December 2021: El Triángulo Friki

When the tickets for the FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE Orchestra World Tour first came out, 2020 promised to be an amazing year. True, we all know how that turned out, but the point was that I did not have enough fun funds at that moment. So I just looked at the Barcelona dates, sighed, and never bought tickets because I decided that it was a low-priority event for me. Then, what happened happened and the tour was pushed forward to 2021. By chance, back in summer this year, I saw that it would take place on a Saturday, the 11th of December 2021. My sibling overheard me mulling whether I wanted to try to go or not this time over, since I had not done much on the nerdsphere for a while, and the low priotity was conflagrating with higher priortity and the still lacking fun budget. They didn’t know about this, though, and they proposed we went together. I thought it was a good opportunity for a weekend out, so I did some checking. We found some tickets that had been turned back, in an amazing place, actually – row #5 on the stalls. We booked a hotel and trains, and just went on with our lives.

The train left around 8:00 and arrived in Barcelona short from 11:00 – both of us had been in town before and were looking for an “alternative” plan. I had been checking out different options, and by pure chance, on Thursday, I found out that there is an area in Barcelona called Triángulo Friki, something akin to “the nerd triangle”. It is an area near Arc de Triomph that holds a bunch stores which specialise in comics, manga, figures, merchandising and so on. I thought it could be a fun thing to see, as Japanese stuff a hobby I share to some extent with my sibling.

We took the commuter train to the area (commuter train tickets are complementary with long-distance ones, which helps, as the Barcelona public transport is very expensive) and wandered around a bunch of shops, under the agreement not to spend too much money nor to buy anything that did not fit in our backpacks. We… failed the mission successfully. On the sixth or so shop I got myself a Christmas present that sure as hell did not fit in the backpack.

A collage showing the entrance to a bunch of comic and gaming stores. Most of them have a window showing Funko pops

One of the shops we visited was Tsume Store, in association with Global Freaks. Tsume is a business that 3D-prints statuettes from anime designs, and Global Freaks is a merchandise shop. They have a partnership and Tsume is selling some of its statuettes through Global Freaks – we saw one of them, priced at 1400€. Most of the figures were just for show. On the other hand, Global Freaks had several things we bought (remember the “mission failed successfully” comment? We spent way too much money on stuff that did not fit in the backpacks). Furthermore, they had a reproduction of a motorbike from Akira (アキラ), a famous manga / anime – a cyberpunk action story whose main character, Shōtarō Kaneda, rides it through Neo-Tokyo.

Tsume / Global freaks store in Barcelona. There are different pictures of resine statues of different sizes (and prices), and a reproduction of an anime motorbike.

We walked towards the area where the basilica designed by Gaudí, and consecrated to the Holy Family, Basílica de la Sagrada Família, which had been decorated with a new twelve-point 7.5-metre 5.5-tonne star. As there was a Christmas market around the basilica, I thought that the start was just for Christmas, but it turns out that it is there for good.

A modernist cathedral. It looks a bit like it's melting. It has four towers, plus one with a star, and a triangular façade

We took an underground train to the area where the venue was, and we were there around half an hour before hotel was open to check ins so we decided to have lunch first in the adjoining shopping centre. We ended up at an Udon, a wannabe fancy noodle bar chain. This was our first time getting our Covid passport checked as it’s not necessary where we’re from. The whole process was fast – open the PDF, zoom in, get it read with a device, and a green light with our names on it lit up (eventually I just screenshot the zoomed-in QR). I still felt a little uncomfortable due to the amount of people in the restaurant, so we ate as quick as possible before heading off to the hotel.

A bowl of ramen and a peek of a tempura plate in the background

It was the worst check-in experience ever. First of all, I think it’s stupid to demand a payment deposit on an already-paid booking. Second, they tried to charge me for the room again, we were given one card key for two people which didn’t even work, and we were “upgraded” to a room with a city view (16 € more expensive than our booking), but that only had amenities for one guest. We needed to get off the lift to request another card in order to get to the 21st floor, and we finally got two working cards. Oh, and the hotel was hosting a bunch of teams for some kind of handball championship who thought masks were for lesser beings and got away with it, despite the super-strict Covid-policy the hotel claimed to have, and with the obvious blessings of the clerks, despite other guests’ complaints.

Two views of Barcelona from above, one with daylight, the other one at night. The buildings are apartment blocks, rather regular, and you can guess the long streets that separate the different areas

We stayed in the room, just chatting and taking in the astonishing views (nah, I’m not being sarcastic (≧▽≦).) The FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE Orchestra World Tour concert was to start at 20:00, but doors were at 18:30. It took place in the convention centre CCIB – Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona, which… actually turned up to be the auditorium of the local Natural Science Museum. That was confusing for a minute.

We were quite literally across the square so we just had to go down. It took just a few minutes to enter, and then we went into the goods queue, because my sibling absolutely needed a chokobo plush. We were in line for about half an hour, as we debated how expensive everything was! They decided that I needed a chokobo too, so I’m the proud owner of a Chokobo Black Mage now.

An adorable chokobo plush with a mage cape sitting on the leaflets we got from the concert.

After we had all our goods, we headed off to our seats – which had been occupied by two different people who had bought row five on the dress floor – but had tried the main floor stands, never mind that a lady told you which door you had to use when you went in, in order to avoid these “mistakes” . I decided that I did not care about causing a scene, so I just grabbed an usher and had her clear our seats. The guy on mine took my flyer too, but I found some more when the concert was over. I’m amused though that someone would buy a ticket on the first floor and then happily stroll down to the fifth row on the stalls – more than double the price.

Let me start by saying that I’m not a video-game player, that’s why this event was originally a low-priority one. When my wrist problems started, I was recommended not to play them any more. But I love video-game graphs and Final Fantasy VII designs more than any. I mean, I own the Advent Children DVD just because it’s pretty. I have to admit though that the concert blew my mind. The stage was full with a complete orchestra indeed, and a choir – the Ensemble Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. At the back of stage there was a screen that projected scenes from the game, both animations and gameplay. In the little emcees by conductor – and producer – Arnie Roth we also got messages from composers and producers from Japan. Furthermore, the composer Hamauzu Masashi was in attendance. We did not get Yosh Morita, from The Prophets, as it was originally announced, but singer Ricardo Afonso did a very decent job out of the power ballad Hollow.

Empty stage with chairs for the orchestra. There is a screen in the background reading Final Fantasy VII Remake Orchestra World Tour in front of a futuristic cityscape

    Part 1

  1. Prelude – Reunion –
  2. Opening medley
  3. Mako Reactor 1
  4. Flowers Blooming in the Church
  5. The Turks’ Theme
  6. Tight rope
  7. Stand up
  8. Words left unheard
  9. Tifa’s Theme – Seventh Heaven –
  10. Those who fight – Battle Medley –

    Part 2

  11. Anxious Heart
  12. Hurry!
  13. Jessie’s Theme
  14. Shinra’s Theme
  15. The Arsenal
  16. Those chosen by the Planet – Fate’s Calling –
  17. Arbiters of Fate – Singularity –
  18. Hollow
  19. Final Fantasy VII Main Theme

    Encore

  20. Aerith’s Theme
  21. One Winged Angel

I loved the Those who fight – Battle Medley –, and I’d say that one of the highlights was the song Hurry Up. Apparently, during a specific part of the game you have to put the rather-uptight main character in a dress and teach him to dance in a night club. I also really liked the choir interventions. The concert ended on a hype – for a second I thought it would end in the slow song, but no, we got the fantastic theme for the bad guy Sephiroth, One-winged angel.

The stage again, this time it is full with the orchestra and the director. The screen shows the main character of the game, Cloud, with blond spiky hair and a ridiculously big sword, holding a bright ball in his hand.

The concert lasted for two hours and a half, including the intermission – in which I got to see (and hug!) friends. After the ending, we tried to go and grab some sushi at the shopping centre, but they were already closing down – so in the end we just got a salad and some chips at McDonald’s and took it to the hotel – then we showered, rearranged luggage and purchases, and went to bed.

12th December 2021: Walk by the ocean

Our original plan after breakfast was to take a walk by the beach, then check out and ride the underground, but we realised that we had a train station about 20 minutes away, and we could get a detour by the seaside and make it a bit longer – and if we took the train, we had a free ride.

When we checked out we got the same person who had checked us in. They still had to charge us for the tourist tax, and I had that ready in cash. They insisted that they had to deduct that from the deposit and give us the change, they could not give us a fifty-buck note. They had to give us the change. With lots of coins. They did not even check the room for damage, so what was even the point of the deposit?

We left the hotel, and walked towards the station. We spent a little time at the beach Platja del Fòrum and the mouth of the river Río Besòs before we reached the station – lots of people walking their dogs, and lots of happy dogs playing on the beach and with the waves. In the background, the former thermal station with three chimneys looming over the sand – Central Tèrmica de Sant Adrià de Besòs. Had we had more time, we would have taken the time to try and get to it, but due to external reasons we had tickets for the noon train and it was already 10:45 – and I am paranoid about schedules.

A sandy beach with a factory building in the background, it has three chimneys made of brick. The waves are coming in gently.

We took the commuter train, then the long distance train. When we arrived, before going home, we made a short stop to have some make-up sushi for the one we could not get the previous night. And some side Chinese dumplings.

Sushi and bao plate

Walking distance Saturday: 9.05 km
Walking distance Sunday: 5.54 km

30th November 2021: Naturaleza Encendida – Explorium. Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid (Spain)

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After being in semi-lock down last year, my sibling, who loves Christmas lights, asked me to accompany them to the Real Jardín Botánico, the botanical garden in Madrid. The Botanical garden was founded in 1755, adjacent to the planned museum of Natural Science, which would later become the art gallery Prado Museum. Today, it is a research centre. The garden is divided into four terraces, a main building (Edificio Villanueva), and a back terrace, and it serves as museum of live plants of sorts.

For the last few years (at least three that I’m aware), the botanical garden has spiced up its winter downtime with light shows and displays. This year, the display is called “Lit Nature: Explorium”: Naturaleza Encendida: Explorium by the company Let’s go. The topic is ocean explorers and exploration, spread throughout the three main terraces and an extra exhibit in the building.

In order to have flexibility, I got us Premium tickets in case we needed to cancel last minute, which had the extra advantage that spared us from any queues, as we had full-access between 18:00 and 19:00. We also got to see the extra exhibit without paying extra. I drove up to a mid-way train station that allowed me better schedule flexibility – and my sibling lives close-by so it gave us the option to have dinner afterwards. I took the first train and we met at the botanical garden station at 17:30. We wandered around for a little while we waited until twilight faded, and we got in, avoiding all the lines – I did a bit of astronomy maths when planning this, regarding latest sunset and shortest twilight.

The exhibit is organised so you are free to wander around each terrace, but you can only cross from the lower to the upper terraces upwards, you cannot backtrack, in order to control capacity and people in each area. It only felt a bit crowded at a couple of points, mostly around the checkpoints, as it was very difficult to hear the staff.

The whole display has thousands of little blue LEDs to get you on the ‘ocean’ scenery. The first terrace sets the mood – there are Christmas-tree looking build-ups and different types of colour-changing sculptures: turtles, pufferfish, and sea horses. The second focuses on laser and smoke, and reflection displays, and some serious-looking grouper. On the third, where the building stands, there is a little pond from where a few gigantic tentacles rise, and jellyfish hanging from the trees. The exhibit in the building itself is similar to the projections done by Team Lab.

Collage. A garden lit up at night, with different shapes: pufferfish, seahorses, a turtle... The trees and bushes are decorated with thousands of tiny blue leds

Collage. Light flashes in a dark garden, along with a colour gouper fish

Collage. Huge tentacles coming out of a pond, illuminated in red and blue; and blue jellyfish lamps hanging from trees

Collage. Light effects repeating the same patterns: a pineapple, a thisle, a khaki

We wandered around for a couple of hours, and believe me or not… the lights went out at some point! This was like climbing up (rope-way-ing up, to be honest) aaall the way up to see Nagasaki’s lights from Inasayama and getting caught in the clouds, but fortunately shorter (≧▽≦).

We left the botanical garden and took a train back. There were a few places to grab a bite around the station, so we ended up at a cosy Italian place and shared some stuff – too much to then grab some dessert though. When we left it was so cold that my car gave me the first heart attack of the winter by bleeping and showing me an orange alarm in the dashboard that means “the roads might be frosty” but scares me to death whenever I see it for the first time in the winter season. I drove off home, had a shower, went straight into work at 23:00 because how was I going to manage a free Tuesday evening without consequences?

Final waking distance: 8.50 km (though I really think that the wristband confuses my stress-driving with activity.

12th November 2021: Beech Unplugged – Hayedo de la Tejera Negra (Spain)

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One of the Unesco World Heritage Sites is “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe”. The “other regions of Europe” actually makes the site expand into 94 forests in 18 European countries – three of these forest are in Spain. A primeval forest, in layman’s terms “old-growth forest” is one that has been allowed to thrive without significant alteration from humans. Most of Europe’s temperate forests have been altered by human activities, so the protected areas are patched throughout the continent.

One of the protected areas is the beech forest Hayedo de la Tejera Negra. The European beech (Fagus sylvatica) is a deciduous tree from the same family as oaks. The trees usually measure up to around 30 m, tend to have a slim trunk and grow branches high on the tree. The leaves are simple, though they are toothed, the shape is soft. They change colour in autumn from green to gold and tend not to be shed but stay in the tree unless the weather brings them down. They grow in humid areas, but they require a well-drained soil. Forests tend to be thick and dark, with few other species as the beech canopy takes up all the light.

The forest is located in the centre of Spain, and it is part of the natural park Parque Natural de la Sierra Norte de Guadalajara, some 30 km away from the Aljibe Waterfalls. Beech forests tend to grow in colder climates, so this one is a relict forest from times when Spain was cooler and wetter (maybe what is called the Little Ice Age between 1300 and 1850). The fact that it remains is due to a very precise location – low valleys with a lot of shades and shadow where fog and mist are common and it rains rather often. Furthermore, the calcite-rich area makes the soil ideal for beeches. The reality of it being a Primeval forest is thrown has doubts cast as the forest was actually cut down twice – 1860 and 1960.

The beech forest technically belongs to Cantalojas, in the north of the province of Guadalajara, Spain. There is an inner parking lot that has to be reserved in advance for just under 5€ (access between 10:00 and 13:00), and a free-access parking lot at the edge of it. In order to get there, the first step is to arrive in Cantalojas. There, a bumpy rail gets to the beginning of the park, where the checkpoint stands, you can either leave your car here and walk the longer trail (Senda del Robledal), or if you have an inner parking reservation, you will get waved through the longer driving path, 8 km long. Once in the parking lot, you may walk the inner trail.

After my first try to visit the park was fouled by the driving path being closed on weekdays and the parking lot full, and my second by the bad weather, I was finally on my way on Friday the 12th of November – took long enough! The roughly 100 km took a bit more than expected due to a good part of the road having a lower speed-limit than normal, as it is considered a “dangerous mountain road”. There is also loose cattle around the roads, and I came across a few cows having a field day. In the end, I drove for an hour and forty-five minutes, and started walking around 11:30. I took the shorter, inner trail, called Senda de Carretas, which is around 6 km long. Depending on which resource you look at, between two and three hours are expected to hike it.

The trail starts in the lower valley, between the creek Río Lillas and the lower pine forest, whose trees won’t lose their leaves anyway. Thus, even if the weather is turning cold this area is still very green. The name of the trail translates into “Trail of Carts” as it was used in the past to transport coal that was produced in the beech forest. As the trail turns to the left, it starts ascending, leaving behind the valley and the pines. First, there is an area of low bushes and trees, where pieces of calcite rock are abundant, then it delves first into the oak forest, which has already turned brown.

A sign reading Senda de Carretas. Behind it, a small valley. A creek runs at the bottom, and the sides are covered in pines and other evergreen trees.

A rock formation, with vertical cracks, and bushes in the background

Beech trees, looking brown / orange / golden in the autumn weather.

There were way more people than I had been expecting for a weekday – a lot of them were hiking in groups and unfortunately loud, which made catching a glimpse of any animal impossible. The forest was beautiful though. Around one-third in I came across the sculpture that recreates the old coal-ovens, La Carbonera.

A hut made out of thin trunks. The autumn leaves have accumulted against

I continued hiking up, and after a pretty wooden bridge, the steep slope started. This was a bit harder than I had anticipated, and made the mistake of taking a break in-between, so I lost my pace. At the end of the slope I found the open prairie Pradera de la Mata Redonda, which looks down on the valley and up onto the multi-coloured mountain.

The valley from above. There are no trees, but a high plane with bushes and scattered grey rocks covered in lynchen

After a short look-around, I continued on the hiking path. Here I could actually see something unexpected… snow! Do you remember that my second attempt had been thwarted by the weather? Well, there were the remainders of so… This was in my opinion the most beautiful part of the forest, as the descend starts. The beech forest was completely golden at this point, and the ground was also covered on leaves. This is the part that gives the forest its fame, and it is well-deserved, at least in autumn.

Grey path into the forest. On the sides there are brown / gold trees, green bushes, and even a bit of snow.

A whole forest of beeches in gold, brown and golden colours; the ground is covered in leaves.

When I reached a fork on the road, I continued for a little on the Senda del Robledal (Oak forest trail), then took the path down towards the parking lot. The forest opened up and I eventually got to the parking lot, where I got on the car and drove away at around 14:45. I took a little over three hours in total and walked 7.46 km.

A whole forest of beeches in gold, brown and golden colours; the ground is covered in leaves

On my way back I drove past more cows chilling out – the complete drive was a bit under 200 km. And I did not have signal for the whole day, which was a nice change for a while.

A black cow chilling at the side of the road - they actually have the right of way in this area

6th November 2021: Torrejón de Ardoz & Guadalajara (Spain)

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No matter how much some people demonise it, one true thing is that a great chunk of the Spanish general income is dependent on tourism. That’s why when the 2008 recession hit the country, many areas or municipalities tried to fabricate tourist attractions where there used to be none. Torrejón de Ardoz is one of these places – despite shouldering a huge debt, it gambled a couple of tourist lure. One is a huge winter lights (Christmas) display, which runs from November through January. The other is a huge park in a former slum, called Parque Europa, Europe Park.

Parque Europa was described as “Pharaonic” upon its inauguration in 2010. It covers a whooping 23 hectares of trees, bushes, ponds, rides for kids and replicas of different European monuments and landmarks, both real and art depictions. I can’t be sure if in the end the park managed to break a profit, but the reviews online do sound like it did.

In winter, the park opens at 9.00 am, and I thought that if I managed to get there relatively early in the morning, I might find a free parking spot around the area. Online reviews do talk about limited parking space aimed to fill the pay-per-car parking lot close to the entrances, so I thought I’d try to leave the park in the streets of the industrial complex nearby. After a couple of Sat-Nav mishaps – human-caused aka I forgot the adapter for it to work in the car (≧▽≦) – I was on my way and I reached the neighbourhood a bit before 10.00 am. As I was driving towards my intended parking spot I caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, so when I turned and found a random parking spot, I decided to just ditch the car. There were many double-parked cars ahead so I thought the rest of the street would be packed. At that time in the morning, I could have just parked in front of one of the access gates without problems, apparently. So I had to walk two whole extra minutes!! In the end though, that parking spot was even closer than the ones I planned to look for – so it was all good.

I wanted something to do in the morning outside the house so I did not have a plan per se (to be honest, I had long made the afternoon plans and I wanted something to do in the morning to make the most out of the disposable contacts). However, as the fountains were turned on at noon, I wanted to leave them for last. Fortunately, most of them are in the same area of the park – which is shaped like a ham of sorts. At that time most of the children rides were closed, and I was mostly alone except for people jogging or walking their dogs, and it was rather chilly. But I wanted to see the replicas, so that was all right.

These are the monument replicas that are hosted in the park, in the order I saw them, turning clockwise from the entrance I used:

  • Puerta de Alcalá (Gate to Alcalá), Madrid, Spain. Neoclassical gate to the former walls in Madrid. Today it is considered World Heritage as part of the “Paisaje de la Luz”.
  • Torre de Belém (Belém Tower), Lisbon, Portugal. Officially named Torre de São Vicente (Tower of Saint Vincent), a 16th-century port fortification for Portuguese explorers, with high symbolism and ceremony.
  • Tower Bridge, London, United Kingdom. Crossing the River Thames, it is one of the most iconic London landmarks.
  • Kinderdijkse molens, the Windmills of Kinderdijk, Netherlands. The original windmills were designed as part of water drainage to drain the excess water in the Alblasserwaard polder.
  • Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), Berlin, Germany. It is one of the most characteristic landmarks in the country, a monument built in the place of a former wall gate in the 18th century.
  • Den lille Havfrue (The Little Mermaid), Copenhagen, Denmark. This small sculpture is displayed on a rock in the a promenade in Copenhagen, and depicts the mermaid in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale becoming human.
  • La tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower), Paris, France, built for the entrance to the 1889 World’s fair and one of the most visited monuments of the world.
  • Michelangelo’s David, Florence, Italy. One of the masterpieces of the Renaissance sculpture, standing 5.17 m of white marble. This replica I didn’t get to see because it had been either stolen or taken away for restoration.
  • Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain), Rome, Italy. Dating back from 1762, the fountain is a “more dramatic” version of a previous one at the end of one of the Roman aqueducts. The fountain was turned on at noon and it had just a little water.
  • Manneken Pis (“Little Pissing Man”), Brussels, Belgium. It is a bronze fountain sculpture depicting a naked little boy peeing into the basin, dating back from the 17th century.
  • Atomium, Brussels, Belgium. This stainless steel building was constructed for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, and renovated between 2004 – 2006. It stands 102 metres high and some of the spheres are open to the public and hosts exhibitions.

There are also “adaptations” or monuments that you can “sort of” identify but have been more freely reproduced.

  • Greek Theatre, based on the Athens one, with the Winged Victory of Samothrace watching over in a bit of an artistic license move I guess, considering it was a ship figurehead. The actual one is in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The theatre is built into the slope of the central pond of the park so visitors can see the light and sound show in said pond when they are held.
  • Plaza de España (Square of Spain). The centre of the square is the famous “Puerta del Sol” in Madrid and the older Post office. Its back represents the Main Square of the city. Other houses represent different regional buildings throughout Spain that I was unable to recognise.
  • Viking Ship fountain. There is not much I can say about this. It was one of the fountains, and this one was turned before any of the others.

Inspired by paintings, there are two other monuments.

  • The Three Graces. While the park’s webpage claims that the sculpture is a copy of the one that Antonio Canova created, it looks like it was sculptured using Ruben’s painting as inspiration. This one was the first monument I saw.
  • “Van Gogh’s bridge”, a wooden bridge inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s painting “The Langlois Bridge at Arles”. I missed it at first so I had to backtrack and I did not find a good angle to see it from the side.

An original piece is the fountain called Plaza de Europa, Europe Square, a circular square with stars forming little fountains. This was one of the fountains I had to wait till noon to see and to be honest, I was… underwhelmed, expecting way more by the pictures on the website. I’m not sure if it was just “winter fountain” or whether the sprouts were set on low because it was a bit windy.

What was interestingly impressive was the original piece of the Berliner Mauer, the Berlin Wall. During the Cold War, after WWII, Berlin was partitioned into West Germany and East Germany with the erection of the wall in 1961 (in what was called the Berlin Crisis of 1961). It was all built within the eastern border as it was the USSR who decided to put it up. The Wall separated the city halves for decades, there were even deaths as people from the east tried to defect to the west. The wall officially but metaphorically fell in November 1989 as the political powers who had driven its building agonised. The piece that stands in Parque Europa originally stood in Postdamer Platz and was ceded to Torrejón by the city of Berlin and it stands behind the Brandenburg Gate.

There are many other areas and activities for kids. A number of them were already opening up by the time I left, others seemed to be on hold due to pandemic concerns. The park has different things to draw attention too, such a giant bird cage (mostly full of parakeets), three life-sized elephants made out of bush, gardens, or an artificial waterfall – which did not get turned on. I saw a lot of birds too – magpies, swans, mallards and some very territorial Egyptian geese (I think that they were Egyptian geese. I’m absolutely sure they were territorial).

I left Torrejón at around 12:30, I think. I took care of some errands on the way, had lunch, and then I headed off to the second part of my self-imposed day off. A late-Halloween activity that ran throughout the month of November: Arquitectura y escultura funeraria in Guadalajara: a walking tour with a focus on the funerary architecture and sculpture in town. Well, at least with a stop at those places that are directly controlled by the town hall, missing those that are not. Yes, I voluntarily signed up for a guided visit! Unfortunately, information on Guadalajara is rather difficult to find, so I thought there might be interesting knowledge to be gathered (Narrator’s voice: there wasn’t).

The tour started at the local cemetery Cementerio Municipal Virgen De La Antigua, where we saw several tombs and pantheons dating from the 19th century and the early 20th century. These included:

  • Panteón de la Tropa, the “Troop mausoleum”, a communal grave for soldiers who died in the African campaigns, where supposedly some of the Civil Wars victims were buried. It actually is not the place, but legends are legends, I guess.
  • Panteón de los Marqueses de Villamejor – a neoclassical mausoleum where a noble family was interred.
  • Monumento funerario de la Familia Cuesta Sanz, a creepy obelisk-looking tomb.
  • Some smaller mausoleums (or big graves) Panteón de María Luisa García Gamboa, Panteón de la Familia Chavarri, Panteón de Josefa Corrido de Gaona, and Panteón de la familia de Ripollés Calvo. All these are stone tombs with a rounded roof that drains off rainwater.
  • Panteón de los Condes de Romanones, the place of eternal rest of another noble family, whose head was the son of the previous one.
  • Kittens

We then walked off towards the chapel Capilla de Luis de Lucena. Luis de Lucena was a doctor and a priest who was born in the 15th century. He died in Rome as he worked as a doctor for the Pope, but he expected to be buried in this chapel, adjacent to a now-disappeared church. The outer area is built in brick, and the inner ceilings have several frescoes, even if they are rather deteriorated as the town had no money to take care of the art during the 90s and the early 2000s. The chapel was never used as a burial place, and now it is a tiny museum that keeps rests of other disappeared churches in town, especially the funerary sculptures.

The final spot was the crypt of the church of St. Francis – Cripta de la Iglesia de San Francisco, built in dark marble and similar to the one in El Escorial. This is where the Mendoza duchy family members were buried, but the area was ransacked by the French during the Napoleonic wars and the remains were taken to Pastrana afterwards, so the crypt is currently empty. Which is good considering the way some of the tombs are shattered…

This concluded the tour so I was free to go. I saved up the entry fee on the chapel and the crypt as the tour was free. Most of the tour was just crawling from one point to the other and there was not that much new information to be learnt. Maybe there is jut not enough information to be found…

Driven distance: around 83 km.
Walking distance: 13.14 km

22nd & 23rd October 2021: Zaragoza Getaway (Spain)

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We had a silly day-and-a-half and it turned out that for some reason a commuting train to Madrid took about as long as a high-speed train to Zaragoza, a town in the area of Aragón that we scratched off our summer route because there are lots of curves in the Pyrenees and time was limited.

22nd October 2021: Churches, Museums and a Palace

The train to Zaragoza arrives at the Delicias station, which is a bit away from the centre of the town, so we took a taxi to the hotel. This was around 9 am so we were of course not expecting any room, what with check-in being 2 pm – we just wanted to drop off the overnight bag. Not being able to give us a room seemed to upset the receptionist quite worried, and he promised to call as soon as a room was available. Honestly, I just set my phone to flight mode because we were starting to visit monuments right away, as the hotel was just by the most important square in town Plaza del Pilar.

Zaragoza is home to one of the most important Christian icons in Spain, the Virgin Mary of the Pillar, Virgen del Pilar. The image is hosted in Catedral-Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar. The bulk of the current cathedral-basilica was built between 1681 and 1686 in the Baroque style, but was later modified quite a few times and it was finalised in 1872. Interesting items in the church include, aside from the virgin image, some frescoes painted by Goya, the main altarpiece, and two bombs that fell within the church during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Zaragoza is very anti pictures inside so I had to sneak them in. Sorry, not sorry.

A collage showing the Baroque Basilica, including unexploded bombs, and two of the altars

Virgin of the Pillar, wearing a mantle

After a small detour to say good morning to the river, Río Ebro, and the Puente de Piedra (stone river), the second building we visited was the Old Market Exchange building – Lonja de Zaragoza. This was the first Renaissance building erected in Zaragoza, dedicated to commerce, with an amazing Gothic-imitation ceiling. Today it is used for exhibits, such as paintings or sculptures.

Coming out, we almost walked into one of the fountains in the square, Monumento a Francisco de Goya, featuring the artist – a brilliant Spanish painter from the Romantic times. He was as brilliant as bad-tempered though. Behind the fountain stands the cathedral, for which we had tickets for 11 am, and it was still early for that.

Thus, we started the route of the Caesaraugusta Museums. Zaragoza was founded in Roman times under this name (where an Iberian dwelling used to be) and in the latest decades, this Roman past has started being dug up. We first visit the museum focused on the original forum, Museo del Foro de Caesaraugusta where we could see the foundations of the old city and walk into the sewers (yeah, it’s cooler than it sounds). The Roman ruins date back from emperors Augustus and his successor Tiberius’ reigns.

After that it was almost time for our reservation to visit the Catedral del Salvador also known as La Seo de Zaragoza, the other cathedral of the town, literally at the end of the same square as the other one. The cathedral mixes several architectonic styles: Romanesque, Gothic and Mudéjar, these last tow being among my favourite styles, so a total win – Renaissance and Baroque elements were added, including the towers. The cathedral has a tapestry museum with a lot of works, not exactly “pretty” but rather impressive.

Following the cathedral we walked towards the rest of the Roman museums, but we made a small detour to look at the Mudéjar tower of the church of Mary Magdalene, Iglesia de Santa Magdalena.

Then we reached the museum of the Bathhouse, which was open but closed – let me explain. They run an “Audiovisual” and close the museum door for as long as it runs. It runs every half hour so finding the thing open seems to be hard. Thus, we moved onto the next archaeological site, related to the old Roman Theatre Museo del Teatro de Caesaraugusta. The theatre was apparently discovered by accident in the early 1970s, and it is apparently one of the biggest Roman theatres in Spain.

We tried our luck with the Bathhouse Museum again Museo de las Termas Públicas de Caesaraugusta. Unfortunately, just like before, we walked up to it while the audiovisual was running, and the concierge made a very studious effort not to see us – so we just peered over the glass roof to see what is left of the main bath.

More impressive was the river port museum Museo del Puerto Fluvial de Caesaraugusta, which keeps the foundations and some of the clay amphorae that were used for import / export.

And believe it or not, we did all that before lunch!! Therefore, we decided it was the right time for a break. We headed back to the hotel to see if we could wash our hands (and take off our facemasks for a while). To our surprise, the hotel had given us an upgrade to a junior suite, so we had a sitting room, a full bathroom and a bedroom – and a balcony that went all along the three. When I opened the window I could hear people playing the piano on the street, as there was some kind of festival going round. Believe it or not… I got to listen to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and Rufus Wainwright’s Hallelujah.

We had lunch outside in a place that my companion enjoyed called La Lobera de Martín – not a cheap place, honestly! However, we splurged a little. We shared a smoked fish salad and I had a side of fresh Foie. As a main, ordered steak tartare, which to my surprise, was prepared for me next to the table! For dessert I tried the home-made berry yoghurt. I have to admit that I was totally planning on having a tiny dinner (or completely skip it!) at that time.

After lunch we walked along one of the main arteries of the town, Paseo de la Independencia, to find the Basílica Menor Parroquia de Santa Engracia, to at least see the outside, since we could not fit visiting the interior and the crypt with our tight schedule. One of the most interesting things about this church is how its façade is built like an altarpiece.

Next to the church stands the neo-Mudéjar post office, built in typical bricks from the area – Oficina de Correos de Zaragoza.

And finally, we looked at the current Science Museum, Museo de Ciencias Naturales, the former Medicine University. Why? Because that’s where my parents met *cue romantic music*!

We did not go in though, because we needed a break and had booked a ticket for 5pm somewhere else, so we decided to raise our feet a little for a while in the hotel room – the sitting area was nice though unfortunately there was no more sun on the balcony, else I would have totally impersonated a lizard there (I did scare a pigeon away though, even if the startle was mutual). Our next target was the Medieval palace called Palacio de la Aljafería – a fortress that combines Islamic architecture and ulterior Christian elements. The Moorish palace was built around 1065 – 1081, and it holds a magnificent garden called the Golden Hall with a portico made out of interlocking mixtilinear arches (I totally looked the word up, and will forget it promptly). The palace was taken over by the Christians 1118 and became a palace for the monarchs of Aragón. It was not modified until the 14th century, and in the 15th Century the Catholic Monarchs extended it further into the Mudéjar Palace. Today it is the meeting site for the local government. I adored it, to be honest, I loved the Golden Hall most of all, but the original ceilings in the Christian palace were also really cool.

We walked back towards the Plaza del Pilar (probably through some streets we probably shouldn’t have, hindsight is 20/20 they say), and we reached the church of St. Paul Iglesia Parroquial de San Pablo. The restored interior leaves a bit to be desired, but the exterior, built between the 13th and 14th centuries in the Mudéjar style – it has an octagonal tower in dark tones, with the upper roof added in the 17th century with richly decorated with tiles and windows. It is worth mentioning here that several Mudéjar buildings in Zaragoza, along with others of singular architecture, are declared Unesco World Heritage Site.

Between the church and the square we walked by the central marketplace Mercado Central de Zaragoza in the late 19th and early 20th century, in a combination of stone and iron-and-glass architecture.

Close to it we could see some of the ruins of the original Roman walls Antiguas Murallas de Romanas de Zaragoza, which are actually sprinkled all through the town and mixed with the Medieval ones at points. There, a lady was happily chatting on the phone while her child climbed the walls – so in case it is not evident, here’s a social clue: if there is any kind of barrier / signage around something, it should not be climbed on.

To finish off the day we visited the Museum dedicated to Goya Museo Goya. Goya, whose complete name was Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746 – 1828) was a painter and printmaker from the Romantic age. He is probably one of the most important artists in Spanish history. He was a royal portraitist, fresco decorator, and also painted and printed many critical and fantasy works. To be honest, the museum was a bit underwhelming – with few of the minor works, and one of the least impressive major works, the Christ portrait. There was however a whole room full of prints.

After one more visit to the square, where I managed my only complete picture of the whole (night-lit) Basílica del Pilar from that angle, we just headed to the hotel. There was a sandwich shop at the entrance, so we took one each and had a late light dinner as we watched Night at the Museum in the hotel bathrobes – because it was cozier than turning up the heating. I did not sleep too well as the fire alarm was right on top of the bed and it kept flashing – at one point I thought that an electric storm had hit, but it was just the alarm…

23rd October 2021: Papercraft and walks

The next morning we had breakfast and headed off to the origami museum and workshop EMOZ: Escuela Museo Origami Zaragoza, located in the “Stories Museum” Centro de Historias. I remembered the exhibition from a few years back in Museo Cerralbo in Madrid, with an actual-size hippo, so I have to admit this time I was a little… underwhelmed, probably because the temporary exhibit ended up being “abstract” paper folding…

However, in the very same building there was a very fun exhibition about the evolution of household appliances throughout the 20th century. That was cute!

As we got ready to draw a close to our day-and-a-half getaway we went to say goodbye to the river Río Ebro. We walked by the modern Puente de Zaragoza bridge, and crossed over the Puente de Piedra, the traditional stone river of the town. The current one dates back (although reconstructed) from 1440, but there are records that a previous Roman one stood in its place and was destroyed in the 9th Century. Between the two bridges a flock of cormorant seemed to be sunbathing.

From Puente de Piedra I took my last picture of the Basílica del Pilar before we had a nice milkshake, then headed back to the station to take our train back. By the way – I find it ridiculous that the stations have blocked 60% of the seats while they’re filling up the platforms and the trains as normal…

Total walked distance: 8.69 km

14th October 2021: Roman city of Complutum (Alcalá de Henares, Spain)

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Around this time in 2020 I took a small tour around Alcalá de Henares. However, the Roman ruins were not near the town centre, and we exchanged walking there for a walking tour the university and the archaeological museum. This time I exclusively drove to the ruins (or tried to, somehow my phone and my GPS have different layouts, so ended up parking 15 minutes away when I should have parked… right by it).

Complutum was founded as a Roman town in the first century BCE, when the locals moved in looking for fertile lands for crops and cattle. The area, near the Roman road and at the bank of the river, was great – and who cared about the original Iberian settlers anyway? The city grew and a newer town started being built in the first century CE. Soon, the town became a religious (dedicated to the goddess Diana and the water nymphs), economic and strategic hub, so that several Roman roads (viae Romanae) started and died there. The town’s influence expanded for kilometres until the 8th century, when the Islamic population took over the city and the population re-settled to what is now the centre of Alcalá.

The city was eventually lost as the town developed around and over it, but part of it was excavated in the 19th century. The modern excavation was organised in the 1970s trying to salvage as much as could be from the urban developments. Most of the mosaics from the archaeological museum are from this time, apparently.

In the 1980s, the city of Alcalá decided to protect and excavate the town and as of now there are two areas that can be visited. However, they are separated and you have to walk or drive from one to the other.

I first visited a building called Casa de Hippolytus, Hippolytus’ House, which was a school dormitory for boys. The building hosts a thermal area, a bathroom, and a garden.

The key part of the house is the “fish mosaic”, commissioned by the rich family who sponsored the school (Anios) to the merchant Hippolytus, who signed the mosaic. The mosaic. is thought to have been a teaching tool as it depicts with a lot of detail a number of aquatic species from the Mediterranean Sea (in contrast with the people in the boat) – there is a dolphin, a sea urchin, a lobster, a cuttlefish, a moray eel, a sea bream…

I walked to the other site afterwards, Foro y Regio II, and it’s divided in several parts – it has a residential neighbourhood, some public buildings (therms, curia, basilica…), and the oracle building, along with remains of the sewers and water supplies.

The most important building, called ‘the house of griffin’ due to to the decoration, was unfortunately closed. But you can be sure that the place is kept safe by the kitty queen on call and her dutiful apprentice.

Driving distance: around 64 km
Walking distance: 6.79 km

13th October 2021: Poblado de Villaflores (Spain)

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Poblado de Villaflores (Settlement of Villaflores) is a long-abandoned farm settlement was erected between 1886 and 1887. In 1882, María Diega Desmaissières y Sevillano, countess of Vega del Pozo and duchess of Sevillano (among other titles) came to own the land where the village now stands. She was known for her philanthropy and ordering several buildings be built. The settlement was one of these – the duchess commissioned architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco to design a ‘rural colony’. The buildings were erected in limestone masonry and exposed brick, and the most important items in the settlement were the main hamlet, a dovecote, four several-family houses and a hermit church. There is confusing information on whether it has been declared an “interesting” or talks of the the declaration were finally archived.

I have driven by the settlement several times, but at one point I made up my mind to visit, even if the area has been in decline for years – as a matter of fact, a clock tower that used to be part of the hamlet collapsed in 2016, and the first alarms had been rung as early as 1980. Since then, most of the buildings have had the entrances either boarded up or walled, and the collapsed areas seem to unstable to come in explore. I wish I had decided to visit earlier, when real urbex was doable, but oh well.

The actual entrance to the area – which is paved – has been fenced off since at least 2011, despite the different announcements about recovering and restoring the settlement. However, next to the settlement there is an official cattle way (Cañada real ), used to guide the herds from winter to summer pastures (the practice of transhumance). This was a common practice in the Middle Ages, but it died away with time, and today most of them have been turned into hiking trails. The key thing is that as they cross roads, there are big clearings where you can park, and that is the way to go in this particular case. The area is named Cañada Real de las Matas (Área Recreativa Francisco Rodríguez).

At the edge of the holm oak (Quercus rotundifolia) forest, Chaparral de Villaflores someone installed a children recreational area and some tables and benches, maybe mid-1990s, and called it a park Parque del Sotillo. While the tables are still in use – judging by the rubbish around it – the swings and other elements have been plundered.

As I approached the hamlet, antigua casa de labranza, I saw the chicken wire fences but most of them were actually open and torn down, so I guess I just decided to wing it. The hamlet was open but I decided not to enter it, just in case I broke an ankle or something. This is the building that lost the clock tower, and the only one whose property is private – it belongs to a real estate company which at some point planned to develop the area, but backed out for some reason.

I went on to the church, which used to be consecrated to Saint Didacus of Alcalá – antigua ermita de San Diego de Alcalá.

I deviated towards the mill, then backtracked to the houses, crossing the actual road that is blocked. It is weird, seeing roundabouts in such a dilapidated place (≧▽≦). As I was exploring the houses, I heard shots and saw ducks try to fly away, so the cars I had come across, which I expected to belong to people looking for mushrooms ended up belonging to hunters.

That made me a bit apprehensive, but I was finally close to the most attention-grabbing building of the whole settlement – the dovecote, called La Tabalta in Spanish. It has two floors and it could home ten thousand doves – which were kept for recreative hunting in the 1880s.

I did not try to enter the winery because it was too dilapidated, nor the more modern barn, but this was a fun little visit that thankfully did not end up with me getting shot! I might try to visit this again in winter when there is less vegetation. Though since it is in the middle of nowhere the wind will be freezing…

Walking distance: 4.48 km

8th October 2021: Tamajón & Cogolludo (Spain)

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When I went to the waterfalls of the Aljibe I drove past a little village I had never heard of before – Tamajón, and a side sign reading “Pequeña Ciudad Encantada de Tamajón”. The term “Cuidad Encantada”, meaning Enchanted or Magic City, is used in Spanish to refer to karst formations. Karst is the name of a particular topography, created by the dissolution and chemical weathering of soluble rocks, chiefly but not just limestone.

The particular Spanish karst landscapes were formed by precipitation of salts – calcium carbonate – in the quiet waters of the Tethys Ocean during the Mesozoic Era (251-66 million years ago). Plate tectonics made central Spanish arise during the Cretaceous (the later subdivision of the Mesozoic, 140-66 million years ago) emerge, and the calcium carbonate became exposed to the elements, which started the erosion process. The most famous karst landscape in Spain is the Ciudad Encantada near Cuenca, which I guess spread the name.

Tamajón has a short hiking route around its karst formation, and while it is true that they are on the relatively smaller size, there are different shapes. I started my hiking route at the Ermita de la Virgen de los Enebrales, hermitage church dedicated to the Virgin of the Juniper Forest – the current building was reformed in the Renaissance style, thought the actual dates are shaky.

I started on the hiking route from the hermitage, along the road, and there were no markings there, so I kind of winged it for a while. After I took the first turn and started going up the rocks, I found the painting marking the routes – I had a handmade map because someone had shared it online, so I just went along it, and when I finished I redid about a fourth of it to take a detour to the other side of the road. There are cracks, arches, caves, cavities and capricious forms. I spent about an hour and a half walking around almost completely alone, which was awesome.

On my way back I stopped by the Church of the Assumption Iglesia de la Asunción, also a Romanesque – Renaissance mixture. The porch is typical of Romanesque churches in the Camino de Santiago (St. James’ Way), to shelter pilgrims.

As it was still early and I was relatively close, instead of driving home I headed off to another village called Cogolludo. I parked the car at the edge of the village and walked towards the main square, where there is a famous Renaissance palace Palacio de los Duques de Medinaceli. It is considered the first Renaissance Palace built in Spain, and it is reported to have been finished in 1492. The palace was designed by Lorenzo Vázquez de Segovia, with exquisite decoration, and the blaring lack of towers, which were very popular at the time. If I’m ever in the area again I might want to try to see the interior, which is only open in the guided visits.

The Palace stands in the main square Plaza Mayor which has a typical Castilian arcade with stone columns (unfortunately workers, sun and cars made it hard to take a good picture of it).

Cogolludo has two churches, Iglesia de Santa María de los Remedios (Our Lady of Remedies) and Iglesia de San Pedro (Saint Peter), both dating from the 16th century, but both completely closed down.

Finally, there are also the ruins of the Medieval Castle Castillo de Cogolludo, but there was not much incentive to climb up. All in all, it was a short but interesting morning – though I glad I teamed the two visits up, going to Cogolludo on its own would have not felt productive.

Driven distance: around 115 km
Walking distance: 7.27 km

8th September 2021: Impromptu Madrid Run! (Spain)

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This was oh my god so unplanned that I kept improvising throughout the whole day! It all started because a Spanish publisher decided to translate a non-fiction book I’ve loved for ages – Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein. The publisher flew the author in for interviews, and I guess I was disappointed that no signing event was organised. I asked the author once and the publisher another time, then shrugged it off when I got no answer. There were some interviews scheduled for him, and a book fair coming up. I guessed it was just not meant to be, but I did feel disappointed.

And then, on the 7th, Mr Adelstein shot me a message that he would sign my book if I could go to Madrid and meet him at one of his breaks. As you can imagine I just… said yes (I could not meet him that very same evening because of travel times, but I could make it on the 8th. And there I went).

It was the first time taking the train since the whole pandemic thing (hell, I had not even been on a train since Paris 2020), and a weekday so I chose the times carefully to hopefully get close to as few people as possible – it worked, as both rides nobody sat next to me.

I arrived in Madrid and transferred easily, then got out at a new station in the area of Gran Vía. The Tokyo Vice book came out that day, so I wanted to go to a big book store that would hopefully have it already. My first stop, FNAC, failed miserably, so I went to La Casa del Libro, where they told me I would find the book in a completely different section where I actually did. But at least I had it in my hands, even if I had apparently not used my credit card for so long, I got the right PIN for the wrong card (≧▽≦).

After I had the book in Spanish – I’ve owned a first edition copy in English since 2010 – I had thought that I should get a small detail for the author as he was making time for me. As he had to continue on his travelling, I decided to do something small and “consumable”, so I came up with buying some typical Madrid candy – violet sweets from La Violeta. I’d never been inside the shop, but it’s an adorable little place dating back to 1915.

It was still early for my appointment at 14:00, so I decided to head towards a square that hosts an Egyptian temple of all things. On the way I made a stop at a Starbucks for a Vanilla Frappucino, I figured out that the amount of calories would get me going and I would not have to eat until I was back – looking back it was a weird thing, but it made sense in my head at the time. I strolled around the park next to the palace Palacio Real.

The way to the temple was completely blocked off due to construction, so I decided to backtrack. I walked up the great avenue in the middle of the city Gran Vía. As I walked around, minding my business and listening to music, I kept remembering a comic by Sarah Sanders, in which she makes fun of how people won’t leave you alone when you’re wearing headphones and, well, minding your own business.

I reached the square with the fountain to the goddess Cybele Fuente de la Cibeles and the related Palace Palacio de Comunicaciones (by Antonio Palacios). The fountain dates back to the 18th century, when king Carlos III revamped a lot of Madrid trying to make it more beautiful and similar to other European capitals.

Carlos III is also responsible for the design of the modern version of one of the former wall gates, called the gate to Alcalá, the nearby town, Puerta de Alcalá. This area was declared Unesco World Heritage Site in summer 2021 as Paisaje de la Luz, so Madrid was in a celebratory mood.

I headed into the park Parque del Retiro, which is also included in the Heritage declaration. The park was initially built in the first half of the 17th century, as part of the royal recreational areas. Carlos III opened it up as public park a hundred years later. Aside from the obvious green areas, the park features fountains, palaces and sculptures. I walked past some of them. First I came across the fountain “of the turtles” Fuente de los Galápagos.

There is also a large pond, aptly called the big pond Estanque Grande del Retiro populated by carps, to whose side stands the monument to Alfonso XII – Monumento a Alfonso XII.

Nearby the pond stands the fountain called the artichoke fountain, Fuente de la alcachofa.

I walked to the fountain that depicts the fall of Lucifer from Heaven, Fuente del Ángel Caído. The fountain itself was built in order to exhibit the sculpture by Ricardo Bellve, who originally created it in plaster. The figure would then be cast in iron for the World Exhibit of 1878 in Paris, and eventually placed in the Retiro.

I strolled back towards one of my favourite points in the park, but that’s because I like iron-and-glass architecture – a little building called Palacio de Cristal, which has a small pond around.

Finally I headed over the little café where I had arranged to meet with Mr Adelstein. He arrived shortly after. He signed my book, but truth be told, I had also brought my first-edition copy, which happens to be full of post-its from the first time I read it. He was happy to sign that one too, and to my eternal mortification… he went over all the notes. I almost died right then and there. We chatted for a little, I gave him the violet candy and he had some umeboshi sweets for me too. I babbled that I was very happy that he had made some time for me, and he told me “but you were so polite on twitter and the publisher said no signatures!” and I kind of died again.

In the end, our meeting was only 15 minutes, but I have not felt so happy in a very long time – that he specifically took time felt amazing. We took pictures and even had a safe mask-hug. Afterwards I headed towards the nearest train station so I could be on my way before the afternoon rush came through, so that was it for the day.

Walking distance: 12.39 km

22nd August 2021: Romanesque Soria {Spain, summer 2021}

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We just spent the morning in Soria, in the region of Castilla y León, before we got on our way back in the early afternoon, but I have to say that the good morning sunset was spectacular.

As again we had a breakfast slot at 8:00, we were out to see stuff at around 9:00. The Parador de Soria is located on the top of the Castle Park Parque del Castillo, we just had to go down. First we came across some of the ruins and the buildings that had populated the area in Medieval times.

As we continued our trek downwards we ended up at the church of Our Lady of the Thorn Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Espino, which was closed as it was still early on a Sunday morning.

In the tiny garden in front of the church there is a dead tree that has been preserved by pouring fibreglass and other synthetic materials on it – the dry elm tree, Olmo Seco. In 1912, the Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote a poem – to an old elm tree, struck by lightning and half-rotten, which has sprouted a few green leaves after April rain and May sun… Well, this is the tree, preserved for all to see, with the poem in a small sign (and another in Braille) right next to it.

After staying there for a few minutes, we went on our trek downwards and we reached another church, the church of St. John San Juan de la Rabanera. It is known that the church had already been built in 1270. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods it was heavily remodelled, but restorations during the 20th century recovered most of the Romanesque purity. The main portal, although Romanesque too, used to be part of another church. The apse keeps all the Romanesque decoration – unfortunately, it was closed too.

We kept strolling around the town centre and came across a bunch of palaces – some of them have been repurposed into public-service buildigns such as the local government, revenue and taxes services, town’s archive, a high school… others were for sale or rent.

In front of the high school we found the sculpture to the poet I mentioned before, Escultura a Antonio Machado.

Not far from there we found the church of Saint Dominic Iglesia de Santo Domingo. Like the church of St. John, it is a reformed Romanesque temple. The most important and impressive part of the church is the main façade, in golden stone with amazing carvings (considered by some the best Romanesque façade in the country), and a rose window.

We decided to try to find the co-cathedral of St Peter Concatedral de San Pedro. Dating back from the 12th century, on the outside, it just looks like yet another Romanesque church, but that changes when you enter. When it is illuminated, the church seems to glow.

Furthermore, you can access the cloister of the former collegiate, which was also built in the 12th century as part of a now-disappeared monastery.

We walked back to the centre of the town. We left the main square Plaza Mayor de Soria, which I accessed through a tiny archway delimited by coloured windows, named Arco del Cuerno.

We ended up at main park Alameda de Cervantes.

However, we were more interested in seeing the archaeological museum Museo Numantino, which was open by then – it holds a few ancient straight-Tusked elephant (Elephas antiquus), Pehistoric art, and most of the artefacts that have been found in Numantia, both Roman and Celtiberian, including Roman statues, Celtiberian weapons and drinking jars and the most famous relic of all: a tiny horse-shaped fibula (brooch) that has been adopted as the symbol of Soria.

Finally, on our way out, we stopped at the ruins of the monastery of Saint John of the Douro, commonly just referred to as “archway” and not monastery Arcos de San Juan de Duero, a very cool cloister with different arc styles – a typical Romanesque one from the 13th century, and a second one that might have had Arab influence.

And with this, we drove back home for around 170 km after walking for 6.57 km. Fingers crossed for the next adventure working out!

21st August 2021: Fossil tracks and Roman ruins {Spain, summer 2021}

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Enciso is a couple of hours away from Sos del Rey Católico, but to be honest it is barely even on the map. It is a tiny little village in the area of La Rioja that I had not even heard of a year ago. But at some point during this year I became aware of it – and its palaeontological importance as it is the reference point for a dozen or so sites where ichnites have been found. Ichnites or fossil tracks are marks left by dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals on the mud that eventually become fossilised. In this little village in the middle of nowhere there are around 1,400 dinosaur foot tracks. When we were in Albarracín, we saw a bunch of fossils from the time Spain was submerged under the ocean. During the Mesozoic, the area of La Rioja, and the neighbouring Soria (Castilla y León), were somewhat swampy, which lead to a lot of mud. When dinosaurs and other animals moved through the mud, they left trails that sometimes became fossilised.

Our first stop in the village was the palaeontological museum Centro Paleontológico de Enciso . This one we could have skipped – it has next to no original pieces, and it basically just has a few infographics and reproductions of different types of dinosaur legs, but we had to start somewhere.

We visited two fossil track sites. The first one was a long strip of rock called Yacimiento de Valdecevillo . In this site, there are tracks of theropods (carnivores with three fingers, usually bipeds that left clawy marks), ornithopods (herbivores with three fingers, also bipeds, that left somewhat more rounded tracks), and sauropods (four-legged dinosaurs with less-defined fingers). Some of the tracks are very easy to identify (especially the ones fenced off), others are chalked on, and sometimes they even cross each other.

Next to the rock formation, a few reproductions have been built, in order to illustrate what dinosaurs roamed the area. A family of iguanodon has been clearly identified. The sauropod looks like a generic brachiosaurus, but it could have been a turiasaurus, even. I have to say though that the carnivore theropod needs a bit of an update – but it looked adorably like those that they drew when I was a kid back in the 80s. Oh, and we also saw a real-life present-day minisaurus (aka lizard, maaaaaaaybe Spanish psammodromus Psammodromus hispanicus).

It was too hot to walk around the trail, so we hopped onto the car and drove off to the other site, Yacimiento de la Virgen del Campo.
In this formation you can “feel” the mud – the rock has ripples (water marks), and here is even a small mud collapse from an earthquake. Here we saw foot tracks again, marks of skin, and even tail trails left by ancient crocodiles. In this site there are indications of a carnivore attacking a herbivore, represented by 1:1 sculptures (maybe a ceratosaurus and an iguanodon).

Around 13:00 we got back on the car and drove off to the town of Garray for lunch and a rest near the river…s. Río Tera, a smaller current, joins one of the most important rivers in Spain, Río Duero (Douro River) under the unnamed stone bridge.

We managed to have lunch in one of the few restaurants in town, in front of the municipal fountain and the church of Saint John the Baptist Iglesia San Juan Bautista. After lunch we stayed at the river bank for a while before we moved towards our next stop.

The archaeological site of Numantia Yacimiento arqueológico de Numancia holds the remains of a Roman town, built upon an earlier Celtiberian settlement. The Celtiberian town was the centre of a number of hostilities against the Romans in the second century BCE – the Numantine War, the third of the Celtiberian Wars broke out in 143 BCE. After a decade, the Romans sent one of the heroes of the Third Punic war to suffocate the rebellion. The general cut down all the trees in the area and built a barrier around the settlement, in what has been called the Siege of Numantia, in 133 BCE. The town was completely cut off the rest of the world and after eight months of siege, the inhabitants set the town on fire. Most of them committed suicide in order to avoid being taken as slaves.

After the Roman conquerors levelled the ruins, a new town emerged, and a Roman settlement existed in the area between the first and fourth centuries CE. The last remains date back from the sixth century before the town vanished from existence and memory until it was located in the late 19th century.

Today, the site holds remains and patterns for several houses, and it has a reconstructed Roman house, an Iberian house and two pieces of the wall. The most visual building is a Roman house of the later period which still keeps a couple of columns. Unfortunately, this was 16:30 and the guided visit was long and full of useless and dull information – guess who got a sunburnt, even under an umbrella?

When we were done with Numantia, we decided to skip the complementary exhibition in Garray and drove off towards Soria, where we would be staying the night.

The Parador de Soria, our hotel, is the first modern Parador I’ve stayed in, though it stands on the mountain where the castle used to be, and the views were astonishing (I also almost forgot my stamp!!). We had dinner in the parador, which included some freshly-fried torreznos de Soria. Torreznos are a pork-based snack especially typical in the area. The pork belly is marinated with salt and paprika, cured or smoked, and finally fried – delicious but for sure a “sometimes food”. After dinner, we went to our rooms to compare the day-view with the night-view and admire the moon.

Total driven distance: 196 km. Total walking distance: 6.57 km.

20th August 2021: A Monastery and a Castle… again {Spain, summer 2021}

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Sos del Rey Católico, formerly just Sos, is a small town still in the province of Zaragoza in Aragón. Its historical centre is so historical that it has been around since the 1400s. In 1452, the infante Fernando, who would go on to become the Catholic King, was born there. Back in the Middle Ages, the Kingdoms of Aragón and Castille became intertwined when Queen Isabel I of Castille and Fernando II of Aragón got married, earning the moniker of Catholic Monarchs due to their relentless fight against the Muslim Caliphates that had conquered the country long before. The trick of their marriage was that both of them remained the king / queen of their own kingdom in a very delicate equilibrium that sometimes was referred to as tanto monta.

A walk through the town yields to viewing a lot of Medieval buildings and palaces – too many to keep tack of. The wall is still standing in several places, built around the natural rock in order to make the most of the natural defences. There are a number of palaces that have been repurposed with new functions – the town hall, a school, and so on, and you can see them all in a short stroll, which we of course took. We left the hotel at around 9 in the morning because our breakfast turn was from 8:00 to 8:30 and there was not much else to do anyway.

The second reason why Sos del Rey Católico became known was the filming of an absurd Spanish comedy back in 1985. Thus, the village erected a sculpture to the director, Luis García Berlanga, Estatua a Berlanga.

The sculpture lies at the feet of the church of Saint Stephen Parroquia de San Esteban, which we could not enter, unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict. The church has a Romanesque-style entrance carved in the 12th century, but protected from the elements by an outer portico from the 16th century. The church has an interesting shape, which tunnels and stairs, owning to the actual relief of the area.

Beyond the church stands the remains of the castle Castillo de Sos del Rey Católico, out of which the keep and a little turret still stand, albeit heavily restored. The old town was a frontier fortified area between the kingdoms of Navarra and Aragón, and it was a strategic point in Medieval times. This is why Fernando II’s mother fled there when the war started and why Fernando was born there.

The short climb yields to being able to survey the surroundings.

The whole “Fernando the Catholic King” was born here reaches its peak in the old palace called Palacio de Sada, where the King was born. Today they have turned it into an “interpretation museum” and holds some panels, an audiovisual, and reproductions of both the Catholic Monarch’s Last Will and Testament. The highlight of the palace is the Romanesque chapel and former Church of Saint Martin, Iglesia de San Martín de Tours, which still shows the painting and polychrome on the altar walls.

Shortly after 11 we went back to the car to drive to the other side of the Aragón – Navarra border, both the old kingdoms and the current areas. We had a booking for the monastery of Leyre Monasterio de Leyre at 12:30 and considering how much our Sat-Nav was trolling us we wanted to give ourself an hour of leeway. The device behaved itself and we arrived there at the right time.

Leyre is a still-active Benedictine monastery has been rebuilt and renovated, but at its core stands the church of Leyre. Standing in the middle of the mountains, it used to be a fortified monastery.

The church is based on an early Romanesque “crypt” whose goal was to flatten the terrain in order for the church to be built above it. It is an amazing engineering work, and not at all usual.

The original Romanesque church was consecrated in 1057, and it is one of the most impressive and highest Romanesque buildings I’ve ever seen. The main nave is also Romanesque, but the dome is already Gothic. There is a beautiful sculpture of the Virgin of Leyre. The entrance of the church is magnificent, carved in the 12th century with dozens of carving in stone.

We were lucky enough to have timed the visit with the monks’ Sext prayer, in Latin and Spanish, and mostly sung in the Gregorian style. Ah, and this was also a burial point for the Monarchs, but this time of Navarra… then again, eventually the Kingdoms of Navarra and Aragón became one so…

After Leyre, we got onto the car again and crossed over to the other side of the highway to the Castle of Xavier Castillo de Javier. We had lunch around the castle before we even approached the building, under Saint Francis Xavier’s glance.

The castle was the birthplace and childhood home of this Catholic saint (born 1506), famous for trying to spread Christianity in India, South-East Asia and Japan. He was a co-founder of the Jesuit order, which owns the castle now. The building has been turned into a museum about the saint.

The origins of the castle date from the 10th century, though most of its current appearance can be traced to the 11th and 13th century. Later the towers were destroyed, and in the 19th century they were re-erected, and the adjacent basilica was built. There is also a reconstructed little church were the saint was christened.

The inside of the castle holds some items from Francis Xavier’s times – real or not – some Japanese paintings and scrolls, trinkets that were brought from Asia during the preaching missions, and a bunch of dioramas. You can climb up to the keep and look at the surrounding area. Unfortunately, the guide was horrid and he just regurgitated facts that were dubious or plain wrong – for example, he claimed that a diorama that looks like a Hindu temple represented the Emperor of Japan.

One of the most interesting artefacts in the castle is a late-Gothic oak carving of Christ on the cross, which sports a faint smile. The piece is located in a tiny chapel decorated with dancing skeletons referring to the Latin expression “Carpe Diem” (seize the day).

After the castle we drove over the “border” back to Sos del Rey Católico, and after a shower and a drink, I decided to explore de historical building of our hotel, Parador de Sos del Rey Católico, and the gardens.

Driven distance: 56 km. Walking distance: 6.17 km.

19th August 2021: A Monastery and a Castle {Spain, summer 2021}

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We packed up and in the morning, we continued out trip, heading generally westward towards our next destination, which was about an hour and twenty minutes away. Unfortunately, we got on a slight disagreement with the Sat-Nav again – it sent us through the secondary road and in the end we took two hours going through the curves. Thus, around 10 am we managed to get our tickets to the “royal” monastery Real Monasterio de San Juan de la Peña – which is in the middle of nowhere but technically belongs to Jaca.

The monastery is actually two (or three, depending on how you look at it). The old monastery, Monasterio Viejo de San Juan de la Peña was built in the Romanesque style, and dates back from the tenth century. Its origins, however, seem to be more obscure, related to Iberian and pagan rituals. It is excavated into / built onto the vertical wall of a natural cove occurring in a bare-rock hill or crag in the middle of the forest. It held a convent, a church, and a cloister on the first floor. From the time it was built till the time it was confiscated by the government in the 19th century, it became one of the burial points for the monarchs of the old Kingdom of Aragón and Navarra, thus the “royal” eponym.

One of the many legends regarding the monastery is that it was home to the Holy Grail between the 11th and the 14th century. Later, in the 17th century, there was a fire, and it was decided to build a new monastery. Here is what is weird – there is a building there now, the so-called new monastery Monasterio Nuevo de San Juan de la Peña. Some of the buildings have survived, but most of it is an archaeological museum / excavation of what was there, again until the liberal confiscation.

Issues: You can only visit the old monastery after buying your tickets at the new monastery. And to get from one monastery to the other, you need to take the shuttle, again, awesome during Covid times. Furthermore, there was no control of the number of people there, which resulted in an overcrowding that would have been uncomfortable in normal times, much more during the pandemic. While the bus makes sense due to the fact that there is literally no way to park around the old monastery, some crowd managing would have been necessary.

After visiting both monasteries, we went back to the awful road. I don’t know if it was the curves, the heat, that I had overdone it the day before, or all of the above but I was not feeling well. Thankfully after some food and a stop at the water reservoir Embalse de la Peña, I felt better.

We continued our way and made a stop to look at an interesting geological feature called Mallos de Riglos, which are several almost-detached vertical walls of conglomerate rock left behind by erosive processes that dragged away what used to be around them. They stand up to 275 metres high over the river Río Gállego.

This was a short stop from a viewpoint, but we soon drove on towards the next destination – after one of the most important buildings in religious Romanesque architecture, we were going to see a civil counterpart, the (self-reportedly) best-preserved Romanesque castle in the world: Castillo de Loarre. The truth is that, from afar it looks awesomely cool, though once you are inside, it loses a bit of its appeal as there is no perspective. Besides, it was too hot to hike down the hill for good views.

The keep is built on a rocky hill, and the surrounding buildings are connected to it by a number of doors and haphazard stairs and arcs. Both the main towers and the fortified wall were erected around 1287, in a strategic point between the Muslim and the Christian kingdoms battling over the place. As the Christians expanded their influence, the Muslim tribes retreated towards the Mediterranean, leaving the castle “jobless” in a way, and the castle decayed until it was restored (twice) in the 20th century.

After the castle, we went back to the car, and from there I fought the Sat-Nav (I was not the driver). When I saw that it wanted to send us through another god-forsaken secondary road full of curves for over a hundred kilometres, I advocated for 123 km of main roads and highways. I won (^◇^)y, and around half past seven we arrived in our next destination Sos del Rey Católico, where we would be staying at the Parador for two nights (of course, I got my stamp there). A great improvement from the hotel in Torla-Ordesa, and a welcome one, with awesome sunset views to go with it.

Total driven distance: 272 km. Maybe around five hours and a bit? Some of the roads felt eternal.
Total walked distance: 5.23 km.

18th August 2021: Hiking the Pyrenees: Ruta de la Cola de Caballo (Ordesa y Monte Perdido) {Spain, summer 2021}

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The Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido was the second national park to be formalised in Spain, in 1918, and expanded in 1982. The area has been considered a Unesco World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve since 1997. The park is located in the southern area of the mid-Pyrenees range. The mountain called Monte Perdido, the “Lost Mountain” is the highest calcareous mountain in the world, which also has one of the few glaciers of Spain, and the different mountains around it create the U-shaped Ordesa Valley Valle de Ordesa. It is home to a wide variety of flora – pines, firs and beeches – and fauna – vultures, chamois and stoats among others.

Well, the plan was clear – wake up early, drive to the entrance of the national park Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido and hike the easy route to the final waterfall, Ruta de la Cola de Caballo. For that reason, we chose the hotel which was closest to the entrance of the park.

Then, upon arrival, we learnt that we could not drive, and had to ride the bus. In normal times, urgh, but in Covid-times, even urgh-er. Furthermore, the bus stop at the visitor centre was dead right on the other side of the village, which was not far… But in-between there was a little one-way tunnel that buses had preference for, and zero visibility when you approached from the hotel side.

Anyway, we had been fortunate enough that at least we could buy bus tickets at the hotel (because what is more Spanish than making something compulsory, then charging for it?), we had set the alarm and went to sleep… And the alarm clock did not go off. We got up a little after seven, got ready in a hurry, then drove off to the bus stop, which fortunately had a parking lot to ditch the car. By the time we arrived a few buses had already left, and there was a queue worth almost four buses worth of people before us – well, we got on the fourth bus a bit before eight. That was at least lucky, because there’s supposedly only a bus every half-hour at that time, and we were on our way just before 8 o’clock.

After a short journey we arrived at the start of the route, the valley called Pradera de Ordesa, where we had coffee and a toast to get going. Then we started walking. The problem was that my group did not really realise the difference between a walk and a hike – which ended up being exhausting.

The route Ruta de la Cola de Caballo runs through a Unesco Heritage area. It is an easy, return trail that starts at the Pradera and trails up parallel to the river Río Arazas to the high valley at the feet of Monte Perdido, called Circo del Soaso. You basically walk up and down the same route, around 18 km in six hours. If you remember, I took a bit under two and a half hours to hike the whole Cascada del Aljibe three-hour trail. This… was not like that time. By the time we had been walking for 4.5 hours, we had only reached the two-hour mark. That was the time when my group got cold feet and I continued alone, covered the remaining hour and back, and caught up with them as they walked down, in an hour and a half.

We started off at the Pradera de Ordesa, the area where the bus left us and we had our breakfast. The trail is easy to follow, marked with abundant signs, and, going straight you leave the river Río Arazas to the right. As you walk up the trail, the forest opens around you, and the trail is continuously upwards.

From the trail you can sometimes climb down to the riverbed and even stand on the boulders in the river.

As the sun came up, in the clearings of the way you could look up above the tree line at the peaks, with two distinctive colours: greys – calcites, quartz and slates – and reddish-brown – sandstone and red clays. Both these types of rocks tell that over 250 million years ago, the area was covered by the ocean.

The first milestone we reached was the waterfall Cascada de Arripas from the viewpoint Mirador de los Bucardos.

Around us, the forest stood tall and straight, seemingly holding the ground at points – mostly pines and breeches at this height.

The next spot was a second waterfall, I think Cascada del Estrecho.

As time passed and we walked, the day became brighter and the trees more scarce, giving the area a brighter look.

Eventually we ended up at the tree line for our valley – while there were still trees on other slopes, we were under the sun until we reached the next group of waterfall Gradas del Soaso – the river finds a fracture area and falls in a number of waterfalls that look like stands (gradas).

From here, the route became steeper and more arduous and my group decided to call it a day, at a quarter to one. Given the option to continue and able to do so faster, I went on and we agreed to meet back at the parking lot. I popped my headphones in, then hiked up for about thirty minutes through some stairs half carved, half built into the rocks and I eventually reached the upper valley at the feet of Monte Perdido, the cirque Circo del Soaso. A cirque is a bowl-shaped valley created by ancient glaciers.

The trail there becomes… paved for a while, which was a bit bizarre. The valley opens in front of you with Monte Perdido in front of you towards the left, and the Pyrenees stand all around you.

As I walked into the valley I spotted a small hill and behind it finally stood the end of the trail and the beginning of the valley – the biggest waterfall of the area Cascada de la Cola de Caballo (Horsetail Waterfall), which was packed!

I did not walk to the foot of the waterfall, so after hanging around for a little, I turned back, had something to drink and hiked downwards. I put the camera away as I came down in order to protect it, and picked up the pace. Around half past two I caught up with the group. I am not made for sprints but I am like an ox – once I find my rhythm I can go on forever.

On our return way, we deviated to another route to walk back, and stopped by another waterfall, Cascada de la Cueva.

Once again the pace was slow, and we eventually reached the lower valley to catch a bus around half past four, but I swear the last half hour felt eternal. By the time we reached the hotel we were too tired to explore the village, though I would have liked that. But there was ice-cream, which was nice. In the end the total walked distance clocked at 20.11 km – though the official legth of the trail is around 18 km.

17th August 2021: Towards the Pyrenees, via the cathedrals {Spain, summer 2021}

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The total driven distance today was around 450 km, but we did that in three legs with with two visits in-between.

The first stop was Huesca, in the province of the same name, in Aragón. After ditching the car (and having our first Sat-nav disagreement for the trip), we walked towards the city centre. The first thing we peered into was a little grocer’s shop Ultramarinos La Confianza, which dates back to 1871 and is reported to be the longest-running grocer’s in Spain. Unfortunately, due to Covid restrictions there was a queue outside and we could only see it from the outside.

We proceeded to the cathedral of the Lord’s Transfiguration Catedral de la Transfiguración del Señor, a Gothic-style building that stands in the centre of the town, just in front of the council hall. The cathedral has only one tower which used to be crowned by a spire, but that was lost during the civil war. The main gate is decorated with carvings of the Apostles.

However, we did not enter through the main gate, but the lateral one which gave us access to the religious museum of the cathedral Museo Diocesano de Huesca. The museum has several art pieces from different periods, and gives access to the Gothic cloister of the cathedral, and to older structures, among them, a peek into the original Romanesque cloister.

Adjacent to the cathedral stands the Bishop’s palace, also part of the museum. The most impressive part is the hall called Salón del Tanto Monta , which sports a Mudejar wooden ceiling carved and polychrome in 1478, restored twice since then. The wording “Tanto Monta” refer to the Catholic King Fernando, indicating that he had as much importance in his wife’s kingdom as she did – I’ll get into that history titbit another day though.

We finally walked into the cathedral itself, which is presided by the high altar made from alabaster and sculpted in the 16th century by Damián Forment, the most important sculptor at the time.

Again due to Covid, we could not visit the council hall and see the painting that illustrates a rather sordid legend – the king Ramiro II called upon some treacherous noblemen under the excuse to show them “the greatest bell in the kingdom” and beheaded all of them. Some of the legends add that he used one of the severed heads as a clapper. The town hall hosts a painting by José Casado del Alisal depicting this side of the legend, even though it has been long debunked. What was open was the little church in the convent Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, though the most interesting part of the monastery is the building itself, in a very characteristic style using bricks that reminds of the Mudejar style.

The next stop was another monastery San Pedro el Viejo, one of the oldest Romanesque buildings in Spain. The church was used as Royal Pantheon and some of the old Monarchs of the former Kingdom of Aragón are buried there. Though it has been completed and renovated in different styles, the cloister dates back to 1140 – albeit some of the capitals have been “cloned” in restoration.

The inside of the church has been populated by Baroque chapels (urgh). However, some of the original polychromy can still be seen.

These are the main sights for the town of Huesca, so we decided to go on. We tried to find a place to have lunch, but most places were closed as the local festival had just finished. Searching, we ended up passing by and underneath the Porches de Galicia, a covered street considered a historical landmark, but there is no actual information on it that I could find.

On our way out, we walked past the fountain Fuente de las Musas, representing the Greek Muses.

The second leg of the journey took us to Jaca, where we visited the cathedral and the Diocesan museum. The cathedral of St. Peter Catedral de San Pedro Apóstol, a predominantly Romanesque building (with, of course, Baroque decoration), although the wooden ceilings have been replaced. The building itself was completed around the year 1130. The altar holds the organ and is richly decorated with frescoes.

The adjacent museum Museo Diocesano de Huesca, also called the Romanesque Museum, which contains a large number of Romanesque paintings that have been collected from the different churches around the area, and sculptures from the period. It also yields entrance to the cloister, which has a small garden populated with roses, bright purple thistles, and tiny shy lizards that ran away as I peered in.

It was a little too late to enter and walk around the old fortress Ciudadela de Jaca, the military museum, so I just walked around it. Unfortunately, the star shape is not appreciated from the ground, so take my word for it – it is star-shaped. Due to droughts, however, the moat is devoid of water, and it has been turned into a… deer park.

So after this we drove off to the final destination of the day, the small village of Torla-Ordesa, which is the entryway to the Pyrenees area on the Huesca province, particularly the nearby national park Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido.

We had a bit of an organisation issue here. Because the park is a National one, there is zero reliable information from the administration itself – it turns out that to reach the park you need to take the bus from the visitor’s centre in Torla-Ordesa, you cannot get there on your own (lovely for Covid times, don’t you think?). Furthermore, the park has top capacity which is measured by the buses that depart from the centre – around 30 buses, which is usually reached around 10 am in summer. This made us change all our plans. So we set the alarm for 6:30 am to get an early start, and went to bed.

As mentioned before, driven distance was around 450 km. Total walking distance: 7.5 km.

The Covid-19 Jab

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When I started Jbinnacle in 2012 it was to be a play by play for what I thought would be the trip of a lifetime, something I would never be able to repeat. But it turned out that stars aligned and it could happen again. Slowly, I started filling the page with other places and trips. When the Covid pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt, I wrote my first meta post as a way of mourning I guess. I also used the “downtime” to reconstruct other trips retroactively and I placed them in the right chronological order. Everything felt… unreal, and in a way it still does. Over a year later, I bring you a second meta post (and I swear, I’m not trying to make a habit out of that), because it will affect travel in the future, I guess.

When I got the call for the vaccine, they were not vaccinating my age group where I live, not yet. However, there seemed to be a large number of people who are rejecting their immunisation. And thus, some vaccination sites were asking medical personnel to reach to people they know in order to use up the rejected doses before they become useless. I received one of these calls on Tuesday the 15th of June to see if I was willing to take a Pfizer dose. The answer was “hell yes” – I’m not trying to make anything political out the statement. I believe it was the right thing to do.

The first dose

My appointment was at 11 am on Wednesday the 16th of June. I arranged things at work so I could just run to the centre and get the vaccine. And…well, it happened.

I arrived at the healthcare centre (not the mass vaccination site as this was a ‘scrap’ vaccination) and was asked to wait outside. A queue formed and it seemed that everybody around had been referred by someone in the healthcare centre. I talked to the nurse who had called me and thanked her and was sent in after a minute, with a note to come back on the 7th of July for the second dose. As I had to go back to work I asked for the inoculation to be on the left arm.

The nurse who had to vaccinate me agreed, but he told me the next one would have to be on the right – that was all right by me, as I won’t have to work that week. As he was explaining the potential discomfort associated to the jab I might experience, I paid attention to him – and I did not really feel the needle go in. Like seriously nothing. If not for the tiny drop of blood that there was on the gauze, I would not have believed that I got jabbed!

Spoiler: I have not become magnetic, achieved better connection to the Internet, started glowing in the dark nor any of the things the cool kids are reporting.

After the jab, I had to wait for 15 minutes (16, actually) to make sure that I did not have an immediate reaction, and I did feel a bit dizzy for a spell, but bluntly put, that must have been the 30ºC and the fact that I had completely forgotten to drink anything at work beforehand. At least it disappeared when I downed half a bottle of water afterwards.

I was expecting a strong reaction to the vaccine because I’ve had them before, but aside from a bit of queasiness, I was fine. The arm did not swell or become too painful, only if I forced it up, it was tight. I felt hot and tired towards the end of the evening. I had a paracetamol with dinner and went to bed early. The next day I took another paracetamol with breakfast and went to work – completely functional and feeling fine.

The second dose

I got this on the 7th of Julyヽ(^◇^*)/. I arrived at the healthcare centre at around 10:45, and joined the queue outside, under the sun, and not a cloud in the sky. I had to wait for around 20 minutes and finally I got my second jab on the right arm – this time I did feel the vaccine going in, but there was nothing to report at the time – 11:11 h, exactly the same time as the first shot. I went home and showered after the 15 minutes in observation.

The arm pain crept up slowly, more spread but less intense than the first dose. I could raise it up without much bother and after 9 hours or so I felt tired. The night, however, was patchy. I had a few tenths of a degree of a temperature, did not sleep well, and vomited at 4 am, and throughout the next day I felt tired and headachey. That might have been the vaccine or the bad night, but I started feeling better in the afternoon – at that point we were in El Campello, so I guess the walk on the beach help.

A bit more long-term consequences included a bump on the arm, that felt a little like a bruise, and sunlight / sun lotion / sweat sensitivity that made me itchy all over – no, not a sunburn. Just my immune system going hyper-vigilant, apparently. The peak of the sunlight itching came on the 11th, when I was at the beach, and took a couple of days to go away. I used to have those reactions when I was younger but they’ve been gone for years.

Spoiler (2): I still have not become magnetic, achieved better connection to the Internet, started glowing in the dark!

The certificate

The area where I live started offering the digital certificate just a few days after I received my first dose – the service was implemented throughout the weekend of the 19th/20th. However, my data seemed to have been lost somewhere along the way and I kept getting an error for days. I actually checked a couple of times per day every day just to see when the documentation became effective. The first dose was recorded on Saturday the 3rd of July, just five days before the second dose. The certificate read my data, the vaccination detail and the fact that it was the first dose out of two.

After that, I could access the system regularly – which I did every day for a while. Then the system collapsed when it was open to 20-somethings. And finally, on the 20th of July, one day before the two-week immunity period came through… I got my certificate.

What does this all mean

Covid is not going away, I fear. It is running rampart and out of control in way too many areas not to mutate. I want, however, to have a little hope. The only event that was on my list of 2020 cancelled items that is still standing is Saint Seiya Symphonic Adventure in Paris. I booked the tickets today (the airline vouchers are only good till the end of the year) and got a hotel (Edit: In the end, this happened in May 2022). Honestly, I don’t think that a few hours in a plane and / or a theatre are going to carry a bigger risk that what I have to do at my day job these days, and I’ve gotten pretty used to FFP2 masks for hours on end…

But for now, just a couple of days driving (and hiking) around Spain and areas where I don’t expect many tourists…

19th July 2021: The Lavender fields of Brihuega (Spain)

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Brihuega is located towards the centre of Spain, in an area known as La Alcarria. The dates back to pre-Roman times, and although it claims to have a long and rich history, and it has been related to a few battles due to its strategic location. It received the denomination of historical site in 1973 due to the Medieval buildings that remain, among them the church of St. Philip. Today, that belligerent history is past, and Brihuega prides itself in being the the garden of La Alcarria, el Jardín de la Alcarria. The village and its related neighbourhoods are home to thousands of lavender flowers – the so called Campos de lavanda.

There are over one thousand hectares of lavender fields in the village. Lavender (genus Latifolia) does not need a high-quality soil to grow, so it adapts perfectly to the area. The flowers are widely used in cosmetics (distilled into an essential oil) , and also dried up for scent. Furthermore, the fields feed the bees in the area, also famous for its honey.

Lavender flowers in June – July and it’s harvested at the beginning of August, so it was a good moment to drop by and see the fields. The town hall advises not to visit the fields at the weekend, ad I thought it might be a nice place to see the sunset – how many people may there be around the fields on a random Monday evening?

Way more than I expected. Nevertheless, when I reached the parking lot I made the lucky decision to walk to the smaller fields and not the ones most visitors seemed to be heading for. They may have yielded to less impressive pictures, but it felt a bit safer – and far enough from other visitors so I could take off the my face mask and – literally – smell the flowers, while I tried hard not to disturb the bees at work.

I left just as the sun was about to set because I did not want to be caught in a jam as all the cars came out of the parking lot, and did enjoy catching a glimpse of the sun going down as I drove back. No pictures of that, obviously.

8th – 12th July 2021: Beach weekend (El Campello & Elche, Spain)

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The sea is far, far away and due to a number of situations coming together, we rented an apartment near the ocean for a couple of days. Our usual summer destination was not a good option this year due to – as everything that is going less than great these days – to Covid, so we gave a try to the town of El Campello. The town likes boasting itself as a beach paradise-resort, while it’s barely a standard Mediterranean village eaten which boomed along other, bigger resorts such as Benidorm. The apartment was not anything marvellous, but it was extremely close to the ocean – just beyond the waterfront promenade, Paseo Marítimo.

8th July 2021: The arrival

We arrived in El Campello at around 4pm, did a fast sweep of the apartment in order to feel safer Covid-wise and I decided to go for a walk at the beach, jeans and all. There were surprisingly fewer people than expected, and not as hot as I thought it would be – all in all we were pretty lucky, weather-wise.

El Campello is built parallel to the coastline. The more traditional area has a small marina Puerto de El Campello to the north, and then a sand beach that extends towards the south divided into Platja de la Illeta and Platja del Carrer de la Mar. Though the beach has a couple of breakwaters, they are for protecting the beach against erosion and not to separate the different areas – the east of Spain has a reputation for building quite close to the beaches. Over the years, that caused the winds and waves to shift and the once amazing and long beaches started being washed away – now all those groins are necessary to keep the sand in place, and are liberally built along the Mediterranean coast.

I climbed on one, of course, more than once – and more than one too (≧▽≦).

In the evening we walked along the waterfront promenade. While most of it is fronted by restaurants and souvenir shops, I did see this cute little house.

Eventually, we chose a place to have dinner – some fish and the area speciality: honey-soaked aubergine (berenjenas con miel), which is not actually made with honey, but a type of molasses – which actually makes this a vegan dish, as bees are not involved in making the “honey”, what do you know? The first time I tried this I was not too convinced, but if prepared well, this dish is absolutely delicious.

9th July 2021: The lady’s town

Elche is a nearby town a bit inland, and the third most populated in the area. It is famous due to the Iberian sculpture bust found nearby and because of its palm grove. The history of the town can be traced back to the current archaeological site Yacimiento Arqueológico de La Alcudia, whose stratigraphic sequence dates to the Bronze Age. There are ruins and artefacts, mostly from the Iberian and Roman ages, though there are findings until the Islamic era.

In 1897, a young farmer found the bust named La Dama de Elche, the Lady of Elche, which can be seen in Madrid’s archaeological museum Museo Arqueológico Nacional – it is the limestone bust of an Iberian woman, probably with funerary purposes, what was carved around the fourth century BCE. Since that time, a great deal of work has been carried out in the area of La Alcudia, and today is a full-fledged archaeological site with a Roman wall, several Iberian and Roman houses, a Roman temple and an Iberian one, a basilica, and hundreds of sculptorical and clay artefacts.

We visited the site in the morning, hoping to finish the stroll before it became too hot. There are still works carried out in the site, but you can visit and walk around the area – as long as you don’t step on the red ground. There are two museums on site, aside from the outer ruins. In one of them there is a reproduction of the lady, which yields to easier pictures than the glass protection in the National museum. There are also interpretations and reconstructions about what the Lady may have looked like when she had her colours. Unfortunately, reaching the site is hard, and probably not worth the detour unless you’re an expert in archaeology, but it turned out interesting to see.

… Except for the “commemorative site” of where they found the Lady. That was hideous.

After La Alcudia, we drove off to the town centre to walk around Palmeral de Elche, the biggest palm grove in Europe, with around 200,000 – 300,000 trees, most of the date palm species, Phoenix dactylifera. The palm tree grove originates in the 10th century CE (planted by the Caliphate of Cordoba conquerors), and it has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since the year 2000. The most important palm grove is in the centre of the town (and we missed the dragon that stands on one of the trees ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡).

Close to the grove stands the local archaeological museum, Museo Arqueológico y de Historia de Elche, divided between the new building and the old Moorish castle or alcázar, Palacio de Altamira, which drinks from La Alcudia and other findings from the area.

After the museum, we headed off to see the main church Basílica de Santa María, but we had just missed opening times. It stands on the place of the original mosque, and the current building – the third church that has been built – is Baroque. The bold blue dome is typical of the area, found all over the region on towers and churches.

As we could not see the basilica, we just had lunch! After a bit of a banter with an over-friendly waiter we had some fish-based lunch to share – salt-preserved fish bits, grilled octopus and tuna tataki.

On the way back we got to see a different view from the palm grove and the castle and the palm grove – maybe it looked like this in the old Arab times?

It was too hot to stick around and wait for the museums and church to open up again, so we drove back and after a while I headed back to the beach. This time I reached the end of the sand beach and got to the boulder one at the end of the waterfront promenade.

We had a quiet dinner at the apartment, then went out for ice-cream. We ended up walking to the marina, Port d’El Campello and caught sight of the Torre Vigía De La Illeta in the background.

10th July 2021: Not much to report

Just some pizza and a night-time walk along the waterfront promenade yielding tries to take artistic pictures without much success.

11th July 2021: The Tower

I woke up with a lovely reaction to the sun – not a sunburn, more like an allergy flare-up (here’s the plausible explanation for that), so we went out rather early for a walk, to then shield from the sun.

From the Roman times, a number of watchtowers were build along the Mediterranean coast to be on the lookout for pirates. The tower in El Campello, Torre Vigía de la Illeta was built between 1554 and 1557 (and restored in the 1990s), was part of a watch system commissioned by the Viceroy of Valencia at the time. The tower was manned by two infantry and two mounted soldiers – in case a pirate ship was spotted, the former would make smoke signals and the latter would ride to raise alarm in town.

The tower overlooks the marina, the town, and the archaeological site Yacimiento Arqueológico La Illeta dels Banyets, with ruins and artefacts dating from the Iberian and Roman times, but we did not walk to them as it was early in the morning and it was not even open.

It was hot, so most of the day was spent under the air-con, to later have dinner out – some mussels, more aubergine with honey (not so good this time), and squid rings. But the highlight of the night was the final ice-cream waffle, which is a great, great idea.

And that was it, as we left early in the morning the following day, as soon as we could check out, as the trip is – as mentioned – long.