Category Archives: Spain [España]

24th September 2023: Hiking to the Castle of Zafra (Spain)

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An association in my town organises monthly hiking outings. I decided to give it a try – if it worked out, I could go out every month at least once for a cool day trip, and I would not have to be alone for a bunch of difficult trails. And if I got to make some friends, even better. I signed up for the first hike: Sierra de Caldereros, Pico Lituero y Castillo de Zafra. It was described as a moderate route of roughly 17.5 km and an altitude gradient of 916 metres. The main reference points were: Cubillejo del Sitio (drop-off) → Pico del Águila → Pico Lituero → Castillo de Zafra (highlight) → Hombrados (pick-up).

The group met on Sunday the 24th at 8:00, and we got on the coach. It took two hours to get to the drop-off point. I quickly realised that the group was already established and not too open to first-time newcomers. That did not deter me though, and I found my pace between the faster and the slower walkers. What I did not like was that a good deal of the route was not through a track. The description mentioned a path, which I did not see. It was a bit riskier than what I enjoy on a hike, for more experienced adventurers.

Ridge Sierra de Cubilleros track

I found the hike too energy-demanding to be able to enjoy the landscape, except when the walking stopped so we could regroup. I was able to spot a few animal tracks and some cool karst and sandstone structures. Underneath our route, the never-ending Castilian plains got lost in the distance. There were a lot of insects, especially horseflies, trying to suck us dry. We reached Pico del Águila in a bit over an hour.

The climb to Pico Lituero was hard because it was done off track, but once on top the first part of the group could catch a breather. There was a bird of prey circling over head, so I might have sneered a little about it hoping for lunch. I sat down at the summit for a little while and snacked on a cereal bar while waiting for the second part of the group.

Castilian plain from Sierra de Caldereros

The highlight of the hike was the castle Castillo de Zafra. It is believed that the original fortress was erected by the Visigoths in the 8th century. It was built upon by the Moors, and eventually taken by the Kingdom of Aragón. The castle itself was built in the late 12th or the early 13th century and today it is part of the municipality of Campillo de Dueñas. The castle was built and integrated on a sandstone outcrop in the ridge Sierra de Caldereros. It was a key defensive outpost which was never conquered, neither by the Moors nor the Castilians. However, it lost importance when the marriage between the Catholic Monarchs joined both the Castile and Aragón Kingdoms, and eventually it became derelict. It was bought and restored in the 20th century by a descendant of the last castellan on duty before the castle was given to the Catholic Monarchs. It was used as the Tower of Joy in the sixth season of Game of Thrones. We stopped there for a while to have lunch, but we could not visit the fortress as it is private property.

Castle of Zafra

After the break, we continued off to the village of Hombrados. We were back on a track, flat enough even for cars. There was not a shadow, and it was very hot – I got a sunburn, and most of the walkers ran out of water – which made find a small fountain joyful. On both of our sides, barley and wheat had been harvested. Around 16:00 we reached the village bar, which opened for us. We had a drink and a toilet break and left around 17:00. While in the coach, my nose started dripping and I realised that between the little straw in Puy du Fou a few days before, and the freshly-reaped fields, my allergies were playing up. It was a miserable couple of hours, to be honest.

In the end, I decided that these day-trips are too demanding for me, and that I had not enjoyed myself as much as I hoped. Glad I went, though, so I could judge instead of wondering.

21st September 2023: Puy du Fou España (Toledo, Spain)

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Puy du Fou is a project which started in France in 1977, when Philippe de Villiers decided to create a show in the ruins of a Renaissance castle in Les Epesses, a village about an hour away from Nantes. Initially, the show, named Cinéscénie was not too successful, but it increased in popularity as spectacular elements with horse riding and sword fighting acrobatics were added. A theme park was built around the show in 1989, and the venture went on to become one of the most popular parks in France, after Disneyland and Parc Astérix. Between 2019 and 2021, the French project was exported to Spain and turned into Puy du Fou España, located in the central city of Toledo, one of Spain’s most historical towns. Toledo is close enough to Madrid that the park can be visited on a day trip from there, and the land around it were probably on the cheap side.

Regardless of the logistics, Puy du Fou España markets itself as a historical theme park. It does not have rides, and instead, it focuses on shows, restaurants and shops. There is a day-ticket and a night-show ticket and we combined both on the same day. We reached the parking lot about twenty or thirty minutes after the park opened and had to walk for about ten minutes until we reached the entrance. We had booked a “fast pass” called Pase Emoción, which guaranteed access to all the shows at specific times, and the walk-throughs without having to queue. We had also reserved lunch, though by the time we bought tickets, the lunch-show was already sold out – we knew we risked this, but the weather had been unpredictable, and we did not want to be caught in a bad storm so we waited until the previous week to decide. While we did have some drizzle during our visit, it mostly found us indoors, so aside from the hassle of putting the camera out and having to pull it out again (and again, and again), it was not a real problem.

Summary of bookings (times three; four tickets per person):

  • Experience 1 day: Park + Night show: Parque + El Sueño de Toledo Ubicación Plata – Entrada 1 día Adulto, 68.00 € (non-weekend, non-high-season price) separated into:
    • Park ticket: Parque 1 día Adulto, 27.20 €.
    • Night show: Espectáculo Nocturno “El Sueño de Toledo” (best seating available), 40.80 €.
  • Fast pass: Pase Emoción, 20.00 €.
  • Lunch: Menú Hospedería de Santiago – Adulto (first course, second course, dessert and drink, saving a couple of bucks from the on-site price): 22.05 €. We decided to book lunch because we thought it would be harder to find a spot, and that for dinner we could grab a sandwich or something. In the end, we had a snack and a drink in the evening, which came up to around 11 € / person, bringing the total spent in the park to 121.05 € (no souvenirs, no extras).

We visited the park on a September Thursday, so we were not expecting many people. The first surprise was the number of buses in the parking lot – yes, there were quite a few people, though not “crowds” as no doubt they have during summer season. We were directed to the private-car parking lot, on the other side of the area and closer to the entrance, but we were “late” enough so that eight double-lines of cars had already been filled. We walked the kinda-long road to the park and picked up our fast passes, which were already prepared on a lanyard, and we were given times for four shows, along with the two others to do “whenever”, which turned out to be walk-throughs.

Thus, according to the bookings and the pass, we had the following schedule and in theory no queues:

  • 12:45, show: A pluma y espada.
  • 14:00, lunch at Hospedería de Santiago.
  • 15:45, show:El Último Cantar.
  • 16:30, show: Cetrería de Reyes.
  • 17:30, show: El misterio de Sorbaces.

Puy du Fou España Historical Village Puebla Real

The park is organised to look like a Medieval village – castle included – with both Christian and Moor flavours (using the word “Moor” to refer to the different Muslim groups that populated Al-Andalus in the Middle Ages). the different shows are scattered throughout the park and there are small clusters of shops, restaurants or activities. The distances are long and though there is some protection, it would not protect from rain nor sun / heat. There were “watering points” but no fountains at them? I think that’s where people selling water bottles stand in summer. I probably should have done more research on the whole thing, but I was just tagging along someone who really was curious about it and I was happy to let them take over the organisation. Instead of wandering around a little, they decided to go inside the theatre that hosted the first show almost at the time doors opened to let people without the fast pass in. Thus, we waited for about half an hour until the show started.

A pluma y espada, “With quill and sword” is an adaptation of one of the French shows, about Musketeers. That makes more sense than the Spanish version – which follows 16th-century playwright Lope de Vega as he tries to foil a conspiracy to kill the king. The stage changes from an open theatre to a prison, to a ship, to the roofs of Toledo as scenes follow one another. After the happy ending, there is a pretty ballet / flamenco dance on the water, along horse riding, which was really cool.

Theatre exterior and stage

We went out and our designated guide got lost, getting us into the complete opposite direction from where he wanted to go. We finally turned around and found our way, though it started raining. We decided to try our luck in the restaurant to see if we could grab lunch early, and we were lucky enough to do so. Actually, we had to be in the restaurant 10 minutes before the reservation, but we had to queue because a bunch of groups before us had issues ordering and understanding how the restaurant worked – never mind that it was easy: flat rate with a choice each from three first courses, three second courses, three desserts, and one drink. Finally, we reached the front of the line and found our table, got our lunch, and sat down.

The food was okay, though value-for-money was a little on the low side (captive audience and all. Though you can take your own food into the park, it might just not a good idea to carry a heavy backpack considering distance and queueing). I had a goat-cheese salad with honey-mustard sauce, a vegetable parmentier – which had pepper instead of the announced mushrooms and upset my stomach for a while – and rice pudding.

In general, the park feels too big, probably with the idea of filling it up as the park generates revenue (though I’m sure that when it’s crowded during summer season it does not feel as empty). My impression that I had was that as long as you were lucky and everything ran smoothly, it would be okay, but anything going wrong could ruin your experience. Just a couple of weeks earlier, the park had to be evacuated due to torrential rains, and people complained about being denied refunds. We would have a little inconvenience later.

After lunch it had almost cleared, and we headed off to Allende la Mar Océana, “Beyond the Ocean Seas”, which is a walk-through. You “enter” a medieval palace to see Queen Isabel I of Castile (Isabella the Catholic) meeting with Christopher Columbus, as the latter convinces her to fund his expedition to the Indies. Then you get to see different stages of Columbus’ trip with a fictionalised voice diary, with the most important stages: setting sail, navigating near Tenerife, where one of the volcanos had erupted, losing hope in the Sargassum Seas, and finally reaching America – complete with Amerigo Vespucci crying “land ahoy” and walking out to a paradise beach with white sand and palm trees. Some of the areas have live actors interpreting scenes. Not too impressive, and too many people decided to get in the way of my pictures, However, the queen smiled at me.

Puy du Fou España Allende La Mar Océana

We had time to check out the other walk-through De tal palo…. The Spanish expression de tal palo, tal astilla means “like parent like child” or “the apple does not fall far from the tree”, literally “from this stick, that splinter”. The idea is to stop to listen to different generations of the same family which have partaken in key episodes in the history of Spain: the resistance in Numancia against the Romans, Medieval clashes between Christians and Moors, and so on. It was probably the weakest show, but truth be told my companions were not really in the mood for it, and we ended up seeing only two complete tales, and two halves. The rain stopped around this time, too.

Afterwards, we backtracked to El Último Cantar “The last Song” or “The last Romance” which tells an extremely sanitised story of one of the warlords of Medieval Spain. Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid, was a 10th-century mercenary whose life was later composed into a book-long romance. He’s sort of the classical hero of Spain, with an extremely idealised view – imagine, this is the first compulsory book to read in school when you’re around 10. The show was even more romanticised. It was held inside, in a circular stage, and the stands turned to face the different scenes. It had work with horses, and even sort of a just. The problem was that this show finished past 16:15, and we had to be at the exact opposite side of the park before 16:30 (16:25, as they closed the doors). My companions told me to make a run for it, because they knew it was the show I’d be more keen on. I literally ran halfway through the park and made it just before doors closed – the person managing entrance was extremely rude, too.

Puy du Fou España El último cantar stage

This show was Cetrería de Reyes, “Kings’ falconry”. I did not follow the plot much, to be honest, I was focused on the birds. It is supposed to be an encounter between a Muslim king and a Christian knight during the Middle ages, and they decide to… measure each other up by showing off their birds of prey. There are barn owls, sparrowhawks, caracaras, falcons, eagles and griffin vultures trained to attack on command, fly to specific places, and “hunt” mid-air. More exotic species include a secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) and a marabou stork (Leptoptilos crumenifer) which were cool just for being there. At the end of the show, they let out a lot of the flying birds that flock all over the show. It was really cool.

Puy du Fou España falcorny show

I got to see the whole show since I sprinted. The other two people were lead in later, as most of the fast pass holders did not make it. They were admitted in small groups around one third into the show. It felt like really bad organisation, to sell something that is almost impossible for most of the pass holders. Furthermore, at the end, we were ushered out through different gates, and could not meet up amidst the crowd. We reunited at the final show.

El misterio de Sorbaces, “Mystery in Sorbaces”, tells a fictionalised tale of how the king Recaredo I, the first Visigothic King in Hispania who converted into Roman Christianity in 587. His brother marries a Roman girl in a Christian ceremony, and the festivities include a lot of horse riding acrobatics. Then the goths come to destroy the village, but they are stopped by the “miracle” of a chalice turning a pond into fire. Recaredo converts and the whole stage is turned into a monastery. Besides the horse riding, the background moving and changing, and the fire special effects are the more impressive thing of this show.

Puy du Fou España El Misterio de Sorbaces initial and final stages

We just hung around the park a bit longer for a while after that. The shops were pretty expensive, and though the eagle plushies were adorable, they cost too much money. So were the handwritten scrolls, even though they were fantastic. We grabbed supper in one of the fast food restaurants – a toast and a drink, a bit on the unremarkable side. Finally, we set off towards the outdoor theatre for the night show El Sueño de Toledo, “Toledo Dream”. It was getting cold so people were waiting in the corridors of the theatre, then the staff kicked us out to line, and they created a bit of chaos – despite assigned seating. They wanted guests to be there with an hour’s time, and in the end we had to wait around 50 minutes until the show started, in front of a backdrop of the city of Toledo. We had paid extra for “silver” tickets, and I was very surprised how they were spaces that I found much better, but were not considered “silver”.

As the sun sets, the story starts with an old water bearer coming in – he represents the memory of Toledo as a metaphor of the history of Spain. He comes and talks to a young lady at the gate of the walled town, and together they reminisce about the key episodes of Spanish and Toledo’s history. The first stage is the Moors leaving town to battle the Christians in Al-Andalus (though Toledo probably existed before as a Roman encampment, it was the Umayyad civilisation who made it great). The Christians attack the town and conquer it, then lose it again. When they once more enter the town, one of the churches has kept a candle burning in front of a walled-off crucifix (famous Toledo legend). The show is presented with lots of light, acrobatics, horse riding, and dancing, even on the shallow water that forms the stage. The sultan’s glass palace comes out of the water, and the cathedral is created with water spurts and light effects.

Time passes. The Catholic monarchs receive Columbus back from America and his ship also emerges from the water. The revolt of the Comuneros comes and goes. Toledo loses its importance and becomes a town of farmers. Then the Napoleonic armies ride in on white horses – the men walk into war and are killed, and the women take over from them. Peace comes, prosperity: the 20th century, the train, the Roaring Twenties – and then the Civil War in the 1930s. The singing girl cries out that her brothers killed each other in battle. In a final dance of hope and healing women dressed with the traditional attire of the different autonomous communities come and dance with her (a bit… dismissive… considering recent events and tensions). Then instead of ending in a happy note, everything goes downhill as the water bearer claims that he is a dream and he’s fading away and the children won’t hear of him and the stories he has to tell, as the whole cast comes to wave goodbye – and it’s about 200 of them, not counting horses, sheep, goats, oxen…

Puy du Fou España night show El Sueño de Toledo

When it was over, we walked back to the parking lot and drove off. It was a bit chaotic and we ended up going in the opposite direction we wanted to – because there was nowhere to turn around until we reached the motorway. We drove to the hotel and crashed in the rooms. If we had been just one floor or two higher, I would have had awesome views of Toledo, but most of it was hidden behind trees.

All in all, the experience was okay – for one time. The price was steep, not even counting petrol and accommodation. I have read online that people go back four or five times, I don’t get the need to do so, even if I know that we missed most of the street shows. We were pretty lucky with the weather, because the park is not prepared for either heat nor heavy rain – and Castille is known for its scorching summers and its temperamental thunderstorms.

The next morning, we had breakfast – hotel was good, but the breakfast there was quite expensive, so I had brought some canned coffee and pastries. We drove back without much traffic, making this a 24-hour-ish adventure. Maybe it would have been cool to try the spa at the hotel, but driving back later would have meant running into the heavy traffic around Madrid at the start of the weekend, and we preferred not to do so.

16th September 2023: Archaeological Site of “Los Casares” (Spain)

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I took an almost two-hour drive to the municipality of Riba de Saelices, which involved having to fill up the tank in the middle of nowhere – ouch. It was early in the morning, and once I got off the motorway I saw a bunch of roe deer grazing dawn away. A couple of them got spooked by the noise of the engine and jumped towards the road, and another was uncomfortably close to the asphalt, but I was careful not to run any of them over – of course!

I went past the village and took a turn at an unpaved road, and reached the parking spot of the site, 3.5 km later, around 9:10, which was great for my free 9:30 visit. . My main interest in the archaeological site Conjunto Arqueológico de Los Casares was the cave Cueva de los Casares, which can only be visited by appointment and in small groups. Post Covid recovery plans have made some archaeological sites free until the end of the year, and I wanted to visit before the end of good weather. The cave holds important carvings from the Upper or Median Palaeolithic period. However, the site also comprises the remains of a Muslim village, a defensive tower, and an ancient oven, with the latest findings dating from the 14th century.

I found the parking spot – a clearing at the foothill of the area. The whole place was empty except for a kettle of griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) circling up above. It was a bit creepy, I’ll be honest, and I joked with myself that maybe the webpage for the archaeological site was just the way the vultures ordered food. From the parking lot I saw a small clearing with tables, and up the hill, a small tower, which I thought was the tower from an old Muslim castle. Since I had some time I decided to climb up and I found the entrance to the cave, with a notice that visits started there. By then it was already 9:30 so I thought maybe my ticket was wrong and the winter timetable had already started so the visit was at 10:00. A bit before 9:40 I saw two cars approaching – yay.

Vultures flying

Archaeological site Los Casares: cave, ruins, and tower

Finally, the guide arrived and she told me that the visitors in the other car had lost their way, so she had had to guide them down the track. We started late as the group also took a while to come up. We stayed at the entrance of the cave for a little as the guide explained about the civilisation that inhabited the area in the Palaeolithic, and a bit about the cave bears that used it as a lair before them.

The cave Cueva de los Casares was inhabited by Neanderthals some 60,000 to 40,000 years ago. The stonework and industry have been classified as the European Mousterian; among objects found inside the cave there are flint points, arrow tips, scrapers, and even pottery. Animal remains, both from predatory events and human consumption have also been recovered. The most important archaeological items found in the cave are the carvings on the walls. Though there are carvings from later periods, some experts think that the cave holds the oldest anthropomorphic carvings in the Iberian peninsula – not carved by Homo sapiens (modern humans) but the previous Homo neandertalensis.

Entrance to the cave Cueva de los Casares

Only the first third of the cave can be visited, and we got to see horses, cattle and the human-like figures. Once you know what you’re looking for, it gets easier to identify the shapes. One characteristic about the human depictions of the period is that humans are represented to have weird heads, though nobody really knows why – possibly animal attributes to represent their qualities. The humanoids are represented alone and in groups, and sometimes they are one above another. There are families, activities – such as diving – and copulation (apparently this is important because the carving in question might be the first ever recorded). It is an interesting experience, though no pictures are allowed inside, there are some on the official page – you don’t get to see half of them anyway. I’m disappointed we were not shown any mammoth carvings either, those are restricted to the expert-only area, but at least I saw something, and it was original.

After the cave, I climbed up the gully to the hilltop and the Berber tower – called Torre atalaya (“Watchtower tower”) – which hangs above the entrance to the cave to look at it. On the way up I also had a good view of the Muslim settlement underneath, Poblado Hispano-musulman. I also looked down the gorge and the valley called Valle de los Milagros, which I may or may not hike in the near future in search for fossils. However, I really did not feel like staying at that point, so I just drove back.

Watchtower Los Casares

Muslim village of Los Casares

Valley Valle de los Milagros from above

9th September 2023: DinoExpo XXL (Guadalajara, Spain)

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When I heard that this was going to happen nearby, in Guadalajara, I was mildly excited. I mean, I did not expect a Jurassic World Exhibition level event, more similar to Dino World Expo. Not even.

In any case, I decided to attend DinoExpo XXL to have a look. There, I had the pleasure to see a bunch of dinosaur models cramped in an obviously-too-small area, a few fake skeletons and bones, and some “Ice Age” representation. Some of the dinosaurs swayed their tails and necks, and there were roaring sounds. It is obvious that someone agreed to place the exhibit there without thinking it through. The models were extremely close to each other, to the point that a lot of their tails were basically in another one’s snout.

The kids were thrilled though, except the ones who wanted to actually ride the available dinosaurs and their parents told them that it was too expensive – on top of the ticket – for a photo-op. A bigger area would have been more enjoyable, but the way it was crammed in the auxiliary tent took of a lot of its lustre. Not sure about the legality of the Jurassic Park logo either… The models were a bit on the old side – some of them a bit damaged, and others inaccurate, such as a Spinosaur with the old tail, and Nanotyrannus has been deemed a juvenile T-rex for a while now.

Two dinosaurs on jeeps that remind of Jurassic park

DinoExpo XXL general view

A hunt scene and a family scene - with dinosaurs

A model of smallish T-rex and a fossil cast.

I stayed for about forty minutes, then left when the area started crowding up. I really did not feel like doing anything else, so I just drove home.

31st August 2023: Blue Supermoon 2023

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The blue supermoon happened the night of the 30th, but it slipped my mind and I was only out just before midnight, therefore I saw the moon already on the 31st. A full moon occurs when the earth does not block the moon getting light from the sun, so it reflects sunlight with all its visible surface. A blue moon is a second full moon within the same month. A super moon means that the moon is closer to earth than usual. The night between 30th and 31st made everything come together at the same time. Even more, it was the closest full moon to earth in the whole year. According to the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, the moon looked about 8% larger and 15% brighter than a normal full moon.

Blue Supermoon 2023

My town is horrible to catch moonrise, but during the evening of the 31st I was also able to observe it, about three times bigger than the usual size, and with a bright gold-orange colour.

Moon rising behind buildings

Moon rising

Note to self: be in a better position in 2037 to see the next blue supermoon rising.

5th August 2023: Prints, Sharks, Mice and Neon (Madrid, Spain)

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I won’t say that the Southern Italy trip was a bad one, but due to the planning blunder, the heatwave and the general not-so-relaxing atmosphere, I kind of needed a low-stakes day out. And what can be lower-stakes than a silly giant shark film? I got myself a ticket to watch Meg 2: The Trench at noon – I’ve found out that my non-dubbed cinema has started doing matinée shows at a reduced price – and planned my day in Madrid around that.

I took the train and arrived in Madrid on time for my ideal connection. Unfortunately the local public transport is chaotic this summer, with both the train system and the underground going through construction, outages and closed stations. As fortunately the city was between heat waves, I decided to walk for 20 minutes instead of waiting for 17 for a train that might or might not come to take me to where I wanted to go.

My first stop was Imprenta Municipal – Artes del Libro, a local free museum dedicated to the history of book printing and binding. The exhibition is hosted in a dedicated building with two levels. The ground floor focuses on the invention and development of the print, both for text and images, and the art of binding and decorating books. There are printing “machines” from the 16th century on, for copying books and texts, and the whole thing gives off a retro feeling – a video actually shows how the machines work even today.

Collage Imprenta Municipal Artes del Libro

The second floor held an exhibition about “Asian Writings” Trazos de Oriente: imágenes, objetos y caligrafías de Asia. It hosts Arabic documents, Mongolian drawings, Chinese writing instruments and Myanma and Hindu praying books, along with items like ex libris and schoolbooks. All very cool.

Exhibition about writing in Asia

I had a little bit of time before the film, so I got a snack, then headed to the nearby Yelmo Cines Ideal to watch my film. Something I’ve learnt is that matinées attract a weird crowd – when I went to watch Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, I sat next to someone who narrated the whole film, and this time there was a lady who would tut whenever any of the sharks was on screen. I read the Meg: a novel of deep terror by Steve Alten a lifetime ago, and I enjoyed its albeit-very-liberal adaptation to film, especially because it did have a self-parody tone. It was fun because it was implausible, and it knew it was so. The second and current film, Meg 2: The Trench, has tried to become more of an action-like blockbuster and it takes itself way too seriously in my opinion. But there are three giant prehistoric sharks on screen at times, and I’m simple in that regard. Bigger and more teeth, I’m all for that.

The film finished around 14:00. I was not hungry, so I just grabbed myself a drink at Starbucks. I had a ticket at 15:00 at the Nomad Museo Inmersivo (and it was bad timing I guess, because just a couple of days later they opened a new exhibit). When I first read about it, the idea reminded me of Mori TeamLab Museum, since the art is all digital. The museum is staged in two floors. The lower one hosts the immersive projection ward and the shop. The upper one hosts the entrance and the “activities”. I thought that I’d ask if I could come in early, and they had absolutely no problem with that, so I entered around 14:35.

As you climb down the stairs, you have a very cool corridor with mirrors and lights that lead to the projection area. I had a ticket with entrance and “iris picture”, so an employee took me to get that one (I guess because the photographer was about to go on a break). We had to try a couple of times as it was hard to force my eyelid open under the bright light of the flash. The photographer was very patient with me and we were done in a few minutes.

Interactive Museum Nomad access corridor

I found my way back to the beginning – the museum is surprisingly small. The immersive projection is shown on the four walls and the floor. The projection I watched was called Utopia 1.0, where millions of digital blocks work as a tridimensional Lego set that sort of “build” a surreal world with dragons, deer, sculptures, whales, high rises, dinosaurs… The whole thing takes around 20 minutes and you can watch sprawled on the floor, or sitting up on a pouf – I chose this last option as it allowed me to turn around.

Interative Museum Nomad: Utopia projection

Following the projection, I went upstairs to do the activities. There’s a virtual reality experience where you get to travel the cosmos and see a lot of “space cetaceans”. I wonder why digital artists are so keen on whales… Another of the activities consists on “painting” planets with a giant brush as they float on a wall, and when you colour them all, you get to see penguins on a rocket or something… I did not catch it well because a bunch of kids burst in and took over. On another wall, there is a bunch of neons that you can play with using an app that you download on your phone, and blast music so they pulsate with that. Finally, the nice attendant is at the ready to take your picture at some stairs photo call (I think it is the glorified emergency exit), and you can go back down using a spiral slide.

There is finally a last corridor with lights and you end up at the shop, where you can start all over again, as there is no limit about how long you can stay in the museum. I really liked the first corridor, so I went back there for a while. Then I walked into the projection area again just in time to watch the dinosaurs roam once more. A fun detail is that even the toilets are “in character” with neon and messages.

Interactive Museum Nomad exhibits

On my way out, I bought myself a shark glass at the shop. There was also a very fun pufferfish cocktail glass, but I thought it would be awful to clean after use – not that the shark one is going to be much easier though… I left and headed off to a place I’ve always tangentially felt curious about, even if I’m not really the target public for it – it’s called Casita-Museo del Ratón Pérez.

Ratón Pérez or Mouse Pérez (also called Ratoncito Pérez, Little Mouse Pérez) is the equivalent of the Tooth Fairy in Spanish-speaking tradition. In 1894, writer Luis Coloma was commissioned with writing a tale for the future King Alfonso XIII, who had lost his first tooth. This tale penned the folklore mouse into print. According to the story, Mouse Pérez lived in central Madrid, in a biscuit box in the patisserie Prast, situated in number 8 of Madrid’s Calle Arenal. The town hall installed a plaque to commemorate the place and when the shopping centre in that building became almost empty, someone came up with the idea of building a “museum-house” dedicated to the mouse.

Museum-House of Mouse Pérez

The kids had a blast for sure, the visit is a forty-minute activity 100% dedicated to them . The guide has them running round looking for stuff and going into small doors. I snooped around and found it an interesting business model – though it falters when you pay a bit of attention to detail: books like 1984 or anatomy guides may very well be interesting, but a bit out of place in a children’s museum. At the end of the visit, the guided asked me what I was doing there and I told him I… wanted to see what the fuss was about, what kind of things they did in such “alternative” museums. We chatted away for a bit before I left.

To end the day, I did some shopping and I headed back home – the trains were delayed, but I eventually made it home and had a pizza dinner, because I suck at staying fed on day trips. Truth be told, I wanted to step by a famous bar to eat a calamari sandwich, but it… was complicated, with lots of signage on where to stand and wait to be seated, but there was nobody around, so in the end I decided I did not care enough for the calamari. Some other day – I’ve been saying that for months now though…

11th July 2023: Museum of Dreamers in Madrid (Spain)

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After I had so much fun in the Balloon Museum, I decided that I also wanted to see the Museum of Dreamers, which is something similar. Furthermore, it Madrid exhibit will close down at the end of July, too.

After I finished French school in Madrid, I headed headed off to the Japanese fusion restaurant Nomo Braganza, part of the Nomo Group. Nomo was established in 2007 under the culinary direction of Japanese chef Naoyuki Haginoya. I have to say that I don’t really trust the Spanish-Japanese fusion too much, but in this case, it really panned out. I met my sibling for a late lunch, because I was curious about the chef’s menu, what in Japanese would be called omakase [お任せ], which means leaving the choice of food to the chef. The menu was was a whooping 12 small-sized courses for 50€ – drinks not included, and considering it was 39 ºC outside, we ended up ordering a few rounds of water.

The menu, which changes periodically, comprised in July 2023:

  • Age Edamame Truffle – fermented edamame beans fried with white truffle scent. I personally prefer my edamame boiled, but the truffle scent was a nice touch.
  • Sukiyaki Croquette – oxtail croquette breaded with panko breadcrumbs. This was surprisingly good – and the actual flavour was strong.
  • Maguro Taco – mini taco of tuna tartar with wasabi and shiso (the “taco” was weirdly… not taco-shaped, more like cracker-shaped). The tuna was really good, albeit the base was a bit strange.
  • Gyu Niku Gyoza – aged beef dumplings with caramelised onion and yuzu, two of them per person. It was all right.
  • Ebi Chili – spicy king prawns and fried egg on kataifi noodles, mixed at the table. When we are talking spicy, it means… really spicy. The prawn bits were sizeable, but this was really something I would not miss should it disappear from the menu.
  • Toro Tartar No Temaki – tuna tartar prepared at the table: raw tuna belly mixed with Japanese onion, turnip, egg yolk, chilli pepper and wasabi on a bed of nori and rice so you can roll it yourself (spoiler: you really can’t). This was probably one of my favourite items – but I guess that after all I am a raw tuna fan.
  • Brie Nigiri – flamed Brie cheese nigiri with honey and walnuts. This was probably the weakest sushi bite, but it was still good.
  • Butter Fish Nigiri – butterfish nigiri with kimchi and chilli peppers. Butterfish is only good raw anyway.
  • Aburi Salmon Nigiri – flamed Norwegian salmon nigiri, with Japanese mayonnaise, salmon roe and onion. I still prefer raw salmon, but the flame was light so it was barely perceptible.
  • Maguro Tataki No Nigiri Trufa Nose – tuna tataki nigiri with soy and black truffle sauce. This was also really good.
  • Gyu Niku No Tataki – aged beef tataki with caramelised mushrooms and miso sauce. The combination of meat and the mushroom was strange, but when taken separately it was all good.
  • Caramel dorayaki – two halves of a dorayaki filled with salty caramel paste. Unexpected, because the menu listed something else, but it is not as if it was bad at all!

Chef's choice menu at Nomo Madrid

My sibling ordered some green tea out of the menu, and in the end, the drinks did not add as much to the price as I expected. Also, I have to give a shout-out to the pickled ginger we got. Really good.

After having lunch, we took a train towards the Museum of Dreamers, which is stands in Espacio Ibercaja Delicias, a place that seems to always look somewhat abandoned, even when it is stupidly hot and sunny. The exhibit was designed by sisters Elena and Giulia Sella, founders of Postology, an agency specialised in “phygigal” experiences. This concept merges the words “physical” and “digital”, allowing for a number of immersive and surreal experiences. The Museum of Dreamers is one of those things that you have to see with an open mind to have some fun. It comprises sixteen interactive installations which are basically photo-ops – after all, the word instagrammable has been officially accepted on dictionaries. I guess it is a new niche that can be exploited, and to be honest, I can get behind that, because some of these activities are hilarious.

Entry is timed, but they do not hold a very strict waiting policy – at least not on a Tuesday at 17:00 and 39 ºC. There were no timed exhibits or performances either. The first installation is a dark room with a starry sky of sorts, designed maybe to isolate the rest of the exhibition from the outside, maybe as a metaphor (100 Dreamers). Then you get to a semi open space that opens to the smaller installations that allow for fun pictures. All through the space there are motivational sentences and “rules” for safety in the different installation.

There is some kind of cosmic tube with mirror that was dizzying to walk into (Free your power), a tunnel made of hearts with an encouraging message at the end (Do what you love), an upside down room (Change perspective), an downside down bedroom with a giant plush and fun bed covers (Never stop dreaming), one full of disco lamps (Sparkle more), and a neon staircase flanked by colourful palm trees (Step by Step).

Museum of Dreamers exhibits

Afterwards, there is a ball pit – you know, it’s not like I had ever stepped into one before Friday, and now that’s twice in one week – with a “relaxing island” in the middle (Enjoy Today). In front of that, a tunnel made of fake pink flowers with a long table, set for a tea party (Believe in Magic). That managed to make you think of Alice in Wonderland imprint on your brain. Thus, you are in the right mindset for the following room, full of giant mushrooms and flowers that open up at will – theirs, for sure, not the visitors – whole giant butterflies hang around with their wings made out of lights (Wonder).

Museum of Dreamers exhibits

The final part of the exhibit consists on a second row of booths – a colour wheel, a door that opens to a fantasy scenery, a VR experience (Choose your Way), a stage (The stage is yours), some pink telephones (Your Dreams are Calling you), bright lights commanding you to DREAM (Be Bright)… There were two more rooms, one with a sky background and swings (Sky is not the limit), and the other with punching bags reading FEAR, STRESS, ANXIETY and so on (Never Give Up). I can’t punch, but I can strangle, so I choked the hell out of these last two.

Museum of Dreamers exhibits

That was the end of the escapade. It was a fun half-day out.

7th July 2023: Balloon Museum “Pop Air” in Madrid (Spain)

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Part of this summer’s plans involved a three-week French course-and-stay in Montpellier, but I ended up changing my mind – too many hidden costs on top of the already-steep price, and a generalised bad feeling that I could not really define. I decided to take a course in Madrid and use up the evenings to do some exploring in town.

After class, I booked a table at the Chueca shop of the Japanese restaurant chain Sibuya Sushi Bar, which claims to offer a new concept of sushi. Most of what they offer felt pretty normal to me, except some random baos and the desserts. I browsed the website before booking, so when I arrived I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted. Somehow, the waiter did not expect that and was thrown off track. I ordered some ebi furai and a sashimi mix – I have to admit that the size of the sashimi portion did surprise me a little, as I did not expect such a generous serving. Luckily, I had hold on ordering dessert, because the two dishes were more than enough.

Lunch at Sibuya Madrid

There were two temporary exhibits I wanted to check out, and I chose the one that closed down earlier. I checked as I had lunch, and there were tickets available online. I decided to take the underground and buy the tickets in person instead of stressing about making it on time for a particular timeslot. I reached the Balloon Museum on time for the 15:45 entry. The exhibition Pop Air runs from March to July 2023 in the Escenario Puerta del Ángel in Madrid’s Casa de Campo.

Still considered a noon slot, the exhibition was not too crowded at the time I entered, I even had a couple of rooms for myself before I reached a point in which you had to be admitted because the performance was timed. The Ballon Museum‘s Pop Air exhibit is a collection of art pieces that use air and light as their main vehicle.

Artworks:

  • The Goof by Filthy Luker (2021). They are a bunch of “friendly monsters” that observer the world feeding off surprise and happiness. They look… just adorable, as if they were made of giant inflated latex gloves in different colours with huge eyes.
  • Aria, The Breath Immersive Experience by Pepper’s Ghost (2022). A room full of mirrors and digitally-created colourful spheres that spreads to infinite and beyond.
  • Airship Orchestra by Eness (2020). More adorable creatures made out of air, some resembling Japanese peaches, other bunnies, or cacti.

    • Ballon Museum exhibits. The Goof, Aria, Airship orchestra

  • Hypercosmo by Hyperstudio (2021), which is basically a huge ball pit with a show of music and lights.
  • A Quiet Storm by Quiet Ensemble (2022). A dark room where cannons shoot bubbles.
  • Silenus by Max Streicher (2002). A giant, breathing… person… sleeping. It’s a bit creepy, to be honest.
  • Knot by Cyril Lancelin (2017). It is an inflatable… knot, literally a 3D knot made out of a tube.

    • Balloon Museum exhibits: Hypercosmo, A quiet storm, Silenis, Knot

  • Polyheadra by Karina Smigla-Bobinski (2022). It is a room full of balloons with small magnets which you can stick to the wall and the ceiling, and even to each other.
  • Never Ending Story by Motorefisico (2021). Music: Gentle Music by Plume (Netlabel). A lot of decorative balls in a small room full of mirrors and light.
  • Tholos by Plastique Fantastique (2022). A giant black ball surrounded by a plastic structure that imitates the archaeological tholos tombs.
  • Canopy by Pneuhaus & Bike Powered Events (2019). Four palm-tree-like structures that open up and glow if you bike them into life.

    • Balloon Museum Exhibits. Polyheadra, Never ending story, Tholos, Canopy

  • Cloud Swing by Lindsay Glatz with Curious Form (2019). Cute swings held by colourful “clouds” of light.
  • The GINJOS by Rub Kandy (2022). They’re blobs of air with eyes. When I saw them my first impression was “they’re squishy and unstable. I have found my people”. I also found the song hilarious, especially the reference that “GINJOS are not Barbapapa”.
  • Into the Rainbow by Ultravioletto. A VR experience out of which one cannot really take pictures. A white sphere travels through the colours of the rainbow and its symbols – orange candy, yellow rubber duckies, green trees, blue whales, purple… cows(?) and amethyst crystals
  • A number of cute photo booths for picture opportunities, without credit to any particular artist.
  • Parcobaleno by Stefano Rossetti (2020), is a large “inflatable park” for “all the family” (i.e. for kids), which was empty as it was way too hot for any playing.

Ballon Museum exhibits. The swings, the Ginjos, Parcobaleno

All in all, it was a really silly but fun experience. I headed back home afterwards, because even if exploring Casa de Campo is on my list, it was way too hot and I did not have any cold drinks on me. I made an amazing underground-train connection though, which was great because the Casa de Campo stop is pretty far away by public transport – and rather horrible to drive to.

24th June 2023: Abierto por Restauración. La Puerta de Alcalá (Madrid, Spain)

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There is a Spanish adage that calls King Carlos III (1716 – 1788) “the best mayor Madrid ever had”. The truth is that when Fernando VI died, his brother, King of Naples and Sicily ascended the Spanish throne. He started a number of reforms in the Spanish capital that today conform the so-called “Way of the Light” – Unesco Heritage Site Paisaje de la Luz since 2021.

Madrid had at the time a surrounding wall for administrative reasons, in order to control trade. The different gates were named according to the main city they lead to. Carlos III decided to remodel one of the gates, the one that lead north-west – first to Alcalá de Henares and then to the rest of Europe. To carry out the task he called for a contest, which was “coincidentally” won by the Court’s architect Francesco Sabatini. It took ten years (from 1769 to 1779) to be completed, in typical Neoclassical style.

Today, this gate is still known as Puerta de Alcalá, and it stands in the central district of Salamanca in Madrid. The wall, however, long gone so the structure remains as a triumph arch more than a gate, in the middle of a roundabout in the Square Plaza de la Independencia.

The gate measures almost 24 metres high, 43 metres wide and 12 metres deep. It was built in solid stone with five arches, and decorated with sculptures depicting the cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance) and allegories of war victories.

Puerta de Alcalá under the protective cover

Restoration studies started in 2022, and the works began in 2023. In March 2023, it was announced that the gate would be “open for restoration” Abierto por Restauración, and that about 6,500 tickets would be offered for guided visits to the monument throughout summer. I had a free morning when the tickets went live and I managed to secure one, despite them being “sold out” in minutes. The Abierto for Restauración project, financed by the Madrid Town Hall, aims to raise awareness of the heritage that Madrid holds.

Though I had originally planned for a day out, I was not feeling too well . Nevertheless, I really did not want to give up the chance and I decided to just head over, attend the visit. and just take the train back home, making it a half-day out.

The gate is covered with a huge billboard showing a hyper-realistic photograph, which also hides part of the scaffolding and protective messes that cover the structure. The restoration aims to repair the mistakes of previous attempts at conservation, counteract the effects of pollution and weather, and secure the sculptures at the top of the gate.

We were supposed to meet at 10:45 at the gate of the park on one side of the square, for the 11:00 visit. The guide arrived at 11:00 sharp and started “taking attendance” – since the gate is technically a “construction site” you are insured, and you have to wear a security helmet and all. Then she took us to the base of the gate and told us the history of the construction. The previous group started coming down at 11:00 and we climbed at 11:15. By noon, we were down.

We climbed the inner scaffolding to the top of the gate, where we got to see the work first-hand. Not that there was much to see, because the works cover most everything. There are giant staples that have been taken off the sculptures in order to repair the damage and secure their placement.

Scaffolding supporting the Puerta de Alcalá

The upper platform allowed for snooping along the sculptures there and the views around the gate, along with a bit of the work being done – huge metal supports for the sculptures, filling up cracks, insulation…

Sculptures at the top of Puerta de Alcalá

Views from the top of Puerta de Alcalá

Though the experience was short, and I did not see as much as I hoped, I was lucky to grab a ticket – 6,500 of them, with 13,000 in the waiting list – but it looks like the reforms won’t be over for a while, so it might still be open next summer. It might be an interesting experience to try again and compare the progress.

11th June 2023: Cuevas del Cerro del Águila {WNW Spain, with a splash of Portugal, June 2023}

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We had decided to split the way back, so we booked tickets for the natural cave known as Cuevas del Cerro del Águila. They are located in the mountain range Sierra de Gredos, quite literally in the middle of nowhere. They were discovered by accident in 1963, and have been open to the public since 1964.

The geological construction dates back 500 million years, from the time when the area was a dolomite-filled marine platform. When Spain emerged as dry land, rivers started flowing, dissolving part of the rocks, and created de underground halls. Mineral-saturated water dripping creates a wide variety of speleothems – stalactites, stalagmites, columns or stalagnates, flowstones…

Caves Cueva del Águila

Caves Cueva del Águila

It was a really cool thing to see – I’ve been to caves before but this one was the most impressing I’ve visited in a while.

Afterwards we just drove off back home for a late lunch, a nap, and getting ready for the work week.

10th June 2023: La Alberca & Plasencia {WNW Spain, with a splash of Portugal, June 2023}

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We left off the castle to have breakfast at the village of La Alberca, a municipality known for two things. The first one is the timber framing of its houses. The buildings have a stony ground floor and a lime-white second floor with the post-and-beam style in dark wood.

La Alberca

The second one is the tradition of the whole village raising a piglet together. The swine is freed mid-June (we missed it by a couple of days) and everybody in the village keeps track of it – feeding and sheltering the animal – until it is auctioned for charity when the time for slaughter draws near, in January. There is a sculpture as homage to the animal in the middle of the church square, yielding to what I’d say is the most iconic sight. However, the amount of butcher and delicatessen shops makes the whole thing a little… weird.

Monument La Alberca pig

We drove through the natural area of Sierra de Francia, and stopped over at the viewpoint Mirador del Madroñal. From there we could see the abundant vegetation – oaks, chestnuts, and vine-fields. A bit further, we reached a second viewpoint Mirador Las Juntas.

Viewpoint Mirador del Madroño

Viewpoint Mirador de las Juntas

Our road was closed, so we had to take a detour, but we eventually reached Plasencia with a lot of big plans. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the Parador de Plasencia, built in the former convent Convento de Santo Domingo, we learnt that the town was in the middle of the local festival. Such thing meant outdoor bars and music – almost rave-like, and most monuments being closed. It had never even crossed our minds that we might run into such a thing, and it was a bit of a bummer that not even the cathedral Catedral de Plasencia was open.

Former convent turned Parador in Plasencia

Cathedral in Plasencia

We walked around for a while, and eventually we found the walls and their mini-museum Centro de Interpretación de la Ciudad Medieval de Plasencia. They reminded me of the wall in Ávila, but in a much-smaller scale.

Buildings in Plasencia

Wall in Plasencia

Plasencia

Plasencia is also a bird-protection area and nestling zone of the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), so that is what I guess we got to see (but it could totally have been an eagle…). We had lunch and dinner at the Parador as it was the least busy place, and they took forever both times. We did not feel like going out to check out the town in the evening considering how busy everything was even in the afternoon. Probably it was the first full-blown post-COVID festival, but it was a tad disappointing for me.

Krestel

9th June 2023: Arribes del Duero & Ciudad Rodrigo {WNW Spain, with a splash of Portugal, June 2023}

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We set off from Zamora in order to drive up towards the Portuguese town of Miranda do Douro, though we were not due to reach the town itself. We were heading to the International Biological Station, which organises environmentally-friendly cruises up River Douro.

The drive was to take around one hour, and we stopped at the reservoir Embalse de Ricobayo, which has a dam and a hydroelectric central. We stumbled upon a nice little outlook above the reservoir to see both the dam and the meandering river. It was not long before we noticed the vultures – a kettle of Eurasian griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus), and even some solitary birds that showed off (or were trying to find breakfast, who knows?).

Meander and Dam of Ricobayo

We reached the International Biological Station Estación Biológica Internacional | Estação Biológica Internacional (EBI) in time to swap our 12:00 tickets for 11:00 tickets, and the little boat took off. The cruise runs up the area of River Douro Río Duero called Arribes del Duero, a gorge nor dissimilar to the Galician gorge of River Sil. It was an hour-long course where we got to see some more birds of prey, a few nests, lychens and local flora, but none of the wild otters that are supposed to swim on the river. The guide collected some water to observe under the microscope and show us copepods and water fleas. At the end of the boat ride, we saw the “emotional therapy otters” (Lutra lutra) that the EBI keeps at the entrance. Oh, and had a sip of Porto wine. I was not too keen on the whole thing though, despite the pretty landscapes.

Arribes del Duero

Otter playing in the water

We “boycotted” Miranda do Douro as the ascent road from the river to the town looked horrible and full of curves. Thus, we headed off to Ciudad Rodrigo, in the Spanish region of Salamanca. We had booked at the local Parador Parador de Ciudad Rodrigo, Castillo de Enrique II de Trastámara. It is a really cool building – a castle from the 14th century, commissioned by the King . The main feature of the building is the keep, which you cannot climb (technically you can, but you have to know that you need to ask beforehand), but you can walk around the walls to have a look at the skyline. In front of the Parador stands a pre-Roman sculpture of a verraco – a granite animal, maybe a pig or a boar, dating back from the Vettones (3rd century BCE – 1st century CE).

Parador of Ciudad Rodrigo

There was a mishap with our reservation, so instead of getting a three-person room, we got the doggy-friendly room. I’ve been long-supporting of pet-friendly travel, but this made me rethink my stance. The room did have a pull-out sofa bed, but the layout made it awkward to share it among three people. Furthermore, it smelt and there were a bunch of flies and fruit-flies at the windows. That was a bit of a bummer.

We went to walk around town and found the tourist office in the mansion called Palacio de los Águilas, a 16th century Renaissance building erected by the family in charge of the castle upkeep. It has two patios with arches, and an exhibition area about the role that the town had in the war against Napoleon’s armies in the 19th century.

Palacio de los Aguila

We wandered around the town for a little, but then it started pouring. Thus, we hurried towards the cathedral Catedral de Santa María de Ciudad Rodrigo. The original building dates back from the early 12th century, and it was in construction and reconstruction until the 18th century. The main building was finished in the 14th century, but the tower collapsed after the Lisbon Earthquake in 1755. One of the most important features of the cathedral is the Romanesque portico Pórtico del Perdón, similar to the one in the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. The gothic cloister is really nice, and it holds frescoes from the Romanesque period.

Cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo

Cloister in the Cathedral at Ciudad Rodrigo

By the time we finished, the storm was over. I climbed up the remains of the town’s defensive walls Adarve Juan Martín Zermeño.

Ciudad Rodrigo: wall

We ditched the chamberpot museum (yes, it is really a thing) and to end the day we walked around the town for a little to find the traditional buildings – the manors Casa de la Marquesa de Cartago and Palacio de los Miranda, the square Plaza del Buen Alcalde, the old army HQ Antiguo Cuartel de Artillería,–the churches Iglesia de Cerralbo and Capilla de la Venerable Orden Tercera, and the main square Plaza Mayor.

Ciudad Rodrigo typical buildings

8th June 2023: Tordesillas & Zamora {WNW Spain, with a splash of Portugal, June 2023}

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Tordesillas used to be one of the Spanish Crown’s strongholds throughout the Middle Ages, starting around 1340 when Alfonso XI ordered the construction of a palace. In 1494, the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs signed a Treaty which divided the lands “discovered” by Columbus among them – of course, this Treaty was largely ignored by any other European powers which wanted to explore America, and never acknowledged by any indigenous people. In 1519, the town was part of the rebellion against Carlos I, naming his mother – and daughter of the Catholic Monarchs – Juana as queen, despite the rumours that she was insane. After the defeat of the revolts – and beheading of the instigators – the town lost importance.

We left early in the morning to try and ditch the traffic, but we were not successful – driving around Madrid, we ran into a couple of jams traffic caused only in part by the intermittent storms, which made the beginning of the road trip stressful. Thankfully, we parked at the outskirts of Tordesillas and the sun was shining again, as we had to cross the village on foot. Our first stopover was the Main Square Plaza Mayor. In the Castilian Main Square fashion, it is actually square in shape, with the main buildings supported by columns, where cafés and shops stand today. The current plaza dates back from the 16th century, and has been painted in a questionable bright mustard colour.

Main Square in Tordesillas

In the end, most of the history in Tordesillas is linked to Alfonso XI’s palace, known today as the Convent of Saint Clare Convento de Santa Clara, which stands a few minutes’ walk from the square. It was home, and later prison, to royal women, both loved and unwanted ones. It became a convent of the Order of Saint Clare in 1363, and the nuns living there were tasked with praying for the health and salvation of the Royal Family. Today, it is managed by the Spanish National Heritage Foundation Patrimonio Nacional. It can only be visited under supervision – seriously, aside from the guide, you get a security guard following you around – and photography is forbidden in all the interior areas.

The castle-convent was built throughout the 13th to 18th centuries. The oldest part of the building is a chapel dating from the 11th century, and the bulk of the construction was carried out in the 14th century. The monarchs employed Mudejar builders, a fact that yielded to multifoil arches, ceramic decorations, and Quran verses (officially “decorative nonsense”) in some of the chapels and the façade of the building.

Inside the palace there is a Baroque cloister and the gothic church, with a wooden ceiling painted gold and the emblem dragons of Carlos I’s shield. Truth be told, the church had been pretty much hyped up on me, so I found it a bit underwhelming.

Santa Clara convenent in Tordesillas

The party separated for a bit so I could explore on my own for a while. I got to the stone bridge over the River Douro Río Duero, just called “the bridge” el Puente, right at whose ends stands a monument to the fighting bull Toro de Tordesillas. The associated bullfighting festivity was one of the oldest in Spain until it was vetoed by the regional government – the fighting bull was set loose in the meadow, chased by horsemen and lanced to death. Today, the festivity is controversial and it’s trying to find its place in the midst of new sensitivities.

Tordesillas

I climbed up the medieval wall Muralla de Tordesillas to the park where the monument to Queen Juana Monumento a la Reina Juana I de Castilla stands, in front of the museum dedicated to the Treaty Casas del Tratado, and the church Iglesia de San Antolín.

Monuments in Tordesillas

We walked back to the car to drive off to the next spot in the route, and Tordesillas became the first spot where we spotted birds of prey during this trip, maybe a golden eagle Aquila chresaetos. Or, you know. Anything else.

Eagle

We drove off towards the municipality of Zamora, a Medieval town and villa by the Douro, known for its Romanesque churches. We reached the Parador de Zamora in the middle of a horrible downpour that was over as quickly as it had started. The Parador hotel is a former noble family’s Renaissance palace, with a military style and a middle patio with a glass-window gallery

Parador in Zamora

We had a late lunch and walked to the manor Palacio de los Momos, near the Main Square Plaza Mayor, home to a church Iglesia de San Juan de Puerta Nueva which has a sculpture representing two figures of the local Holy Week celebrations Monumento al Merlú. Other buildings include the old and new town halls Ayuntamiento Viejo and Nueva Casa Consistorial, and blocks of colonnaded buildings.

Buildings in Zamora

The first Romanesque building we came across was the church Iglesia de Santa María Magdalena, which contrary to many other places has got rid of the Baroque add-ons, and stands severe and naked in its stony glory. It is considered one of the most important and pure Romanesque constructions in Europe, sparsely decorated save for the tomb to the side.

Church of Saint Mary

From a side stop I overlooked the river Río Duero and the medieval bridge Puente de Piedra.

Zamora Medieval Bridge

We continued off to the cathedral Catedral del Salvador de Zamora. It is considered the first cathedral in the “Douro Romanesque” style. After the original cathedral was destroyed during the Muslim conquest of Spain, the reconstruction began around 1151. It must have been finished towards the beginning of the 13th century. The building has two particularities – the thick tower, and the umbrella dome, in a style that travelled from Byzantium to the Islamic architecture and reached Spain with the Nasrid artists. The inside holds a cloister and two small museum – one of religious art and the other of archaeology.

Zamora Cathedral

Afterwards, we visited the ruined castle Castillo de Zamora – a purely-defensive Romanesque fortress built around the 11th century. The castle has a moat, and you can wander up the walls and defensive towers. The interior is ruined, but the ancient structure can be guessed by the arches and different walls that would have separated the fortress’ halls.

Castle in Zamora

Finally, we explored a few more religious Romanesque buildings: Iglesia de San Pedro y San Ildefonso, Convento de Clarisas El Tránsito and Iglesia de San Cipriano. From the viewpoint next to this last church, we got to see a stork nest with a baby chick in it.

Zamora churches

Stork nest

We had dinner at a restaurant called El Horno, a traditional places that offers tablas – wooden trays full of treats to share. We shared a serving of tabla de fiambres – Iberian sausages (ham, loin, chorizo…) and cheese on a bed of crisps.

Zamora at night

31st May 2023: Birthday in Madrid (Spain)

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I was lucky enough to be able to combine my 2022 birthday with a holiday that happens around the end of May / beginning of June, so I took off to Tenerife. I could not do that this year, but the stars aligned for a half-day in Madrid – actually, what aligned was a lot of website-hopping, to be honest. It all started when we were booking tickets for the visit to the Royal Palace of La Granja. At that time, I discovered that the collection of Stradivarius instruments in the Madrid Royal Palace are brought out so they can be played every now and then. I had to work on the dates of all the upcoming 2023 concerts where they were used, but I managed to secure tickets for a side gig, which also gave access to a usually closed-off area of the Palace anyway.

Conversely, I have been obsessed with a London experience in which you get to have afternoon tea on a 60’s double-decker bus – but unfortunately, it does not take reservations for one. I was browsing the Internet , looking at similar experiences, and I stumbled upn the fact that the Mandarin Oriental Ritz runs afternoon tea in Madrid. They actually claim that their tea is the same as the London Hyde Park Ritz. I signed up for the Fan of M.O program – not that I’m ever going to be able to afford a stay there, but oh well – before making the reservation, and the system asked if there was a special occasion going on. I ticked “birthday”.

Plans thus built, we arrived in Madrid for the 16:00 booking of afternoon tea at the Palm Court restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid hotel.

The Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid opened in 1910, after King Alfonso XIII decided that Madrid needed a luxury hotel to host European nobility. The king himself became an investor, wanting the city to have lodgings comparable to Paris or London. The building was commissioned to French architect Charles Frédéric Mewes and the construction was directed by Luis de Landecho y Lorenzo Gallego. Surrounded by a metalwork wall, it has 153 rooms and suites, and a wide variety of dining options with different levels of formality.

Through the 20th century, the original Ritz became a piece of history. Its rooms and bars hosted a wide range of personalities – WWI spy Mata Hari, artist Salvador Dalí, writer Ernest Hemingway, scientist Alexander Fleming, and more recent celebrities such as Ava Gardner, Michelle Pfeiffer or Madonna. In 2015, the hotel was acquired by Mandarin Oriental, and in 2018 renovation was tackled. The Covid pandemic delayed its reopening until 2021. Part of the restoration focused on the inner court, with an iron-and-glass ceiling. This is the area where the restaurant Palm Court is located.

When we arrived, they confused my reservation with someone else’s with the same first name – I had to correct the lady, it was a reservation for three not for two. Then they asked if we were celebrating something, to which I replied that it was my birthday – again. As we sat down, the pianist was playing the OST of Aquaman. Cognitive dissonance? Check.

A nice gentleman brought out the tea menu – while the food is fixed, you can choose from a wide variety of tea. I had of course studied the options beforehand, and ordered sencha meicha, because it is one of my favourite teas, even if it is Japanese. I mean, I can get Earl Grey more easily – and affordably.

The booking confusion continued when we got our food – once more they brought out a three-tier tray for two, and when they brought out the third one, they had mistakenly brought out one of the dietary-restriction trays – easy to spot because the sandwiches had different colours. When the correct tray was brought out, the order of the different tiers was incorrect.

The tea itself was delicious. The food included has been designed to Quique Dacosta, mixing the “best afternoon tea tradition” with Spanish confectioneries. The classic mini sandwiches included a cucumber and cheese cream, Spanish ham, potato omelette, seafood and mayonnaise, and a salmon cracker, shaped as a rose. The sweets included chocolate mousses, lilac sponges and citrus pastries.

Afterwards came the scones, which were a bit too small and I was slightly disappointed that the promised clotted cream was merely butter. But the scones – two types of them – were warm and well done. Afterwards, as we were finished, the pianist played the notes to the traditional happy birthday song and I was brought a small mousse with “congrats” written on the plate – though they served it to someone else in the party!

Afternoon Tea: sandwiches, pastries, scones and the actual tea

Felicidades dessert

I loved the tea party. However, even if all the staff was extremely nice, it gave me the feeling that they were overwhelmed and nervous – almost improvising – as they made a few mistakes. Afterwards, we walked to the Royal Palace Palacio Real de Madrid. Even if it was an hour to the recital, we were allowed into the courtyard, and not much later into the royal chapel Real Capilla. The recital was called Afectos Amantes (Loving affections), and it mostly comprised music by José de Torres. Torres was the main composer of religious music for the Spanish 17th-century court, though the majority of his music was lost when the original Madrid alcazar burnt down – however, a few pieces were preserved in El Escorial, Salamanca, and Guatemala. There were also a couple of pieces by Händel.

Royal Palace and Chapel

The music was performed by Al Ayre Español, a classically-trained ensemble that focuses on Spanish Baroque Music. Its members are Eduardo López Banzo, (harpsichord, and director); Jacobo Díaz Giráldez (oboe); Alexis Aguado (violin); Kepa Arteche (violin); Aldo Mata (cello); Xisco Aguiló (double bass); Juan Carlos de Mulder (archilaúd and guitar); and finally Maite Beaumont (mezzo-soprano singer).

The program included:

  1. Pasacalles I & II (Passacaglia), Anonymous
  2. Divino Hijo de Adán (Divine Son of Adam), José de Torres
  3. Sonata Op.5 No.4 in G Major, Georg Friedrich Händel
  4. ¡Oh, quien pudiera alcanzar! (Whomever could reach), José de Torres
  5. Sonata Op.5 No.5 in G Minor, Georg Friedrich Händel
  6. Afectos amantes (Loving affections), José de Torres
  7. Grave (Low), José de Torres

Al Ayre Español bowing to the audience after the recital

The recital lasted a bit over an hour and a half. It was something really interesting to do once in your lifetime, and surprisingly not pricey at all. Even if Baroque music is not usually my thing, the event felt very appropriate in the chapel. We did not feel like any more food, so we just headed home, braving the thunderstom on the highway.

27th May 2023: Mammoths and Knights in Madrid (Spain)

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I headed off to Madrid to watch the Knights of the Zodiac film, the Hollywood remake of the 80s anime Saint Seiya – I’m not making any excuses (I mean, I still went to the Symphonic Adventure after it got cancelled trice), I just wanted to see it, even if I did not have much faith in it. I wanted to combine it with another activity, and I thought I lucked out when I found that Caixa Forum Madrid was running an exhibition on mammoths – Mamut, el Gigante de la Edad del Hielo (Mammoth, the Ice-Age Giant). I allocated about an hour and a half for the exhibition, which hosted an almost-complete fossilised skeleton and a hyperrealist sculpture “among other pieces”. Truth be told, there was not much else to see.

The exhibit has some molars from different species, some fur, a tusk and a few pieces of prehistoric art. There was also an evolutionary timeline and little models comparing the sizes of different mammoth species to the average human size. The pièce de résistance is indeed the complete mammoth skeleton that was the literal centre of the exhibit – hugely-tusked specimen of wholly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). It was a truly magnificent piece, but I was a little disappointed by how few pieces were actually on display. It’s not like there is not any material around – there used to be a Mammoth Museum in Barcelona that had actual tusks for sale. I had also seen another one in Muséum des sciences naturelles de Belgique in Belgium a couple of months back, which diminished the awe factor a little.

Mammoth - The Ice Age Giant exhibit featuring the giant skeleton with huge curved tusks, the smaller sculpture, a lone tusk, some hair and a piece of Paleolithic art engraved on the ivory of a tusk.

I was done in a bit over 30 minutes, so I had time to walk to the cinema – there was another exhibition in the same floor, but I had already seen it in Barcelona, and the Museum shop did not have anything interesting. I had planned to walk to the cinema, as public transit was only slightly shorter. The weather was not so nice, and there was a small storm. I did duck into a couple of shops but to be honest I ended up at the cinema 40 minutes before the session started while it poured outside. I found myself a seat to wait – I had got my ticket online the day the release was announced. This was my first time in a cinema since Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in 2018, and it was a weird feeling, being so close to strangers again. It was also extremely cold, and the previews were felt eternal.

The reason I sometimes choose Yelmo Cines Ideal is that some of their films are shown in their original language, and I tend to enjoy subs more than the dubbed versions. The Knights of the Zodiac film was… a choice, I guess. It is based on the newest remake – which I have not seen because I’m not a streaming-service person – and it changed a lot of the lore. Except for the main character (Seiya in the original material), all the names had been changed, but I noticed that the subs stuck to the original ones.

Knights of The Zodiac movie poster

It was not a bad film, all things considered. Entertaining, wannabe Marvel-like, tapping a little into mixing the cosmic magic and newer technology that was unimaginable in the 80s when the manga was made. It lacked on the music department though – considering how powerful the anime music is, that was disappointing, though here and there there are a few chords of the original song Pegasus Fantasy. That was cool.

But then again, I was half-expecting a disaster, so anything was an improvement, and the film made itself watchable. Sean Bean’s character died, but considering that in the original material his character is already dead at the end, I guess it could be considered some kind of record…

15th April 2023: Madrid for Sweet Space Museum (Spain)

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My friend D****e and I met for a fast day packed with activities. We reached Madrid at 10:40 and had tickets to visit an interactive museum called Sweet Space. It markets itself as a “colourful experience which mixes sweets and modern art”. I just thought it would be a fun thing to do with a friend that would give into quirky pictures and a couple of hours of giggles. It actually fulfilled both. If you take the place seriously, it’s plainly not worth the visit – modern art in general is questionable at best, and this could be seen like a bit on the childish side – and regular tickets are 18 €. The place’s best-selling point is “get cool pics for your social media”, and we had decided to just be silly about it and enjoy ourselves.

The “museum”, located in the ABC Serrano shopping centre, gives the vibes of an oversized (maybe overpriced) playground, and just like Monasterio de Piedra, the number of people you encounter weighs a hugely in your experience. Although we had an 11:30 ticket, we were lucky enough to be admitted at 11:15 with a family that lost us on the third room, so we had quite a lot of time on our own, until the group that came afterwards caught up. We did take a lot of pictures, to be honest, and missed no opportunity to fool around – which was the mindset we had.

Since the museum’s flagship idea is mixing sweets and modern art, when you enter some of the rooms you are given a treat – a gummy or a piece of chocolate or a tiny bit of ice-cream. You cannot backtrack, so the route gets a bit weird at points – you go up to the second floor on stairs, but down using a slide… The museum has nine different rooms and a few of them are refurbished over time. Unfortunately, I forgot to track down the artists because it was stupidly fun – I mean, at one point I got to ride a carousel-style flamingo. Back in the day in the day, I would have never dared do such a thing, but I guess I’ve changed a little in the last ten years.

  • Room 1: Palm trees with marshmallow trunks (Antonyo Marest). This was a fun way to start the whole thing and set the mood. It is literally a room with tree trunks that look like colourful marshmallows, with leaves on top.
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  • Room 2 (corridor): Flowers in the dark – a dark room with bright plastic flowers. It was pretty, but probably the less surprising room.
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  • Room 3: Mirrors and hanging pink balloons, inspired by Tokyo’s TeamLab. It was hard to take a good picture that did not catch anyone’s reflection!
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  • Room 4 (corridor): Mirrors and neon graffiti (Álvaro Linares) with Star Wars inspired references. This was one of the coolest areas (though I’m not sure how… legal that Darth Vader painting would be). One of the sides had a throne-like chair you could sit on and feel like an evil mastermind.

Collage. Sweet Space museum. Palm trees whose trunks resemble marshmellows, neon-coloured flowers and grafitti, pink balloon-like lamps hanging in a mirror-wall room

  • Room 5: Ice-cream parlour “Töto Ice Cream”, including little kart and refrigerator you can step into, giving off a strong 1950’s aura. A lot of pink, I’d say – I did not dare walk into the fridge (for some reason it gave me the creeps), but D****e did; I “drove” the little kart instead. We took silly pictures there with the installed iPad camera, just for the hell of it.
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  • Room 6: Fairytale landscape (Christian Escribá and Patricia Schmidt), a-la Hansel and Gretel or Alice in Wonderland (though it was officially inspired by Wizard of Oz), with a swing and flamingo that you can ride. When I saw that one online, I really, really hoped that it was not only one of those things that only influencers get to do. I got to ride the flamingo. I don’t know why it drew me so much, maybe it was the pure surrealism of it all, but it made me giddy. The rest of the room was fun too – oversized mushrooms, teddy-bears, and colourful decoration.
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  • Room 7 (upstairs): Sky with clouds (Agatha Ruiz de la Prada) painted and carved into sliding doors, a starry rocket (Ivanna Gautier), a bouncing area, a mural where you could take a 3D video for TikTok, and a “planetarium”, with tiny lamp-robots and tons of stars made from light dots. I liked this last one a lot, too. In order to leave the floor and go back to the lower floor, you have to go down a spiral slide, which I was not a fan of – it was difficult to get into it without putting weight on my bad wrist. However, I managed to go down unscathed.
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  • Room 8 (Misterpiro): It held a ball pit with a “staircase to heaven” (or to nowhere). We did not go into the pit, but we climbed the stairs for pictures too.

Collage - fantasy worlds from Sweet Space museum. Overgrown mushrooms, a flamingo, a cloud, a universe made out of green neon dots with a little robot peering out, a cartoonish rocket in front of a starry background, a colourful ballpit full of white balls.

Finally, we reached the shop, where we purchased the pictures we had taken at the ice parlour (8 € for two magnets with four photographs, the downloadable version, and a gif). We were supposed to get a sweet in each room, and we ended up with three or four gummies, a chocolate, and a tiny scoop of ice cream. My favourite was the skull-shaped sweet&sour gummy we got upstairs, but they did not have it at the shop (though it is advertised online). The whole experience was a bit on the expensive side, but I had a discount that helped knock 10 € off the official price. The recommended time I had seen recommended for the museum was an hour and a half, but even if we took a long time, we were done in about an hour.

I had reserved lunch at 14:30 based on the time I expected us to be in the museum (and the availability of the restaurant), so we had some time to kill. We walked by the open-air museum of modern sculpture Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre de La Castellana, but it did not catch our fancy. Too much modern art in one day?

The place we would invest most of that extra time was the museum of Natural History Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales to see some dinosaurs and the gabinete de curiosidades, the 18th and 19th century collection of taxidermy specimens. I’d been there before, and it mostly has replicas (and holy molly, prices have gone up). This time there was an exhibit on the Moon landing, and the gardens had been open. The taxidermy collection is not as good as other museums, but at least it got us out of the heat.

Collage. Dinosaur fossil casts and reconstructions, both carnivores and long-neck herbivores. A flying reptile with some mammooth fossils in the background. Rocks. The old collection dating from the 19th century - a number of glass cases with people looking at them and a painting of king Carlos III overlooking the place.

We left the museum and headed for lunch at one of the franchised establishments of New York Burger, which markets itself as a “gourmet burger” place. It was all right, and the servings were huge. After lunch, we hung around the area known as Nuevos Ministerios, a complex originally designed by Secundino Zuazo Ugalde around 1930. We hung out under the eastern archway for a while.

The archway in Nuevos Ministerios, built in reddish brick and white plaster

Afterwards, we took the train to Alcalá de Henares. We stopped at one of the shopping centres just outside town, Quadernillos, where the comic event Krunch! 2023 was taking place. We did not stay for long as most stands sold bootleg and plagiarised stuff, and I did not find any legit shop, but we had ice cream and D****e did take the chance to do some shopping in the mall before we headed home for the evening.

7th April 2023: Monasterio de Piedra (Nuévalos, Spain)

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There are many things to consider when visiting the so-called Monasterio de Piedra, a tourist complex in Nuévalos, in the area of Aragón. One of the most important ones is the weather – as most of the complex is outside. The second is probably people. Just the online bookings are 2,000 tickets in a day – and some more go on sale throughout the day as visitors leave, or it is calculated that they do. A third factor is getting there, because it is literally in the middle of nowhere. This year, Easter break has peaked at an almost 100% occupancy rate since it seems that Covid is dwindling down, and the weather is superb – these facts have implied crazy traffic, too.

I had been mulling the trip for a while, checking weather and traffic warnings, and considering all the driving around that would be take place. I thought that the 7th would be a good date for a day trip – fewer cars out within the break period, and I was busy on the 8th, the other calm day. When I finally decided that the 170-km-each-way drive was going to be worth it and safe as the traffic authority had not updated its warning on the late-afternoon of the 6th of April, there were around 30 left for the 7th, and it was already sold out for the 8th. I got worried about traffic again, decided to leave the tickets for later, and by the time I definitely made up my mind, the day had been sold out!

I was disappointed, but I noticed that some tickets had become available for the 8th when previously there had been none. Thus, I kept checking throughout the evening, and finally around 23:00, I was able to purchase the 2000th ticket for the complex. Good thing that while I was wondering whether to go or not, I had prepared a backpack with whatever I might need, because if I wanted to beat the crowds, I had to leave by 7:30.

I did, and I made it to the complex around 9:10, after driving on almost-empty roads. I had planed to park in the outer lot, but as I reached the area, there were a number of workers directing cars and I ended up in the inner area. All the visitors who were already there – maybe I was the 30th car or so – stepped out of their vehicles commenting “oh, I thought there would not be so many people so early”. I thought the same… I had no idea of what “many people” meant in this place yet.

The Monasterio de Piedra complex has two distinct parts – the historical garden Parque-Jardín Histórico del Monasterio de Piedra and the monastery-turned-hotel. I decided to visit the park first, which would later be proven a good idea.

Río Piedra is mainly a pluvial-regime river (a fancy term to say that its flow depends on rain), also fed by various underground springs. The water has a high concentration of calcium carbonate, which for centuries has been key in creating the landscape that characterises the park, with a large number of waterfalls and caves – calcium carbonate dissolves and precipitates depending on how much water the river carries at any given time. Along the fertile soil from the river banks, the precipitates feed a very green landscape which in turns yields to a rich and varied fauna that lives there.

The park was established as a Romantic garden during the 19th century by Juan Federico Muntadas when he inherited the area. He also built the first Spanish fish farm there to breed river trouts. The garden is organised in two trails, a main one and an “extra” one – I decided to take the main trail, which runs around 5 km. The park prohibits food inside, but it does not really enforce it. I took a bottle of water, and an energy bar just in case, without the intention to eat it unless it was an emergency.

I walked in, got my print-at-home ticket scanned, and I was surprised that a few steps in, someone was holding an owl for people to take pictures with it. At 9:00. That was bizarre – I knew that the park used to hold birds of prey shows, but I thought it was a thing of the past. I got to my first intersection, and a park employee directed me towards the route. I was a bit disoriented for a minute or two, and I later realised that they were flushing the first visitors towards the big bottleneck area in order to try to control people, capacity, and waiting times. In this garden, the amount of people you run into can indeed make or break your experience – and I am happy to say that I made the right choices most of the time. The biggest problem I ran into were families with small children being loud, which was annoying but bearable.

Because of the redirection, I started off at what would have been number 16 on the route – the most famous waterfall, called the “ponytail”, Cascada de la Cola de Caballo. From there, you walk into one of the karstic caves (Gruta Iris) and pass under another waterfall, which even creates a small underground lake. It was cool, but I was really not prepared for how splashy it was! I continued off, I saw the and walked around a backwater called “mirror lake” Lago del Espejo for obvious reasons – it reflects absolutely everything. Although the route is only 5 km, it goes through areas that feel and look completely different, and it feels much, much longer without being tiring.

Monasterio de Piedra garden - waterfalls, karstic caves and the underground lake. Everything looks green with the vegetation and reddish with the karst deposits.

A 15-metre waterall, water splashing, flows into a river. The land around it is reddish-grey

A reddish hill perfectly reflects on a lake.

As I “finished” the route, I got to the intersection where the bottleneck is created and I saw all the people waiting – hundreds, probably. That was unexpected, because it had not felt that it was so crowded – it turned out, arriving early had been a great idea. The amount of people waiting was shocking, but understandable as most of the cave passages are only wide enough for one person – now I understood the reviews that claimed hours to see the waterfall and the cave.

I got a bit disoriented at this point – as I said, the route feels long since the landscape is so varied. However, instead of going for the exit, I decided to continue exploring a bit more – that is how I arrived at the lower numbers of the route again – number four, that was a bit more on the crowded side. I did the first part of the route, climbing up the hill slopes to see a dozen or so more waterfalls. Then had to backtrack again, until I finally saw everything that there was to see, even if in a strange order (on the map: sixteen to end, four to fifteen, then three to one. Not confusing at all, I know).

Monasterio de Piedra garden - fountain, and waterfalls and a cave. Everything looks green with the vegetation and reddish with the karst deposits.

Unfortunately, loud people scared most of the wildlife away, so aside from a few fish, there was nothing around in that respect. There were dogs around, but well-trained, so they did not cause a problem. The area is really nice, the waterfalls and caves are beautiful, but I can see how the number of people you visit it with might make it a good or bad experience. I am sure that I would have quit had I needed to wait hours to cross a cave and see one of the waterfalls.

When I left, there was a huge queue to get a picture with the owl. Furthermore, there were several huts with more birds of prey or other animals, and the pictures were sold at the exit. I’m not sure I approve of that, no matter how trained the animals are – there actually used to be exhibitions with the birds of prey, which is not happening these days. After I left the historical garden, I went into the former monastery. Today, most of the building has been turned into a hotel, but part of the historical site can be visited.

The monastery Monasterio de Piedra was established in the 12th century by Cistercian monks sponsored by king Alfonso II of Aragón. The building was erected in the years when Romanesque was turning into Gothic, so it mixes both styles along with some extra Baroque. Between the late 18th century and the early 20th century, the Spanish government carried out several programs to seize and sale property deemed “unproductive” – mostly belonging to religious orders and municipalities. These properties were auctioned to convert them into cash so the government could pay off its debt. The whole process is known as the Spanish confiscation (desamortizaciones).

In the 19th century, Monasterio de Piedra was confiscated. Everything it contained was auctioned in the 1840s and 1850s. In 1843, the buildings were also sold and acquired by the Muntadas family. It was soon afterwards that Juan Federico Muntadas became the owner. He turned the orchards into the now historical garden, and the convent itself into a hotel and… what today would be called a “wellness spa”. He also established the fish farm.

I would have really liked to stay at the hotel, but it’s a bit on the expensive side and there is really nothing else around, so you have to pay for meals on top of the stay. But it would have been cool to wander the monastery building at night. Not being a hotel guest, the ticket includes access to the cloister and the old church. Some rooms around the cloister have been dedicated to host exhibits about regional or historical products and items: carriages, wine, and even chocolate – the monastery was reportedly pioneer in the preparation of chocolate in Spain. The cloister itself has a few chapels, the early-Gothic chapter house with decorated columns and ambience music, and a small garden-like centre. You can also visit a monk’s cell, and there are mannequins spread through the different rooms – startling if you are not paying attention and suddenly see one.

I am not a wine person, so the museum on the topic did not impress me much despite having a bunch of traditional wine-making artefacts. The chocolate exhibit was just a succession of panels with pictures, and thus a bit underwhelming. Within the monastery, what I enjoyed the most was the architecture itself I guess. I loved the cloister and the chapter house most.

I also visited the adjacent ruined church. Like the cloister, it’s early Gothic. It has a Baroque chapel to the side which keeps the wall paintings. Although most of the ceiling is gone, the church still looks pretty – then again we all know that I like the architectural style anyway. It’s nice how the building is somehow ruined but at the same time it’s not, as it has been restored and preserved. However, underneath the altar, there is a small crypt, where a small window has been made to peer at someone’s bones – that was… huh… unnecessary. The nave is now open to the sky and covered with grass, all the figures have gone, and only one of the sides holds a few architectonic remains and capitals.

Inside the monastery - the cloister and the ruined gothic church

I left the inner area and I walked around the outside of the building – what has become the picnic area since you can’t eat inside the garden. Once I left that behind, the area was deserted. I reached the former main square, where the Baroque façade of the monastery still stands. I walked a bit further and found the walls that used to enclose the area, along with a small tower that is called the keep, but it looks more like a defensive tower.

The baroque main entrance to the monastery

Finally, I checked out the gift shop, bought a book and some chocolate. I headed back a bit after 13:00, but instead of driving directly home, I made a stop at a couple of viewpoints over the reservoir Embalse La Tranquera. On the way out, I had crossed several tunnels and seen viewpoints, so since I had time and I was not hungry yet, I decided to snoop around. After a while, I just drove back – though I might just have made a stop for a late fast food lunch, because guilty pleasures happen sometimes. And by 15:00 I was hungry indeed.

A reservoir with turquoise water, nestled in a reddish gorge

5th April 2023: The ghost station of Chamberí (Madrid, Spain)

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Perusing the web for something – I can’t even remember what – I came across one of those things that I had discovered a long time ago, then forgotten because life is hectic and so (read: Covid happened). In Madrid, there an underground ghost station, one that has not changed since the 1960s. Well, sort of – it was closed, then restored, and finally turned into a museum. Anyway, somehow accidentally, I ended up securing a free ticket to visit it during Easter break, so there I went. I decided to round up the trip with a fancy lunch in a place I also wanted to visit.

The Madrid underground system Metro de Madrid was the third underground line to open in Europe, after Moscow and London. It ran a little short of 3.5 km, with eight stations, when King Alfonso XIII inaugurated it in October 1919. Subsequent ampliations and renovations of the line were carried out until it reached its current 24 km and 33 stations (plus twelve more lines). The city expanded, its population increased, and underground trains grew with both, going from four to six carriages in the 1960s. The stations were renovated to fit the new, longer trains. Most of them. The ampliations of the stations of Bilbao and Iglesia made it inefficient to do the same with the stop that lay in-between – Chamberí. Thus, this station was locked down – and bricked off – in 1966.

The city forgot about the station’s existence for decades, until in the early 2000s, it was turned into part of the Underground’s museum network Museos de Metro de Madrid or Andén 0. Today, Estación de Chamberí can be visited for free, but only under reservation. Pre-pandemic, I looked into it a few times, and never found a spot, then the whole thing slipped my mind, until I relearnt about it, and lucked out.

I took the train to Madrid and walked from Recoletos to the square where the station was built Plaza de Chamberí. The original entrance has long disappeared, so the underground area is accessed through an ugly metal kiosk and a spiral staircase. However, the original station looks completely different. It was designed by Antonio Palacios (1878 – 1945), a Spanish urbanist and architect with a very recognisable style, whose most important works still stand in Madrid (such as the Círculo de Bellas Artes and Palacio de Comunicaciones). My entry slot was 11:30, and I arrived with plenty of time – trains have been unreliable lately so I gave myself a wide margin. When most of the group had arrived, we went down the modern stairs that yields to the old hall. Characteristic white tiles are laid along the access tunnel that leads to the original ticketing stands and the exit control. The station used to have a skylight, now closed off. The original stairs and maps still stand, along the Metro logo – though everything has been adapted for wheelchair-users.

Ghost Station of Chamberí. Entrance corridor and old ticketing booths

The group comprised 25 people, with a surprising amount of non-Spanish speakers – at least seven, who of course did not care about the guide’s explanation, which was little more than the Wikipedia page (so I guess anyone can take the visit. Print out the wiki and read along). There were families with kids who tried to yell over anything the guide said. Furthermore, underground trains still run through the station, which make for cool pictures, but their six-minute frequency drowns all the given explanations. It was hard to actually get into the “ghost station” mood.

Estación de Chamberí does look really cool though. Unfortunately, glass panels separate the platform from the tracks – they are dirty and get in the way of pictures of the other side of the platform. However, it was interesting to see the old advertisement mosaics – they used to be painted on tiles, and built into the walls themselves, and surrounded by very cool darker slabs with metallic tint. The visit takes about 40 minutes, and on the way out, you get to go through the old ticket gates, which have a very ingenious way of opening – you step on the little platform in front of them, which triggers a latch, and you can push the gate open. Really fun.

Ghost Station of Chamberí. Collage showing details - the name of the station on the old logo, tiles, the platform, and a train coming through

Truth be told, I had booked another free visit before lunch, but I realised I had messed up the location. I cancelled that one before entering the ghost station so the ticket would be available for someone else to use. And thus, I had a bit of time before my lunch reservation at 14:00. Since the weather was nice, I decided to walk to my next spot, and I spent the extra time – and some not-extra money – in one of the big bookshops in the centre of Madrid. At 13:50, I arrived at the back entrance of the hotel Hotel Riu Plaza España. This hotel opened in 2019 in a mid-20th century skyscraper (Edificio España) designed and engineered by brothers Julián and Jose María Otamendi. It is a 26-floor tower which was the highest building in the city at the time of its construction. Situated in the square called Plaza de España, it is close to the Royal Palace and Main Square.

Edificio España - tower like building in reddish and white brick, spanning 26 floors. It is the Riu hotel now.

The hotel has a large terrace on what would be the 27th floor, a rooftop bar and a restaurant or “gastro bar”, whatever the current buzz word means. Entry to the terrace is 10 € (5 € on a weekday), and food is not on the cheap side (everything around that area is stupidly expensive), but I found a deal at their Edén Gastro Bar: one-course lunch + drink + entry to the rooftop terrace for 30€ which allowed me to skip the queue.

I did skip the “ticket-buying” line, but there is only one lift to go to the rooftop, so that queue I had to wait. I ended up reaching the restaurant around 14:10 or 14:15, and snagged a counter-with-a-view seat. I ordered a salmon poké and a drink, and got a few complimentary snacks and breadsticks to complete the meal.

Rooftop picture showing Madrid's Plaza de España and Royal Palace. Blurred in the foreground, lunch

Afterwards, I climbed the stairs to the terrace, officially called 360º Rooftop Bar, on the 27th floor. Music was blaring and there were tons of people drinking overpriced cocktails. The views were cool, sort of a once-in-a-lifetime thing that I don’t think I’d need again. The terrace has a small all-glass balcony that I did not wait the queue for, and a glass platform that would probably impress a bit more if the glass under your feet were clean(er). The terrace was completed by a tacky bull sculpture with metallic-gold testicles.

Madrid rooftop view - low houses with red brick roofs, and in the very background a few highrises

I walked around a couple of times, and then I headed back to the train station after calling it a day. I killed time reading one of the books I had just got, and time flew on the train. It was a nice little outing, but I did mess up with one of the locations, so it could have been more efficient. I guess not every little trip can work flawlessly…

4th April 2023: La Granja and Riofrío (Spain)

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King Felipe V of Spain was born Philippe, Duke of Anjou, in France. He was appointed successor to the throne by his great-uncle Carlos II, who died childless. He was never very interested in being a monarch, or at least King of Spain, which he became in 1700. Around 1718, he fell in love with a hunting area and decided to buy it. Today, this area has become the municipality of Real Sitio de San Ildenfonso (Spain), the Royal Site of Saint Ildephonse. He ordered a palace be built “without disturbing what was already built”. The result was the palace known as Palacio de La Granja de San Ildefonso (The Farm at San Ildefonso), in honour of the hermit church and farm that were there when the King bought the hunting grounds.

Legend has it that the palace is extremely uneven because the King ordered that no parts of the church were demolished, so the walls were built around the old construction – however, it is such a massive building that seeing the irregularities from the inside is hard. The palace, built between 1721 and 1724, was commissioned to Spanish architect Teodoro Ardemans. Later, the garden façade was remodelled by Italians Filippo Juvarra and Giambattista Sacchetti. A fire destroyed part of the building in the 20th century and a lot of the paintings were lost. The gardens – the most famours feature of the site – were designed by Frenchman René Carlier in 1721 and finished by Étienne Boutelou when the former died in 1722.

Today, the palace is managed by the Spanish Heritage Network Patrimonio Nacional – which means that photography is not permitted inside. It is technically one of the royal residences, so of course you have to go through security and X-rays and whatnot. We headed there on what was technically a working day before Easter break, so we were not sure how much traffic we would find, or how many visitors there would be. Thus, we had booked our tickets online for 11:00, anticipating a two-hour-and-a-half drive. In the end, we were in front of the palace around 10:15 and were able to enter at 10:30. Before that, we saw some impressive trees, including a sequoia, which I don’t think I had ever seen before.

Baroque Palace of La Granja peering behind a few large trees

The palace is Baroque, showing the likings of the time in which it was built. A monumental staircase gives access to the first ward, rebuilt after the fire into an area to display part of the royal tapestry collection – Museo de Tapices. The oldest tapestries date from the 16th century, before the Spanish tapestry school was founded. Tapestries are not my favourite form of art, but these were pretty impressive. A collection of nine pieces allegorise some of the virtues, mixing classical mythology with Christianity and historical figures.

The interior of the palace displays the private rooms of the monarchs, on the first floor, and the different ballrooms and social rooms on the ground floor. The private areas are decorated with paintings, and the public ones try to emulate the Palace of Versailles (France). They are furnished with marble and mirrors, and decorated with sculptures and statues.

La Granja: Dizzingly-decorated large hall in golden and white marble, with large open wooden doors

The ground floor opens to the well-known gardens Jardines de La Granja. These are considered the best “French gardens” in Spain. They cover almost twenty thousand square metres. Sprinkled throughout paths, hedges, parterres and trees, there are 21 fountains, most inspired by characters taken from classic mythology. The fountains are made out of lead, painted in bronze colour, and even if built 300 years ago, they still work and are indeed turned on during the summer season, fed from local reservoirs. They were not running during our visit – except for one dragon which leaked a bit. Spring seemed not to have arrived in the gardens yet, and it looked strangely like autumn.

La Granja: Italaian façade of the pakace from the top of the waterfall fountain, which was turned off. A number of bronze statues representing mythology characters line the waterfall

From the top of one of the fountains, called “the waterfall” Fuente de la Cascada Nueva, there is a good view of the Italian façade of the palace. Other fountains include “The Fame” Fuente de la Fama and “Diana’s bath” Fuente de los Baños de Diana. One of the most complex fountains is Fuente de las Ocho Calles (Fountain of the Eight Streets), a complex of eight fountains in a sort of “square” created by the intersection of eight garden paths. The fountains were built to only run when the King approached them, and today they are turned on in a rolling schedule, and very rarely all at the same time. This is to take care of the pipe system, still the original one, and because some of them need a lot of water to function.

La Granja, outside. Two large fountains crammed with bronze figures representing mythological beings. Both are turned off.

After we were done with the palace, we continued off to what I found the highlight of the day, the Royal Factory of Glass and Crystal of La Granja Real Fábrica de Cristales de La Granja. It was also established by Felipe V in 1727, and even today people use the old techniques to make glass items there! Even though it is called a “factory”, the process is completely artisan. The place also doubles as a museum to explain the how glass is (and was) made, exhibiting different traditional instruments. Of course, it has a shop. However, the coolest thing is that you can visit the furnace workshop to see how glass is blown, and the decoration workshop to see the engraving process. We hung around the furnace area and the experts can make a whole goblet in three minutes and a half, from incandescent blob to ready-to-engrave product.

Glass museum: diferent machines used to process glass in the 20th century, and a reproduction of the original glass furnace

Workers at the Glass factory: making and engraving a glass

After the factory, we headed towards the Parador de La Granja, a mix of a modern and historical building where we were to have lunch. We shared some cured beef cecina de León, and I tried the local speciality judiones de La Granja, a hearty bean-and-pork stew.

Collage of the inner patio of the Parador building + lunch: dried meat and a bean stew

When we finished lunch, we took the car to the secondary palace in the area, called Palacio Real de Riofrío, a hunting pavilion also managed by Patrimonio Nacional (though apparently, pictures are okay here, which is cool). The building is surrounded by 600 hectares of forest and hunting grounds. It was originally commissioned by Felipe V’s wife Isabel de Farnesio, who actually never got to live there since when she became “queen mother”, her son Carlos III had her move to Madrid.

We drove past the forest, where some storks were happily wandering around. The SatNav flipped on us because it could not find the correct gate, but we managed to make it on time to spend an hour or so there. Also, the entrance was weird – it is actually closed, and there is a guard inside. If we had not arrived just as another car was exiting, we would have thought it was closed and left.
Baroque palace of Riofrío. It's large and pink, with lots of archeways

The palace is also Baroque, and the areas which can be visited include some bedrooms, dining rooms, and the areas where the servants waited to be called. The palace has been organised as a Romantic museum Museo Alfonsino, that honours King Alfonso XII, who mourned his first wife there. It was actually decorated by his father, King Consort Francisco, Isabel II’s husband, and later “enriched” with paintings from other Royal Sites. The most interesting item was the billiard room, because it actually felt rather unexpected.

Another area of the palace has been transformed into a “hunting museum” Museo de la Caza, to honour the fact that these were the King’s hunting grounds. It mostly hosts taxidermy representations and a collection of pelts and skulls. To be honest, some exhibits were a bit unsettling.

Collage showing the inside of Riofrío: the hyper-decorated rooms, the staircase and taxidermy of local deer

As we left, the SatNav warned us of a 40-minute jam on the way back, so we forgave its previous flop. The warning allowed us to take a detour to avoid it – we had to pay the toll but it shaved off almost an hour.