27th December 2022: Early start and late delays {Egypt, Winter 2022-2023}

Posted on 11 January 2023 by JBinnacle

Not that 5:00 is a nice hour for anything, but it’s definitely a nicer hour to get up than to take a plane. Leaving was scheduled for 6:00 (with sail-off at 14:00), and I would not have minded had it been earlier to be honest. However, given that most of my group had arrived at midnight, there might have been a riot…

Breakfast was not too well stocked, but there was coffee and eggs for energy through the morning as we were going to be out from 6:00 to 14:00 – a full eight hours. We started late because the tour guide was late… not a good sign. The group had 18 people plus him, and he really did not sound either enthusiastic nor particularly knowledgeable to be blunt. We had a coach booked for us and we set off to visit the main elements in the city of Luxor [الأقصر] and its surroundings, the Unesco World Heritage Site Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis. We started towards the West Bank of the Nile, the bank of the dead, where the ruins of the Necropolis are.

Our first stop was Medinet Habu [مدينة هابو] a Pharaonic complex, whose most important building is the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III. It was the last monument built in the area, during the pharaoh’s reign (12th century BCE, Twentieth Dynasty of the New Kingdom). The basic structure of an Ancient Egyptian or Pharaonic temple is the pylon – court – hall. The pylon is a massive wall separated in two parts in which a narrow passage acts as gate. The court is a colonnade, and the hall is the area where the sacred spots can be found, covered and darker.

In the case of the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, the complex is surrounded by a mud brick wall with an extra pylon. The temple is decorated with carvings that depict the pharaoh as a great warrior smiting all his enemies. The structure used to be connected to the Nile to the point that there was a so-called Nilometre. In Ancient Egypt, taxation was determined by how high the Nile floods were – or were not.

Collage of the Mortuary temple of Ramesses III: The pylon, the columns, a bare gate and one decorated with rows of hieroglyphs

After the temple, we continued off to the Valley of the Kings | Wādī al-Mulūk [وادي الملوك]. Between the 16th and 11th centuries BCE, after the pyramids had been proven easy to find and pillage, the pharaohs from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth dynasties were laid to rest here. The tombs are excavated into the rock and here was where Howard Carter found Tutankhamun’s grave in 1922. The ticket grants admission to three “standard” tombs, and the most emblematic ones require a separate fee. Our guide pressed us not to buy a ticket for Tutankhamun, and did not even mention other tickets – at this point I decided that I had to read beforehand about what we were going to do the following days in order to be prepared for his attitude.

A scorching valley opening to both sides with grey-white hills going up. Everything looks sandy and dusty,

The first grave we visited was the Tomb of Ramesses IV (KV2) (12th century BCE, Twentieth Dynasty of the New Kingdom). It consists of a long and richly-decorated corridor that ends in a mortuary chamber where the sarcophagus still stands. It has been open to visits from antiquity.

Tomb: a long corridor with painted and carved hieroglyphs. In the background stands a bare sarcophagus in pink granite

The second tomb was the Tomb of Ramesses IX (KV6) (12th century BCE, Twentieth Dynasty of the New Kingdom), which was unfinished at the time of his death. The entrance corridor is wide, with the walls covered with glass. In this case, the burial chamber was unreachable.

Tomb collage: a long corridor decorated with hieroglyphs and a close up of a painted boat taking the deceased to the underworld. The corridor ends in stairs that go down towards the mortuary chamber

Our final grave was the Tomb of Ramesses III (KV11), whose temple we had seen before. The interesting thing about this tomb was that it ran into another one as it was being built, so the corridor actually has corners before reaching the empty burial chamber.

Tomb collage. Details of the different engravings and hieroglyphs. The burial chamber has thick columns and it has a downwards slope. The columns are decorated with further hieroglyphs and images of the gods

After the Valley of the Kings, we headed back to the Eastern Bank and made a stop at the Colossi of Memnon [تمثالا ممنون]. Each of the four statues was carved from one huge block of rock, and they signal the entrance to the funerary temple of Amenhotep III (14th century BCE, Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom). The temple is currently being excavated, and it would have been the largest in the West Bank.

The four colossi. There are two in the foreground, sitting down. They don't have faces. Two others can be guessed in the background, though one is just a block of rock

Afterwards, we got stuck for a stupid amount of time at an “artisan stonework” shop – a tourist trap to buy souvenirs. Boy, was I miffed, especially when this took out time from temples in Luxor. The first stop in the Eastern bank the was Karnak Temples Complex [الكرنك]. Karnak is a succession of temples, pylons and chapels that started around 2000 BCE, during the reign of Senusret I (20th century BCE, Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom) and continued for 2000 further years, with more Pharaohs adding their own structures. The most impressive area in Karnak is the Hypostyle Hall, open to the sky now with a number of columns ending on an open papyrus capital. Other features are the obelisks of Hatshepsut, one standing, the other fallen.

The complex was dedicated to the Theban triad: the god Amun, the goddess Mut (the “mother” goddess with the head of a vulture) and their son Khonsu (god of the moon). Amun was the creator of the universe, and later his cult was merged with that of Ra, the god of sun and light, thus the appearance of the god Amun-Ra, to whom the main temple was dedicated. The huge complex expands right and left, but unfortunately we had little time to explore due to time constraints.

Karnak complex: the entrance pylon, the columns in the hall, decorated with scenes from Ancient Egypt's daily life, and an Obelisk

We moved on to Luxor Temple and the Avenue of Sphinxes, also called Rams Road [طريق الكباش]. The Avenue joined Karnak and Luxor, and was flanked by ram-faced sphinxes all along its three kilometres – though the four best preserved ones were taken to Cairo to create a monument in one of the squares. The avenue has actually been walkable since 2021, and you can go from one temple to the other on foot.

A long line of sphinxes with human faces and lion paws

Luxor Temple [معبد الأقصر ] was dedicated to the rejuvenation of the monarchy, and many pharaohs were crowned there. It was founded around 1400 BCE, and throughout the centuries has come to host a mosque. In front of it, stands an obelisk, whose twin is in Paris. Behind the obelisk stands the pylon, the court, the colonnade, and a final court before the sanctuary chamber.

Luxor temple: The pylon with an obelisk in front, two sitting colossi and two parallel rows of columns from the hall

We were back on the boat just a few minutes after 14:00 for lunch, and then I found my way to the sun deck to see the sail off… which did not happen till 16:00! All that running through the temples for… nothing. I was not pleased, but I refused to get angry. Instead, I read up on what was to come, did some bird watching – I caught a flock of ibises – and watched the sunset.

A flock of birds flying against a bright blue sky. The curved-down beak suggests that they're ibises

Sunset over the nile. The sky is orange, the suni s almost white, and there is a trail of light on the water

In the late evening we reached the floodgate at Esna, which we should have crossed around dinnertime. We got stuck waiting for our turn behind a large LNG ship and a lot of other motorboats. In the middle of nowhere, I was able to see the stars very clearly, and that was pretty.

12th & 13th November 2022: Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

Posted on 27 November 2022 by JBinnacle

Here’s a little secret – people don’t like flying on the 13th, even less when it’s a Tuesday. Thus, I came across a bunch of awesome offers for the 13th of December, which unfortunately I could not take up due to work uncertainties. What I could muster was a mini getaway on the weekend of the 12th/13th of November, to the northern Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela. There were a few reasons for this choice – one, cheap flights; two, I’ve recently started considering a route through the so-called Camino de Santiago (St. James’ Way); and three, pandemic shuffled ‘Holy Years’ round so there was a special gate to the cathedral open that I wanted to see. I flew out around noon on Saturday and came back on Sunday night. It was a perfect plan for a decompressing getaway.

Santiago de Compostela is known as one of the most important pilgrimage cities in the world. According to the Christian tradition, the tomb of Apostle James was found in the area in Middle Ages (different sources vary throughout the 9th and 11th century), and the pilgrimage to visit the remains became one of the most important in the Christian faith, alongside Rome and Jerusalem, to the point that the pavement proudly states that “Europe was built on the pilgrimage to Santiago”. While I’m not religious, I have a thing for religious architecture, and as mentioned above I’ve been thinking about the Camino for a while, and visiting the goal felt a good way to start organising how I wanted to look at things.

However, let’s say it wasn’t the most perfect getaway ever. Though the flight was on time, and pretty short, there was turbulence – not something too out of the ordinary, but here’s something you might not know about me. Back in the mid-nineties, I sort of crash-landed in the Santiago airport, so let’s say I was not so invested in a bumpy flight.

As the flight had been very cheap (about 30€), I had decided to splurge a little in the hotel – and I found a not-so-bad offer of half-board at the Parador de Santiago – Hostal Reyes Católicos, downright at the centre of the city. It is located in the old pilgrim hospital, and it is a magnificent building, aside from a five-star hotel. I arrived around 14:00, and the room was not ready – fair enough. I wanted to get there early in order to drop off my luggage, and make sure I could arrange my dinner reservations for a convenient time. One of the reasons I decided to book half-board in the Parador was to guarantee myself a meal late in the evening, as I had booked a walking tour at 20:00, and the main restaurant served dinner till 22:45.

Wide shot of the Parador. It shows a severe building with an ornate gate. The sky is bright blue.

Unfortunately, the check-in staff “had booked me” at 20:30, and they asked if that was okay. I replied it wasn’t, and explained the reason stated above – the staff then said that they could accommodate me at 22:00 at the secondary restaurant, but not at the main one. I answered that then I’d have dinner at 22:00 at the secondary restaurant then, but the staff asked me to check the menu. I stated that it did not matter. I needed my dinner to be at 22:00, and if the main restaurant wasn’t available, it would have to be at the secondary one. The staff asked me to check the menus, and I explained again that I had a tour from 20:00 to 21:30 – I needed dinner at 22:00. I thought that was resolved, and as it was too early to get a room, I picked up my camera, left my backpack in the locker room, and went on my merry way to explore the outdoor “monumental route” within the historical city Ruta Monumental de Intramuros. The old city of Santiago is part of the Unesco Heritage Site Routes of Santiago de Compostela: Camino Francés and Routes of Northern Spain Caminos de Santiago de Compostela: Camino francés y Caminos del Norte de España.

As I had tickets for different activities in the cathedral booked for the previous morning, and the Sunday forecast was rain, I decided to do most of the walking on my first afternoon. I started off in front of the cathedral façade in the square Praza do Obradoiro (the Artisans Square), which hosts the town hall in the former Neoclassical palace Pazo de Raxoi, the Parador itself, and the main – but closed, will get into that later – entrance to the cathedral Santa Apostólica y Metropolitana Iglesia Catedral de Santiago de Compostela, with its Baroque façade called Fachada del Obradoiro.

Baroque façade: two towers and twin set of stairs, fenced away.

I walked around the cathedral, and stopped at all the other squares: Praza da Acibecharía (the Black Amber Workers Square), Praza da Quintana de Vivos (Villa of the Living Square) and Praza das Praterías (the Silversmiths Square).

A collage of views of the cathedral of Santiago.

I walked down Rua do Villar, which is the closest to a main street the historical town has. I strolled around the historical centre – there are many interesting buildings and churches, alongside the market. At some point I entered a bakery, but I kinda ran away when I heard the prices they were charging.

Santiago Route. An archade, a fountain, an ornate corner with a coat of arms carved into it.

After an hour and a half or so, I found the convent-turned-museum Igrexa e Convento de San Domingos de Bonaval that has become the ethnological museum of the Galician people Museo do Pobo Galego. The museum itself was not too spectacular, but the building itself was fantastic. One of the most amazing things was the triple-helix staircase that joins the different floors on one side, and the remains of the gothic church (where I got to climb the pulpit). To the side there’s the pantheon for illustrious Galicians, including one of the few female historical figures in Spain – poet Rosalía de Castro.

Monastery and museum. The pieces include a humanoid stone idol, some Christian figures in polychromated wood, and two pipes

View of the triple staircase, from above, from below and through the door from one of the sides.

A view of a gothic chapel, showing an empty altar.

This was around 16:30, and even if I was not even a bit hungry, my legs shook a little. Thus, I decided that I needed to find a supermarket to buy a snack – I only had coffee before I left for the airport at 9:00. Before getting to the supermarket though, I walked around the former orchard and graveyard of the convent, now a picnic-friendly park Parque de San Domingos de Bonaval, full of ruins and fountains.

The previous church, from outside, on the right. There's a winter tree in front, and some old niches on the left wall.

I grabbed my snack and went back to the monumental route until I was back at the Praza do Obradoiro. I walked around to see the sunset, and caught a glimpse of the light playing on the façade of the church Igrexa de San Frutuoso, and some nice views from the adjacent park (which turned out to have been another graveyard) Xardín do Cemiterio de San Frutuoso.

Santiago sunset. Upper picture shows the church of Saint Fructuoso, and the lower one a view of the nearby park with the sun setting in the background

It was around 18:00 at that time, so I could finally check in – which I did, only to find out that the staff I had talked to had decided not to book my dinner in the end, which lead to me needing to explain about my tour again to a new staff who told me they couldn’t book me at 22:00 on the secondary restaurant! It had to be at 21:45, but they could notify the restaurant that I would arrive a bit later. I was really not impressed by the whole thing, even less when I apparently needed a bellboy to guide me to my room and carry my backpack– and of course get tipped.

I had my snack and then went on to explore the building. As I did, the sun completely set, so the different lights were cool. The Hostal Reyes Católicos used to be the pilgrims’ hospital. It is a huge rectangle with four interior cloisters named after the four Christian Evangelists, the inner areas having been refurbished into the rooms.

The four gothic cloisters of the Parador. Two have some greenery on them, the other two are just grey and built.

A few minutes before 20:00, I left for my tour. Although I’m not a big fan of tours and group activities, I had had my curiosity piqued by a “theatrical visit” of the historical centre of the town called Meigas Fóra. In the area of Galicia, a meiga is a type of traditional witch, good or bad, depending on what side the person speaking about them is – in this case, the guide being a supposed-meiga, of course they were all neat and nice. The tour was supposed to tell about the different legends and interesting supernatural trivia of the town, but just ended up being a bit watered-down walk around those graveyards-turned-parks I had walked before. The coolest thing was finding the pilgrim’s shadow Sombra del Peregrino, a fun game of light-and-shadows in one of the squares around the cathedral.

A view of the cathedral of Santiago at night, illuminated, on top. On the bottom, a column casts a shadow onto the wall behind it - it seems to be that of a man with a walking cane and a travel hat.

Hilariously though, as we were walking, someone approached me to ask in wonder if on top of taking the tour alone, I was in Santiago all by myself, in total awe of someone travelling on their own. She said that she would never be able to do so – while she took selfies of herself because the people she was “touring” with could not be any less interested…

After the tour I went to have dinner – guess what? At 22:00 h! Let’s say that it was not the greatest experience. The restaurant staff had their hands full with a table of around 20 drunk “pilgrims” who had come all the way from South America and were rightfully celebrating – albeit loudly and a bit obnoxiously (all that pilgrim wine, no doubt) – that they had reached the end of the Way. The rest of the patrons were, including myself, four one-person tables, which made me wonder if they just don’t book one-person tables in the main restaurant after the first shift. The floor staff – basically one working waiter, and one wandering waiter – was overwhelmed by the table, and it took me over an hour to finish my dinner – which was some local octopus (pulpo a feira), a roasted great scallop (Pecten maximus, not only a delicious shellfish, also the symbol of the town and the related pilgrimage, called vieira in Spanish) and a piece of the typical almond pie (tarta de Santiago).

Dinner: pulpo, a scallop and a piece of cake.

Then I went to my room for a nice hot shower and to get some sleep. I was surprised then to find no extra blanket in the wardrobe, though there was an extra pillow. This was around midnight already so I decided not to hit reception for the extra blanket and just cranked up the air-con on and off to stay warm. I slept on and off, too, but it was not too much of a long night.

The next morning I had breakfast and set out for my day at the cathedral, Santa Apostólica y Metropolitana Iglesia Catedral de Santiago de Compostela. Santiago was built around the 7th century legend that the apostle James the Great, Santiago el Mayor, was buried in the area of Galicia, after having reached Spain to convert it into Christianity. In the 9th century, a tomb was discovered among some abandoned Roman ruins, and the local bishop had “the certainty” that it was the Apostle’s tomb. The bishop informed the King, who was the reported first pilgrim, and later ordered that a church should be built to commemorate the finding.

As the number of pilgrims grew, the church became too small, so subsequent temples were erected. The current interior was built between the 11th and the 13th century in a very pure Romanesque style, but the exterior was covered in the 18th century, in a very adorned Baroque style, which is also the style of the altar.

The most important piece of the cathedral is the Portico of Glory Pórtico de la Gloria, the Romanesque entrance to the 12th-century cathedral, with 200 sculptures carved in stone in the three-archway portal. The entrance now is locked away, you have to pay to see it, and photographs are not allowed.

For starters, I climbed up to the roof of the cathedral and the bell tower – not really the bell tower but the “rattle tower”, as the bells chime on the eastern tower, and the rattle is played on the darker, western tower. The roof was restored as recently as 2021, and from there there are some nice views of the town.

The towers of the cathedral from the room, and some aereal shots - one shows the Parador cloisters from above.

Between visits, I went inside the cathedral, where the pilgrims’ mass was about to start. I might have stayed out of curiosity had I been in town for a longer period. Then I visited the portico – since pictures were not allowed, I’ve rescued some 1995 ones from when I were in town as a teen.

Three shots of the very baroque altar in Santiago - it is heavily decorated and painted gold. On the bottom right, a silver urn, also very ornated, supposedly where the remains of St. James are.

A collage showing several sculpures of the Portico of Glory - Romanesque statues richly coloured and decorated, they look placid

After wandering the cathedral for a bit longer, I made the most out of the last hour of sunshine to head to the park Parque da Alameda to find the spot Miradoiro da Catedral next to a huge centennial eucalyptus tree (Eucalyptus globulus labill) Eucalipto centenario, a 120-year-old specimen, considered one of the oldest eucalyptus trees that was planted in Europe after captain Cook “discovered” Australia and the species was introduced by Fray Rosendo Salvado.

A panoramic view of Santiago, showing the cathedral.

My next stop was the museum of pilgrimages and Santiago Museo de las Peregrinaciones y de Santiago, which was free due to the Covid recovery plan. It features a collection of items related to Saint James Way, and other important pilgrimages of the world, including the Japanese Kumano Kodo [熊野古道], and the Muslim Mecca Pilgrimage Ḥajj [حَجّ]. The upper floors are dedicated to the hagiography of Santiago / James through the Way and in the city.

Museum of Pilgrimages. A collage that shows a wooden statue of Santiago on a white horse, sword raised; other depictions of Santiago as pilgrim; some paper scallops decorated by kids; and a Japanese sacred gate.

Later, even though I should have gone to eat a bite, I headed to the monastery and museum Mosteiro de San Martiño Pinario, religious complex built between the 16th and 17th centuries, though the inner areas and chapels date from the 18th century. Today it’s a cultural centre, and alongside the church, it features a museum with block prints, fossils, an ancient pharmacy… The church has the most baroque Baroque altarpiece I’ve ever seen, and two choirs – one behind the altar, and the other one up on the second floor.

Exterior of the monastery, including the double downward staircase, and a picture of the interior, showing a very Baroque altar painted in gold.

Finally, I stepped into the museum of the cathedral Museo de la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela, which features the entrance to the cloister, library, and the upper galleries, aside from artistic and religious treasures such as the original stone choir, wooden carvings, and tapestries. I was also able to access the upper galleries and look at the rain in the Praza do Obradoiro, and later the crypt.

A collage showing the cloister of the cathedral of Santiago while it rains outside, and the former Romanesque choir, carved in stone.

Romanesque arches and columns built in stone, and a cast ceiling.

After one last visit to the cathedral and its shop, I got myself a last souvenir – a silver and black amber bracelet I had seen upon arrival, and took a taxi back to the airport in order to fly back. All in all, I was not too impressed by the city nor its inhabitant, and I was pretty disappointed in the Parador. I think it has put me off the idea of doing the Camino as much as I thought I wanted to, but not every trip is perfect, I guess, and I hope my memories warm up with time.

A silver and black amber bracelet. The silver is very fine, and the gem is bright black.

Walking distance: around 11.68 km (18659 steps) on Saturday and 10.58 km (16931 steps) on Sunday, not counting airport transits

9th October 2022: Atémpora, Sigüenza (Spain)

Posted on 15 October 2022 by JBinnacle

Sigüenza a Medieval town in the centre of Spain that is currently trying to gain the status of Unesco World Heritage Site. It has a castle, a protected historical centre, and in the heart of it stands the cathedral Catedral de Santa María La Mayor de Sigüenza . The cathedral dates back to 1124, when the original Romanesque building was was erected. The construction finished in 1326 , with remodelling and decoration elapsed several centuries, with different add-ons, until it was “declared” finished after the Spanish Civil War, with later works being just conservation.

Cathedral in Siguenza, a late-Romanesque / early-Gothic building, in a reddish colour. Left: side view, showing the bell tower. Right: façade, with two side towers.

In summer and autumn 2022, there is an exhibition in the cathedral – Atémpora. Sigüenza entre el Poder y la Gloria, which translated to something akin to “Timeless. Sigüenza between Power and Glory”. It displays some of the treasures of the cathedral and the museum, along with a few archaeological devices. We had seen most of the religious artefacts in a previous visit, but the historical chronicle was rather interesting.

The first block, around the cloister, deals with Celtiberian (the Arevaci tribe) and Roman weapons and everyday life. The second block deals with the Goth conquer and the newfound Christianity.

Upper Left: entrance to Atempora, flanked by two angels. Upper right: Celtiberian Daggers. Bottom left: oil lamp looking like a bird. Bottom left: clay bowl.

Interwoven with the exhibition are the treasures of the cathedral, including two collection of Flemish tapestries, one focused on Athena, the other on the story of Romulus and Remus. Another highlight is an Annunciation painting by Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos “El Greco” a Greek artist of the Spanish Renaissance (since he moved to Toledo in his prime). Of course, the cloister is fantastic. There is a tiny gothic altarpiece in one of the chapels that is delicious. The problem? As always, Baroque trends building choirs in the middle of the naves, blocking the view, and overdecorated altarpieces. The wooden ceilings are extremely beautiful where they have been preserved.

Upper left: tapestry collection, hanging from walls. Bottom right: Annunciation by El Greco. Bottom left: decorated wooden ceiling. Bottom right: Cloister of the cathedral.

The three final blocks present different Christian symbols and pieces of art from the Middle Ages onwards, and interestingly enough, a watermill from the old salt marshes. The exhibit makes a particular emphasis on Wilgefortis, a Catholic folk saint which is supposed to be buried in the cathedral, with the silver arch where her body lies brought from the altar. Other pieces include coins, sceptres, and even a few elements from the times when there was a Medieval university in town – one of them being a human skull with “anatomy notes” on it. There are also late Medieval sculptures, most importantly crucified Christ representations and Virgins with the Child, though probably the nicest one is the one which is permanently at the entrance of the cathedral. Next to it, a mill from the nearby salt mines (Salinas de Imón) has been brought – I really want to visit those at some point too, so great reminder.

Altar of St. Wilgefortis on the left. On the right, a coin, a scepter and half of a skull with writings on it.

Top left: Romanesque virging with child. Bottom left: watermill. Right: Crucified Christ with four nails on his hands and feet.

The most important monument, or area, in the Sigüenza cathedral is the chapel called Capilla del Doncel. It holds the tombs of Martín Vázquez de Arce and his parents. The de Arce men participated in the war against Granada Muslims during the 15th century, where the son was killed in an ambush, as the Muslims created a flash flood from the watering system they had to control the waters of River Genil. Though he was already 25 years old, too old to be called a doncel, teenage boy, the name has stuck for centuries. The parents’ tombs are traditional burials, however, the Doncel’s grave is an arcosolium, with the decorative sculpture showing the young man awake and reading a book, rather than lying in death as it is the typical representation.

Chapel of"El Doncel", showing the traditional burials in the foreground, and the Doncel's tomb in the background.

We went to have lunch after the visit, we went to have lunch at La Taberna Seguntina, where we shared some typical cheese, sausage, and roasted pork before we went home.

Typical Siguenza Dishes. Top: sausages and cheese. Bottom: roasted pork leg with potatoes.

24th September 2022: Manzanares el Real & Alcalá de Henares (Spain)

Posted on 28 September 2022 by JBinnacle

My friend, whom I had not seen since January 2020 as the pandemic kept us apart, dropped by for a visit as she was in the area. Since the weather forecasting had not been promising, I had not booked anything, but given her a bunch of options to do. She was particularly taken by the castle in Manzanares El Real, a town in the Madrid area, so we drove there.

The palace-castle Castillo Nuevo de Manzanares El Real was built in the late 15th century as a replacement of the previous one by the House of Mendoza. The noble family was given control over the area the previous century, and after a hundred years living in the older castle, the new one was commissioned to Juan Guas, who designed the building in a on a Romanesque-Mudejar style. It was built in granite stone, with Isabelline Gothic decoration, mixing defensive / military, palatial and religious architecture. It was inhabited for about a century before it was abandoned. The castle was declared a Cultural Monument in 1931, and it has undergone several restorations. In 1961, it was used as shooting location for Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren’s “El Cid” film.

Considered one of the best-preserved castles in the Madrid area, the building it has four towers, six floors, and a central patio. It holds a collection of tapestries, and most of it can be walked. Unfortunately, the towers cannot be climbed, but you can walk around the walls, both in the terraced gallery and outside. It was a bit overpriced, but well-worth the visit.

Collage showing the castle. It is reddish with hard corners and rounded towers. The decoration is white and ornate.

We made a pause for lunch and tried the best wild asparagus (Asparagus acutifolius) that I have had in ages – just grilled with salt and lemon. We had some croquettes too.

Plate of perfectly-round croquettes and some crisps in the middle + plate of roasted green wild asparagus

As we had walked into the village for lunch, we only had to walk a little further to find the ruins of the original castle Castillo Viejo de Manzanares el Real. At the moment, only the foundations can be seen, though it is similar to the new one. The archaeological excavation started in the year 2022, but nothing much is known of it, except this one was an actual military fortress that predates the new castle. From there, the views of the new castle and the local church make a nice skyline of sorts.

Foundations of the old castle. Not much is seen, there is a sign reading "Old Castle Archaeological Excavation"

View of Manzanares el Real, showing modern roofs, the church tower, and the castle in the furthest background

It was still early in the afternoon, so I suggested stopping by Alcalá de Henares. I wanted to make a stop at a shop to check for something, but after a quick visit to the shopping centre, we moved on to what is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting buildings in town – the small palace house Palacete Laredo. Built in the Neo-Mudejar style, it is a bizarre combination of mosaics, moorish-like decorations, and vibrantly-coloured windows that somehow work, somehow. Though only about half of the building can be visited, I just find it bizarrely alluring. My friend loved it. Furthermore, the building has a few Complutensian Polyglot Bibles in display – the first polyglot edition of the Christian Holy book, published in the 16th century under the patronage of the Cardinal Cisneros, a key figure in local history.

Palacete Laredo: exterior and interior decorations + close up of the open bible, in Latin and Hebrew

We continued on, and walked round the city. We saw two back-to-back weddings at the cathedral Santa e Insigne Catedral-Magistral de los Santos Justo y Pastor – that meant we could not snoop into the cathedral, but we did see one of the brides arrive in a Rolls Royce.

Finally, we dropped by the archaeological museum Museo Arqueológico Regional, which has opened a very interesting new palaeontology ward – holding reproductions and real fossils of animals that used to live in the Madrid area, with a few coming from the palaeontological site of Cerro de los Batallones – most interestingly a Tetralophodon longirostris and a Machairodus aphanistus sabretooth cat.

Skeletons and skulls: mastodon, giant prehistoric giraffe that looks similar to a humongous goat, and sabretooth cat

We did a little more shopping afterwards, and eventually we drove off into the sunset… and the traffic. We ended up walking for 12.47 km (19078 steps), and driving for a good three hours, though M40 was so busy it actually felt like much much longer.

13th September 2022: Wadi Rum (and the bus) {Jordan, September 2022}

Posted on 17 September 2022 by JBinnacle

I had a boiled egg, potato hash-browns and coffee breakfast because my body was craving salt, I guess. Then we set off on the bus, where we ended up spending around seven hours (the 412 km are supposed to be done in 5 hours and a half, but that does not take into account bad traffic). Urgh. Our first stop was a viewpoint over the whole canyon area.

Wadi Musa valley panorama, showing the deep gorge from above

The second stop was a souvenir shop that had probably somehow bribed our guide or driver for it. None of us even bought anything, but we were forced to be there for about half an hour before we could continue to the only organised activity for the day – a two-hour jeep tour throughout the Natural Reserve and Unesco World Heritage Site of Wadi Rum | Wādī Ramm [وادي رم]. It is the largest wadi “valley”, created by alluvial fans and wind deposits, rather than the idea of a river bed. They are often found in deserts.

During the tour in Wadi Rum Reserve [محمية وادي رم] we drove through the desert and stopped at some rock formations that had built a gigantic dune. Wadi Rum used to be a granite and sandstone rocky formation. Thousands of years worth of wind eroded the sandstone back to sand, forming and shaping the desert dunes. Huge granite structures still stand, such as the Seven Pillars of Wisdom [عمدة الحكمة السبعة], just at the beginning of the route. One of the stops is the tourist-named Big Red Sand Dune, which you can climb for kicks, giggles and some nice views of the landscape.

Driving into Wadi Rum. The roof of the jeep is visible, along with a rock formation in the background. Between us and the rock formation there is the other jeep, causing a dust cloud

Back of a dune we had to climb, and the rock + sand landscape that could be seen from the top. Wind erosion marks have created soft ridges. The rocks are red-grey and the sand is rose-gold

Then we drove off to see some petroglyphs, and were offered dromedary rides. These petroglyphs, depicting early humans and their cattle – bovines and dromedaries – are the reason for the Heritage status.

A rock wall with some dromedaries in the foreground + a close up of the petroglyphs engraved in the rock, also showing dromedaries (by JBinnacle)

Finally we were shown a Bedouin tent at the feet of the Lawrence Canyon, a beautiful rock formation with faces of Jordan monarchs. Unfortunately, we did not get to see any onyx or fennec foxes, but I did see a small lizard. The Bedouins treated us to a cup of tea, but then we had to tip the driver about 10€…

Lawrence Canyon, a deep cut in the rock filled with sand at the bottom + details of engraved faces and Arab script, a lizard and a bit of tea, along with a traditional Bedouin coffee maker

Afterwards, we started off our trip back northwards back to Amman | ʻAmmān [عَمَّان]. Though the trip is supposed to take about 4 hours, it was way more than that, and we did not arrive at the hotel until way past 18:00. We went through the security checks and ended up learning that we could not travel between floors, so we could not go to the others’ rooms using the lifts, and the stairs were blocked… Well, at least we had… views?

A view of Amman skyline in the dark

After we managed to regroup, we had dinner and decided to try to check in online for the flight next day’s flight – and I was successful. Apparently, the airline only cared about us filling in our Covid certificate to enter Jordan, we were on our own for the way back.

12th September 2022: Petra {Jordan, September 2022}

Posted on 17 September 2022 by JBinnacle

Petra | Al-Batrāʾ [ٱلْبَتْرَاء] is without doubt the crown jewel of Jordan. It was the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom, and a strategic point in the middle of the trading routes. Nabataeans were one of the nomadic Bedouin tribes in the Arabian Desert that eventually settled and established the capital of their kingdom around the 2nd century BCE. Soon, Petra became a major trading hub and flourished as the Nabataeans were extremely skilful in harvesting rainwater and agriculture in the barren deserts. The Nabataeans also became very good at carving the sandstone of the canyon where they built their city. They lived in caves in the rock and created intricate façades in the sandstone of the mountains surrounding the site.

Eventually, water dried out and Petra fell, becoming a lost city, a tale told by crusaders when they returned home. In 1812, Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt “discovered” Petra for the Europeans, and excavations and archaeological expeditions took place throughout the 20th century. At this time, a Bedouin tribe, the Bidouls lived in the area, and in 1985 they were resettled in a nearby village built by the Jordan government before the site was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site.

As part of the concessions made for the Bidouls, they were given sole rights to the exploitation of the archaeological site, and their traditional customs were declared Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage. Unfortunately, these traditions have devolved today into blatant child labour, peddling, and animal abuse. Barefoot children run after tourists to sell trinkets, women handle myriad of stands illegally selling rocks and fake archaeological artefacts along with imitation jewellery, cosmetics, decoration and so on, and men offer the services of thirsty and sad-looking donkeys, dromedaries and horses to move round the area. And while I can understand choosing to ride an animal in the long distances and heat, I saw a poor dromedary covered in red graffiti made by tourists that made me want to scream at people.

In 1989, Petra was featured as the lost city of Alexandretta in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, something that is considered the start of the Western tourism in the area. The film features the entry canyon, the Siq, and the Treasury as the Temple of the Holy Grail, possibly inspired by the crusade references from the Middle Ages. Aside from being a Unesco World Heritage Site, Petra is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, and a geoarcheological protected area.

We were picked up at 8:00 and driven to the visitor centre. We had been warned beforehand to say no to anyone trying to rent / sell us anything as long as we were with the guide, who insisted on “taking care” of us for a couple of hours until he gave us free time until 18:00.

As you leave the visitor centre behind, there is about a kilometre and a half of barren desert. To the right of the trails stand the Djinn Blocks [أنصاب الجن], so named because the wind makes a sound around them (a djinn is an invisible spirit, sometimes called a genie, from the pre-Arabian mythology that was later incorporated into Islamic theology). On the other side of the path stands the Obelisk Tomb [مدفن المسلات].

Petra: Djinn Blocks and Obelisk Tombs (by JBinnacle)

The following area is the canyon Al-Siq [السيق], another kilometre and a half’s worth of walking between two fantastic rock walls. The Siq is an opened fault that was subsequently eroded by wind and running water. It was used as the caravan entry to Petra, and the lower area shows rests of Roman roadway, and the water canalisation built by the Nabataean. There are also some sculptures, both religious (baetyli) and non religious, such as a merchant with their dromedary. Some of the side fractures have brick dams to protect the main route.

Petra: Different views of the Al-Siq, including the waterways (by JBinnacle)

At the end of the Siq stands The Treasury | Al-Khazneh [الخزنة], the most famous building in town, built in the 1st century BCE, probably as the Mausoleum of Nabataean King Aretas IV. Older tribes of Bedouins thought there was a Pharaoh’s treasure in the upper urn, so they tried to shoot it down throughout the 19th century. I had wanted to go up to the view point, but the locals made sure that you could not do it on your own so you were forced to tip them and support their submerged economy – thus, I decided against it in the end.

Petra: first view of the Treasury through the Siq, and main façade (by JBinnacle)

The canyon opens to the right and you move onto The Street of Façades, flanked by Nabataean tombs. As the canyon opens, to the left stands the Nabataean amphitheatre [المدرج النبطي ] and to the right, the Tomb of ‘Unayshu carved into the rock.

Petra: Different façades, Nabataean amphitheatre, and Palace Tomb (by JBinnacle)

Once in the open, turning back you can see the Royal Tombs, from left to right Palace Tomb, Corinthian Tomb, Silk Tomb and Urn Tomb. To the right there are the remains of a Byzantine church that we did not climb to.

Petra: overview of the Royal Tombs carved into the mountainside (by JBinnacle)

The Colonnaded Street holds the Temenos Gate, the Great Temple [المعبد الكبير] on the left and the Temple of the Winged Lions [معبد الأسود المجنحة]. It ends on the Qasr al-Bint [قصر البنت], the only building in the traditional sense that it is still standing after thousands of years of erosion and earthquakes.

Petra: Colonnade street, Great Temple, and ruins of the gates and the only standing building (by JBinnacle)

Here we made a stop at the restaurant / bar to have a drink and gather a little strength before we took on the 850 upwards steps on the Ad-Deir Trail. The hike was a bit difficult due to the uneven steps and the donkeys constantly going up and down, carrying tourists. The views of the canyon were spectacular, and at the end of the hike stands the largest stone-carved building in Petra, The Monastery | Ad Deir [الدير]. It is 47 m high and 48 m wide, built in classical Nabataean style – an interesting detail is that the columns are purely decorative, and not at all functional. I enjoyed the hike, but apparently my family did not.

Petra: Different views of the Monastery Trail, up and down. The lower pictures shows and overview of the whole valley, 800 steps down (by JBinnacle)

Petra: Façade of the Monastery, a building carved ito the mountain side in reddish sandstone (by JBinnacle)

After the Monastery, we made our way down, leisurely, and stopped at the places the guide had told us about. We decided not to hike up any more sites and just strolled back to the visitor centre. From there, we stepped into The Petra Museum [متحف البتراء], where we could see some of the found artefacts and decorations up close and protected from erosion.

Petra: Overview of the Museum, pieces of the Nabataean piping, chapitels, teselae and a reconstruction of a Nabataean man's head (by JBinnacle)

We finished around 17:30, so we just set to wait for the bus at whatever shadow we could. Having read a lot of bad reviews about Petra by Night, I decided that 9.5 hours / 15 km (24326 steps) in the site had been enough and I did not need to walk the Siq again illuminated by candles. Yay me getting over my FOMO. We had some dinner in the hotel – and what I really regretted was not packing my bathing suit, because I would have loved a soak in the swimming pool.

11th September 2022: Roman, Byzantine and Nabataean archaeology {Jordan, September 2022}

Posted on 17 September 2022 by JBinnacle

The alarm clock went off at 6 am as we left at 7 for the initial leg of the tour, the city of Amman | ʻAmmān [عَمَّان]. The first thing we learnt was that traffic rules are little more than guidelines in Jordan – cars jumping lanes, honking at will, and driving whereever they could physically fit. The tour had 14 people in it, so we had a minibus. At least we had some presence / weight going on for us in that crazy traffic… so that was a good thing about the tour.

Around 8:00 we arrived at the Amman Citadel | Jabal Al-Qal’a [جبل القلعة] – and here is where my heart sank. The guide made clear that we had to be with him at all times unless he gave us “free time”. Unfortunately, he rushed us through, and he was droning, boring, and embodied everything I dislike about guided tours. And here I thought I had made my peace with them back at Stonehenge…

The most important remains in the Citadel are the Roman Temple of Hercules [معبد هرقل] and the remains of the colossal statue (2nd century CE), and the Umayyad Palace | Al-Qaṣr al-Umawī [القصر الأموي] (7th century CE). In the mid-20th century, the Jordan Archaeological Museum [متحف الآثار الأردني] was built within the Citadel. The museum is tiny, but it holds artefacts from all the historical eras the country has lived through.

Amman Citadel: Temple of Hercules and Palace

Amman archaeological museum: roman sculptures and trinkets, sarcophages, estelae

After the Citadel, we drove downhill to the Amman Roman Theatre [المدرج الروماني في الاردن] and Odeon [مسرح الأوديون], both of them are structures dating from the Roman period, 2nd century CE. Both are extremely well preserved, and still in use. There are also two tiny museums – the Folklore Museum and the Jordanian Museum of Popular Traditions.

Amman Roman theatre, from the outside

Amman Odeon, from the upper seats

We got back on the bus and started our trip south. After an hour or so we reached Mount Nebo | Jabal Nībū [جَبَل نِيبُو]. According to the Bible, this was the place from where Moses laid eyes on “Promised Land” and died. Today, it belongs to the Franciscan Order. At the top stands the Memorial Church of Moses [كنيسة موسى جبل نيبو], which holds the archaeological remains of a Byzantine Basilica. A few astonishing mosaics can be seen inside. Next to the church stands the Brazen Serpent Monument (Nehushtan), and on the other side there is an olive tree orchard, with a tree planted by Catholic Pope John Paul II. From the viewpoint you can emulate Moses and look upon Promised Land, but the day was hazy and I only caught sight of the Dead Sea – a bit sad we did not get to got there, to be honest.

A collage: Mount Nebo mosaic showing men and animals, and Greek Writing. A panorama of the Dead Sea. The olive tree planted by the Pope

We drove forward to Madaba [مادبا] to see the Map of Madaba mosaic, dating from the 6th century CE and preserved on the floor of the Greek Orthodox Basilica of Saint George. It is a representation of the Middle East, essentially the Holy Land and Jerusalem. The mosaic was rediscovered in 1884, but the lack of preservation damaged part of it, until the Germans took over conservation in 1965.

Madaba Mosaic, showing Jerusalem

We continued our trip and made a stop for lunch at a restaurant / tourist shop in the three-hour ride southwards. The whole morning was rushed because the guide wanted to fit Little Petra | Siq al-Barid [سيق البريد] that afternoon, instead of Wednesday. It is part of the Unesco World Heritage Site of Petra and the Petra Archaeological Park. Little Petra was probably a suburb of Petra. The Nabataean built their desert cities by carving the buildings into the sandstone that made out the walls of the canyons, sometimes carving fantastic façades from top to bottom. One of the most interesting things in Petra are the frescoes found in the Painted Biclinium (dining room), depicting vines, flowers, and other leaves. Other constructions include water cisterns, the real secret of the Nabataean success flourishing in the desert, and the Triclinium. The city was built in the 1st century CE, “found” in 1906 by Père Abel, and excavated by Diana Kirkbride and Brian Byrd in the late 20th century.

Little Petra collage: Entrance canyon, triclinium, Nabataean paintings and stairs carved on the rock

Finally, we drove off to our hotel. The manager told us that we were the only group with an arranged dinner at the hotel that night, and he asked us to arrange a dining time for “salad and barbecue”. The salad turned out to be an assemble of Arab snacks and a plateful of barbecue lamb and chicken. Just wow.

Assorted Jordanian "salads" and a plate of barbecued lamb

In the end, we drove for around 300 km and about five hours, and walked about 6.5 km (10711 steps).

13th August 2022: Smoothness in Chaos {England, August 2022}

Posted on 21 August 2022 by JBinnacle

As rail strikes rolled out both in London and the rest of England, I was thankful I had found out in advance. The hotel internet was patchy and I would have had trouble booking a coach ticket for the airport. I decided not to try and cram more than I had already on my plate for the day, and stick to my booked tickets and original timing.

I took an underground line to Victoria railway station, from which I went to find out where my airport coach would leave from. After that, I walked from Victoria coach station towards Westminster, stopping at Westminster Cathedral, a rather out-of-place Neo-Byzantine building, which serves as the Catholic cathedral. Designed by John Francis Bentley, it was completed in 1903. It was closed for service, unfortunately.

Westminster Cathedral, a Chrsistian neo-byzantine building: a view of the exterior, in white and red brick, and the open doors showing the inner altar from afar

Due to the strikes and potential issues, Westminster Abbey had rearranged its opening hours, and waived all the “entry times”. So basically it was a bit on the chaotic side, though I arrived for my own timeslot, as I had calculated that would be all right for the tour I had signed up for. The abbey is officially called Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster. It was a originally a Benedictine abbey, and William the Conqueror, in 1066 made it the “official coronation ceremony” place, and many Royal Weddings have occurred there. It is built in the Gothic style, with Neo-Gothic towers. Furthermore, most British monarchs were buried there, along with a number of personalities that were either earthed there, or had memorials erected – Darwin, Newton, Hawkins, Shakespeare… The Abbey features a 19th-century wooden choir in the middle, and an outer cloister in early Gothic style. It was bustling with people fighting the audio guide and extremely hot though. However, this completed my tour of the Unesco World Heritage Site of “The Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church”

Westminster Abby, a Gothic Protestant Cathedral. Collage showing the towers and main entrance, the inner Norman altar in golden wood, the ceiling in the nave, and the cloister

Before the train strikes and the chaos in English airports, I had booked a 12:15 “Westminster Abbey hidden highlights” tour as my last activity in London before taking the Stansted Express to the airport. The change of plans meant I had to take the 14:00 h coach instead of the 15:00 h train to be at the airport by 16:00, to make sure that I would have plenty of time to go through security. That meant that I unfortunately had to cut the tour short. Event then, I got to see St Margaret’s Church, the old Medieval sacristy, the inner chambers of Samaria and Jerusalem, and got close to coronation chair. Not bad at all, even if I unfortunately had to miss the library to walk back to the station.

A collage showing an archaeological excavation (very professional holes on the ground, some showing a hint of brick foundations); the Coronation Chair and the hanging flag over it; ornate wooden ceilings; and a mythological-themed tapestry hanging from a wall

I have to say that the return was exhausting. Even with one hour difference, I got on the coach for the airport at 14:00 and did not land until 22:00. However, flying out of Stansted always has a good thing – goodbye sushi!

Tray of sushi and sashimi

All in all, this non-weekend weekend was an amazing mental break! Even if the last day did not work as originally organised, I had a heads up in order to prepare my contingency plans. I got to see something that I always wanted to see – and even if Stonehenge was smaller than I thought, it was not disappointing. Also, I checked that entering the UK after Brexit is pretty much the same as before, so I can organise more escapades in the future, because I still need to go to Jurassic Coast…

Walking distance: 11.27 km / 16672 km

12th August 2022: Stones, the reason for the trip. Lots of Stones {England, August 2022}

Posted on 20 August 2022 by JBinnacle

I was convinced I’d sleep like the dead and set a couple of alarms. Unfortunately, laundry and house service got going at 6:30, and woke me up. At least, the room had a kettle and some instant coffee which, along with one of the sandwiches I had procured the previous day, got me going. I made sure that the camera was charged, put everything I needed into the backpack and strolled off. My hotel was close to Earl’s Court, and I was walking to South Kensington to check out sandwich and coffee shop. And – to my eternal surprise – to queue for a museum! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people waiting for a museum to open in my life.

I’m referring to the Natural History Museum, one of my favourite ones. This time, it was a must, so I booked free entry with the special exhibition – “Dippy is Back”. Dippy is the diplodocus cast replica that used to stand in the middle of the museum, the Hintze Hall (where now the whale skeleton hangs). Dippy was the first of its kind to go on display in the world. The original skeleton was discovered in 1898 by railroad workers in an area called Sheep Creek, in Wyoming, USA. At the time, Andrew Carnegie had made a fortune in the American steel industry, and become one of the most important philanthropists in the US and the British Empire. He paid for casts of the bones to be made (some sources also say that he bought the actual skeleton, some that he had sponsored the dig) and sent to museums in Europe and South American. For the first time the public got to see a whole dinosaur skeleton, which was actually named Diplodocus carnegii after Carnegie. Dippy was gifted to the National History Museum in 1905, and was exhibited there until it went “on tour” around the United Kingdom in 2017.

Here is a little trip down memory lane: back in the mid-nineties I was a teenager in London with my English class. We had free time and they wanted to go to Harrods, so… instead I got myself into the Tube to go to the Natural History Museum just to see this dinosaur (I also ditched the group in the British Museum, but that’s another tale). The point was that I was around 14 or 15, bouncing through London by myself, on my way to see this very cool dinosaur! And I did not have to listen to people being rowdy, nor try to keep the peace in group – I was alone (scared out of my skin, true), but I was free by myself. And for me, that was very important, even if I would not come to realise that until recently.

The fossilised skeleton of a diplodocus, seen from the front. Lots of people are trying to take pictures with it

I saw Dippy again in 2011 when I went to London, but I was surprised when he was not there in 2018, shipped around the country in a travelling exhibition. For some reason, knowing that it was there made me really, really want to see it again. Since the pandemic, you need to reserve at ticket at the Natural History Museum, even if it’s free, so I booked mine for 10:00, to be there first thing as they opened – thus the queuing-before-opening.

Originally a gallery of the British Museum, the Natural History Museum was first designed by civil engineer Captain Francis Fowke, and then it was revised by Alfred Waterhouse, who redesigned the façades in a Romanesque-like style, with architectural terracotta tiles to withstand the British weather. These tiles have flora and fauna decoration and reliefs. The building was finished in 1880, and all the material had been moved by 1883. In the 20th century, the museum rebranded itself as a separate entity from the British Museum, and in recent years different areas and expansions have been opened.

Anyhow. The gates opened a little before 10:00 (If I lived in London I would totally be a member and stroll the museum before opening hours), and the queue started moving. There were lines for ticket holders and non-ticket holders, but my ticket was not even checked. Thus, I just moved towards the area where Dippy was and spent a while there. I felt a little emotional, thinking that, in a way, I owe that dinosaur one.

After seeing Dippy, I wandered around the dinosaur gallery for some time, then I went to buy a sandwich and have a coffee and a painkiller, because I had a long day ahead of me and my head was buzzing a little – I needed to get that under control beforehand. At 11:40 I took a coach with a company called Anderson Tours for an organised day trip: Stonehenge Special Access – Evening. Even though I am not too keen on guided tours, I will admit that they can be handy at some particular circumstances. They will never become my preferred choice of travel, in this case, choosing a tour was the best option.

Regarding Stonehenge, if you want to get up close and personal with the stones, you need a VIP ticket, which means you have to be there before they open to the general public, or after they close, and for that you need transportation – either a taxi, or renting a car, and a hotel as close as possible. The Stonehenge VIP ticket is around £50, and I booked my tour for £135, a full-day tour, including coach, Stonehenge at sunset, and two other destinations, with pick up and drop-off near my London hotel. In the end, that was cheaper than a taxi or a rental plus a hotel near the site (I did a lot of maths before deciding to book this). Anderson Tours offers different combinations of “Stonehenge and…”, with places like Bath or Bristol. However, those are easily reachable by train, and I can explore them on my own. Nevertheless, there was a particular trip that interested me – it went along two or three spots that are a bit off the beaten track, and related to the theme – a Neolithic tomb and another stone circle. This particular tour happens only on certain specific Fridays, thus why my “weekend” away was not such a weekend, as I had to make sure I was in London on the 12th.

The first stop of the day was West Kennet Long Barrow. A long barrow is an elongated prehistoric (3800 – 3500 BCE) stone monument that has been linked to the worship of the dead and the ancestors. Sometimes, human remains have been found in them. If one imagines what Great Britain was at that time, the south-east area would be the one with less tree coverage, and therefore the best option for primitive people who had started to settle and use agriculture. The counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset have a lot of chalk-rich soil (the Salisbury Plain), which makes it difficult for tress to root and grow. Thus, it would have been easy for the primitive humans to settle and build their villages and monuments. Today, the whole area is known as Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site, listed by Unesco in 1986, and it includes over 700 prehistoric monuments from the Neolithic and Bronze Age.

Collage: elongated mound of dirt on top. On the borrom, the gate. On the left the protective slabs, standing upright, and on the right, the entrance. It is a construction of vertical walls made from grey slabs and another slab on top. The interior is dark.

West Kennet Long Barrow is situated in the middle of a farm. There is a tiny parking lot to the side of the road, and a fifteen-minute walk to the barrow itself. It is one of the largest built in Britain, and around 50 sets of remains have been identified, along with pottery, beads and other personal items. Around 2000 BCE, it was closed down and barricaded, then discovered in the 19th century and scientifically excavated and restored in 1956. It is private property under the care of British Heritage. Apparently, all these sites have become a point of pilgrimage for neo-pagans, and on this day, there was a bunch of them chanting inside the barrow…

On the opposite side of the road from the barrow stands Silbury Hill, a mound or artificial mountain. It stands 30 metres high, with 160 metres in diameter wide, and it is estimated that half a million tonnes of material (mostly local chalk) were used to build it throughout several generations of humans. It cannot be climbed, due to a collapse a while back, that would have been neat!

View of a small hill and dry grass.

After that, we headed off to the village of Avebury, which hosts the largest Neolithic stone circle, with smaller circles inside. It originally had over 100 stones, and it might have built between 2850 and 2200 BCE. Today there is a village in the area, with a few shops and museums in the centre, and a lot of sheep grazing the area. Around three quarters of the circle is still standing, along the henge (long ditch that used to be built with the stones in Neolithic circles).

We had two and a half hours in Avebury – a bit too much, I would say – to explore the Avebury Stone Circle and Henge and its sheep. The guide told us about ley lines and trees that were supposed to have inspired Tolkien’s Ents from “The Lord of the Rings”, and I needed to ask about the geology of the stones – here I learnt that they are made out of sarsen, like the Stonehenge ones. Sarsen refers to silicified sandstone blocks, common in the area, and it has been proven that the ones used in the megaliths come from Marlborough Downs, some 25 km away (35 km from Stonehenge). Once we were dismissed for our “free time”, I walked along the three fourths of stone circle remaining.

A collage showing different megaliths from the Avebury stone circle. Small pillars mark the spots where the stones have been lost. There are some sheep grazing on dry grass.

There are other places to visit in town, such as a Medieval manor with a dovecote. The stables of the manor are the site of the archaeological museum is hosted, and here I made a mistake. I should have got in, but I wanted to visit the church, and by the time I was done, the museum was closing down. Live and learn. There is also a tiny chapel, and a lot of souvenir and “crystal” shops.

The Church of Saint James dates back to the 1000s, though later centuries saw the addition of many items, such as the aisles and the 15th-century wooden roof. The nave and the chancel are separated by a one-of-a-kind wooden rood / screen with an original 13th century base. There are Saxon windows and a Norman font. It is a fantastic little church.

Gothic church, from the outside. The inside shows a wooden Normand altar, the standard altar, and a carved stone baptismal font

Finally, the time came. At 17:30 we met up on the way to the coach, and then we started off towards the highlight of the day – Stonehenge. Stonehenge was erected between 3000 and 2000 BCE – the primitive human somehow got the sarsen stones into Salisbury plain and planted them so they stood in a circle. They measure up to four metres long, and some of them are arranged in the shape of trilithons – two large vertical stones (posts) support a third one (lintel) which is set horizontally on top of them, with carved studs so the structure fits like a snap. There is a tear-shaped monolith standing a few metres away called “Heel stone”, which marks the entrance.

Some of them are indeed collapsed now and some are covered in lichen – there is a special type of lichen that only grows in three places in the world, and that is one of them. For thousand of years, these stones have remained standing, and the first historical study of them dates from 1666, carried out by an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer John Aubrey, and has been restored a several times, especially during the 20th century, when they were roped off and a fee charged for entry.

Currently, the stone circle belongs to the Queen of England, and according to the British Ancient Monuments Bill, it cannot be touched or altered in any way that is not to preserve its current status. In 2020, a core taken from the stones during the 1958 restoration was returned. This allowed researchers to analyse the composition and prove that the megaliths are indeed sarsen from the Malborough area.

The rules when you are allowed into the stone are “simple”: do not touch the stones, do not step on the stones, do not hug the stones, do not lick the stones, do not get naked among the stones. Judging by the tone in the guide’s voice, all that has happened before. Apparently, there are a lot of ley-line believers, neopagans and neodruids wanting to “connect” with the earth energy there (there is even a “yoga at sunset group”). In a kind of compromise, they allow you to take off your shoes and socks – which I did not do.

According to archaeologists, Stonehenge was designed in alignment the Winter Solstice sunset. The site was probably a celebration of the end of the worst of the winter before days started getting longer again. Other theories propose that it was originally a burial site that became a place to worship the ancestors.

The great thing about the after-hours tour is that you get to see the sunset around the site. Our timing was 18:45 – 19:45. The guide was nice too, and gave us “permission” to wander around and did not expect to listen to him all the time – don’t tell me twice. I explored and wandered to my heart’s content. We stayed there for about an hour, and it was really cool. I mean, not magical or “I feel the magic of the earth” or anything, but the circle is a fantastic piece of engineering, especially considering it was built five thousand years ago, before writing was even invented. Sometimes, humans are neat.

Stonehenge collage. Two shots of the megaliths standing on dry grass, from the outside; the sun shines between the darkened stones. One shot from the inside of the circle, showing the megaliths circling inwards.

It was over sooner than I would have liked, but about an hour later we were back on the bus after hitting the souvenir shop – where I got a guidebook – and we arrived in London around 22:00. When I got off the bus I just walked to the hotel, had my sandwich. Good thing I had left the window open, too, as it made the temperature slightly more tolerable – I own up though, I slept with the fan on, but… like a rock. Or a stone.

Walking distance: 11.96 km / 18742 steps
Coach distance: 317 km

23rd July 2022: Plateresque Salamanca {Salamanca, July 2022}

Posted on 16 August 2022 by JBinnacle

Officially in western Spain, Salamanca stands next to the Tormes river and sports a Unesco World Heritage title for its old town. I was five or six the first time I was there, so it’s not like I remembered anything from it, except memorising excerpts from the book El Estudiante de Salamanca (José de Espronceda), my favourite Spanish Romantic poet.

Salamanca is known due to its university, which is considered one of the best in the teaching of Spanish as a second language, the oldest Spanish university and one of the oldest in Europe, founded in 1218. There are actually two universities, but we shall get to that later.

There is a period in Spanish history referred to as the Gold Century, Siglo de Oro (Not an actual century, the given dates are between 1492 – the year when the Catholic monarchs finished conquering the country, Europeans realised America existed, and the first book on Spanish grammar was published – and 1659 – when the Pyrenees treaty was signed after the war with France). It was throughout this period when Salamanca thrived, especially late-time Gothic styles and early Renaissance ones. Then of course Baroque later on, but you know my stance on Baroque by now I guess… The mixture of late-gothic and Renaissance gave way to a unique style, Plateresque – with a strong Gothic base and a blend of Mudéjar, Flamboyant Gothic, Lombard and Tuscan Renaissance elements and decorations. Plateresque is characterised by heavy decorations sculpted onto the main architecture, especially in the typical fusion of doors and altarpieces. The motifs are plants, animals, shields and medallions… All and all, an impressive style considering we are talking about carving stuff on stone – in the case of Salamanca, a lot of it is sandstone, which gives the old city a golden tone.

We had to take a couple of trains, but and made it to Salamanca around 10:30, and were in the city centre a few minutes later. After dropping the luggage at the hotel – I had been requested the hotel to be near the cathedral and I found one which was literally across the street from one of the flanks. Then again, here’s the thing – Salamanca has not one but two cathedrals: the Old Cathedral Catedral Vieja de Santa María and the New Cathedral Catedral Nueva de la Asunción de la Virgen. Apparently, instead of building over the old one, they decided to keep both, making the historical complex unique in the country.

The New Cathedral was built mainly in Gothic style with later Baroque add-ons, with an ornate Plateresque façade. It was commissioned by king Ferdinand V of Castile, and built between the 16th and 18th century, in the Gothic style, even though this was at time when Gothic was already in decline. However, the town authorities wanted it to “match” the old Romanesque cathedral. A cupola and a choir were added in the Baroque period, and the façades were decorated in the Plateresque way (in a 20th-century restoration, someone thought it would be funny to add an astronaut to the decoration, causing some hoaxes to pop up afterwards). The most important architect who worked in the new cathedral was José de Churriguera, one of the leading Baroque architects / sculptors / urbanists.

A very ornate Gothic cathedral. The entrance has so many carvings that it actually looks organic, if not for the fact that it is made out of golden / reddish stone

The New Cathedral connects to the old Cathedral, which is late Romanesque / early Gothic in style (I know, it’s confusing. Historically, the old cathedral is between Romanesque and Gothic, and the new one between Gothic and Renaissance – and this is the reason why the Gothic makes the two cathedral “match”). It was built between the 12th and 14th centuries. The most impressive thing in the Old Cathedral is the altarpiece, in which the highest-quality paintings were made by the Italian Dello Delli. On the way out, I let myself be tempted by a paper guidebook of the city – which was helpful because we had to remake all of our plans a couple of times.

Interior of a Romanesque church - the nave has very high and severe-seeming columns

Afterwards, we headed off to the main university building Universidad de Salamanca, the first university building. The university was founded by King Alfonso XI in 1218, which makes it the oldest university in the whole Spanish-speaking world. The most important building today is the Escuelas Mayores, the upper school, built between 1411 and 1533. The façade, which looks towards the newly-discovered New World is sculpted in the Plateresque style, with a ton of decoration – and the most famous motif is the frog that stands on top of a skull. The university was built around a cloister for the students of old, and it has the most amazing library I have seen in a long while – selfishly (I’m joking of course) closed to the public. There is also a chapel and the classroom where the Spanish academic Fray Luis de León, who was famously jailed for four years, and picked up his lectures with “as we were saying yesterday”. The cloister has two floors since the 19th century, and in the centre there is a small giant sequoia (which I thought was a simple fir). There are chapels, and halls, and areas where university holds events.

Very ornate entrance to a building. there are two doors (four or five times as tall as a person) and the decoration, all carved in stone, is on top. Three floors of decoration, with columns and shields. A close-up shows a frog on top of a skull.

The problem with Salamanca is that the entries and exits of the building make you have to backtrack a lot (and the horrible street lights), but I love Gothic so I did not mind wandering around anyway. After the Escuelas Mayores, we went to another university building the lesser school or Escuelas Menores. Today, there is a cloister which dates from 1428 with a Baroque upper veranda. In one of the side halls there is a fresco panting that used to be in the library and that was moved over in 1950. The fresco represents a night sky was used in teaching.

Gothic patio and a suck picture of a fresco painting, showing stars and the representation of constellations

We had lunch, then we went to the Dominican monastery Convento de San Esteban and its church. The current monastery dates from 1524-1610, and it was built over the previous one. The façade of the church is considered the best example of Plateresque, and José de Churriguera also worked in the main altarpiece. The monastic building has a portico with Italian loggias, typical of the Renaissance. The cloister is mainly Renaissance with Gothic features, and a small temple in the middle. The ambulatory in the cloister has beautiful Gothic columns and nerves on the ceiling.

A convent, built in ornate gotic style. The covered corridor around the cloister shows pointed arches and rich decorations

Right in front of the monastery stands the Dominican convent Convento de las Dueñas. The building is Baroque, and before being a convent it used to be a palace – which has caused the convent to have some eclectic elements of architecture, such as the Mudéjar arch mosaic or doors. The inner cloister is Plateresque and full of roses and flowers.

A Baroque building. The inner patio is decorated with plants and Moorish-seeming blinded arches

Next, we found the tiny Romanesque church Iglesia de Santo Tomás Cantuariense, where I happily sicced the oh-so-bored guide onto my companion.

Small Romanesque church in reddish-gold stone. It has a tiny bell tower.

After a stop for a cold drink we went to the Art Nouveau and Art Déco Museum Museo de Art Nouveau y Art Déco Casa Lis, which is one of those places that takes itself very seriously and does not allow photographs. I got scolded for having my camera to my side even closed – but I have to admit that I did sneak up a few things with the phone, mostly because I wanted a record of the central hall with the glass ceiling, and the green windows from the inside, more than the decorative details, though some of them were pretty nice. The Lis house was built by Andalusian architect Joaquín de Vargas towards the end of the 19th century for the first owner, Miguel de Lis.

A Modernist building with brightly-coloured glass in the ceiling and walls.

We headed to the main square Plaza Mayor for dinner, and then to see the pretty lights. On the way we found the other university Universidad Pontificia and the palace Casa de las Conchas, which we would visit the following day.

The main square was another of the city landmarks first designed by Alberto Churriguera, and later one of his nephews – it seems that the Churriguera family claimed dibs on doing stuff in Salamanca. The square is fantastic by day but when night fell and the lights were turned on, it was unbelievable. We had some local sausages and cheese for dinner at one of the street tables in the square.

A plate of sausages and cheese, and two views of the Main Square in Salamanca, one in daylight, one at night, and lit up. The square buildings have a lot of windows and arches on the ground floor

Afterwards, I wandered alone for a while, to revisit some of the sights at night, and a couple of new ones.

Salamanca at night. The cathedral is lit and the ornamets almost shine. The Modernist house is lit in green and blue lights.

I headed off to the riverside of Río Tormes, which as any river has bridges. The first one I found is the Puente de Enrique Estevan, commissioned in 1891 in order for the town to be ready for the new cars. It has six iron arches and at night it is lit in bluish light. A few minutes downstream stands the older stone bridge Puente Romano, which according to the legend was built by Hercules – it dates back to the first century, but it has been heavily rebuilt and reconstructed through the years, especially after it was damaged by a flood in the 17th century.

A collage showing an iron bridge, and a stone bridge, both lit in the dark

Finally, around midnight, I went back to the hotel for a shower and sleep.

Walking distance: 17269 steps / 10.76 km

28th May 2022: San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Bajamar & Santa Cruz de Tenerife {Tenerife, birthday 2022}

Posted on 3 June 2022 by JBinnacle

I had a four-day weekend that happened to overlap with my birthday, so I decided to get myself a present and I booked the four days out – I wanted to visit the Spanish island of Tenerife. I seemed to have a streak of luck finding a decent flight, a couple of good hotels and a free permission to visit the peak of Mount Teide, a non-extinct volcano that happens to be the highest peak in Spain. I also decided to rent a car for the first time so I could travel around the island and do different activities in different places.

The plane left on time at 8:15 on Saturday – and I have to say that I love my IKEA travel bag, because it has a huge capacity but the perfect size to place under the seat, therefore I do not need to queue up for boarding to make sure I can stow the carry on. We taxied at the correct time, but when we got to the runway, we stopped. It turned out that one of the sensors was giving a warning of a 400 ºC temperature on one of the wheels. It turned out to be a false alarm, but we ended up with an hour-long delay that ended up cascading.

I reached the airport and got my rental – Volkswagen Polo I had to learn how to reverse. Once I was done with that, it was surprisingly easy to get by. I drove off to San Cristobal de la Laguna and went off to visit the historic quarter, which is a Unesco World Heritage site as an example of colonial architecture – Centro Histórico de San Cristobal de la Laguna. Most of the buildings date back to the 15th century, and the design was then copied in different colonial cities in South America. The houses are painted in different colours and most of them sport amazing woodwork in their doors or balconies.

It gave me a pretty distinct “Disneyland” feeling as the pedestrian streets are plagued with cafés, brand shops and bars. It was packed with tourists like myself flocking in guided tours from the tourist office, which seemed to only open to gather groups in order to hold those tours. As the week before my trip had been work-crazy, I had not been able to plan in detail, so my plan was to hit the tourist office, gather information and move on. This did not work out, and on top of that, the cathedral Catedral de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios was already closing down when I arrived – due to the delay. Other interesting but closed buildings included the church Iglesia Matriz de la Concepción, and several palaces including Casa de los Capitanes and the reconstructed Palacio de Salazar.

Typical buildings from Canary Islands. They are colonial in style, with big doors and windows. The façades are painted with different colours.

Typical buildings from Canary Islands. They are colonial in style, with big doors and windows. The façades are painted with different colours. The streets are wide and full of people.

I’m not going to say that I was disappointed, but I was really not digging the atmosphere, so I decided to move on. Instead of following the initial rough plan, I decided to head off to the tiny village of Bajamar to see the “sea pools”. Built in the petrified lava coast, the Piscinas de Bajamar are swimming pools fed by ocean water that keep swimmers safe from the rocks and the waves. I was lucky enough to find a very good and easy parking spot.

I wandered around the promenade Paseo Marítimo de Bajamar, saw the pools, the beach, and the mini lighthouse Faro de Bajamar.

Waves coming into the volcanic beach, which does not have sand but big black blocks of rock.

I moved onto Santa Cruz de Tenerife afterwards, ditched the car and checked into the hotel, then went off to explore. I walked by the market complex La Recova, also called Mercado de Nuestra Señora de África.

A bright orange building. It has a low, wide wall, and in the centre a clock tower

The tower of the church Iglesia Matriz de la Concepción (yes, again, but another one). The church has been repeatedly rebuilt and renamed between the 15th and 18th centuries. The current building is Canarian Baroque / Tuscan style.

A church with a bell tower. The building is white clay with black rock; this style is typical in the area

My first real destination was Plaza de España where the defensive castle Castillo de San Cristóbal used to stand. Now there is a fountain / pond and you can see the foundations of the castle.

Collage. The former site of the castle, now converted into a fountain or lake. On the other side, the castle foundations, and a cannon.

Next, I found another important square, Plaza de la Candelaria, but it was unfortunately under construction.

A grey building with construction work being done on it

So I moved on to the science and anthropology museum Museo de Ciencia y Antropología de Tenerife. It was rather underwhelming at first, as most of the “exhibit” were photographs. Eventually I reached the “good” stuff, with reconstructions of ancient and extinct animals such as the Tenerife giant rat (Canariomys bravoi) and the Goliath Giant (Gallotia goliath) lizard – we’ll come back to those eventually. There were butterfly collections, reproductions of marine animals, rocks and meteorites. In the archaeology ward there were mummies – that was a little unnerving to be honest, I thought we had learnt a little more respect about the ancient cultures.

Before the Europeans arrived in the Canary Islands in the 15th century, there was a previous civilization in Tenerife, called the guanche. The guanche settled in the island around the 6th century. While it is not clear where they came from it is thought that they came from the north of Africa, as their language was similar to those in the Berber language group. They lived off the cattle and the land, and their economy was clearly based on the goat, which they used for everything – food (meat and dairy), clothing, bone tools, and mummification material.

Collage of the museum: a prehistoric carved rock; preserved giant rat and lizard; models of fish; a meteorite; rests of mummies (a foot and an arm)

After the museum, I walked along the harbour and saw the modern concert hall Auditorio de Tenerife, designed by the famous architect Santiago Calatrava, whose style is easily recognised – even though in recent years he has drawn criticism for going way beyond budget and his building having problems due to “over innovation”.

The auditorium. It looks like the sail of a yacht, all white.

A few steps further stands the tiny fortress Castillo de San Juan Bautista, built between 1641 and 1643, and rebuilt the following century. I would have loved to see the botanical garden, but it closed early – as most things seemed to do.

Small castle surrounded by a moat that fills up in high tide.

I took a small detour to see the former arsenal Casa de la Pólvora, built in masonry in the 18th century. Eventually, I went to the supermarket to buy some dinner and snacks for the upcoming adventures, and called it a day after 14 hours on the go.

Armourine building. It looks like a treasure chest, built in grey rock

13th – 15th May 2022: Paris (France) & Saint Seiya Symphonic Adventure

Posted on 23 May 2022 by JBinnacle

This has been a weird ride in more ways than one. Back when we did not know what kind of hell was breaking loose in Wuhan, I went to Paris for a couple of concerts with the idea of coming back in a few week’s time. Instead of that, Covid turned the world upside down. Four postponements later, and a stupid amount of money I am not even going to calculate, I finally set off to Paris, France, once more, to watch the Saint Seiya Symphonic Adventure. The concert that was supposed to happen on the 18th of April, 2020 finally took place on the 14th of May, 2022, and the promoter handled the postponements pretty badly, which led to a lot of people returning their tickets at some point.

Ticket. Frand Rex 75002 Paris, Overlook Events Presente: Saint Seiya Symphonic Adventure. Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque. Samedi 30 Octobre 2021, 19:30 h. Orchestre Chevaliers Dor. Eur 240,00. Accès VIP. The rest of the information is blurred.

Corny and problematic as it may be, Saint Seiya [聖闘士星矢] was my favourite anime as a child – it was exciting and my parents heavily disapproved of it, the perfect mixture for a pre-teen finding their place in the world. In December 2019, I do not even remember how, I came across the information about the event, described as a fully-immersive live-to-picture symphonic concert with the music from pop-culture […] synchronized to cutting edge video screen, lighting and special sound effects. Similarly to the recent Final Fantasy Remake concert, the idea is an orchestra concert with the original singers for some of the musical pieces, along with projections of the original cartoon. Overlook announced an afternoon and an evening concerts. However, by the time I found out that the event had been planned, tickets had been on sale for a while. I managed to get a fairly decent ticket for the afternoon concert, but and a very bad one for the evening concert as part of Christmas sales (which meant I got both tickets for the price of the normal “good” afternoon ticket). At the time, I was ecstatic, as you may guess, though a tiny bit bummed I had not learnt about the whole thing in time to get some VIP tickets.

Enter Covid-19. One postponement led to another, and then another. At some point in late summer 2021 I entered the ticket page for something, and I could not believe my eyes – someone had returned one of the second-tier VIP tickets, and… I got that one. I seriously could not believe it. One of twelve (with the name of one of twelve characters of the show), it came with goodies, access to the rehearsal, and the autograph session after the show. So I now had a good ticket and a fantastic ticket!

Then the event got postponed again, barely three weeks before. I was… miffed. Eventually though, the promoter got in touch with me and I was assigned a character, I bought plane tickets (again), booked a hotel (again – in this case I booked two, one at the airport and one near the theatre), and… held my breath.

When the Japanese singers arrived in Paris, I realised that it was finally happening. And thus, I booked my airport parking ticket and… held my breath again. Iberia’s check in gave me trouble, but I eventually managed to get my boarding pass (I could check in on the webpage, but only get my boarding pass from the app), and fill in the passenger form to get into France.

The plane left late on Friday evening, and it was a long weekend in Madrid, so I left with time – a lot of time. I learnt two things: one, my planning skills are awesome, and two, my car has run out of air-con gas, as I got caught in a bad traffic jam, and yet somehow I arrived within five minutes of my expected entrance time. The flight to Paris was stupidly uneventful and I was surprised at how nicely the security personnel actually behaved.

Upon arriving in Charles de Gaulle I walked out of the plane into the bus and then to the terminal. There was no kind of health check whatsoever, so I could just walk up to my hotel, which was strangely bustling for it being near midnight.

14th May 2022: Paris & Grand Rex

The organisers had sent me an email that I had to be at the Grand Rex theatre at 10 a.m. in order to pick up my goodie bag. It turned out that the email was wrong, and I was not to be there till 11 a.m. The Grand Rex is an art decó building which, like a bunch of things I saw, was under renovation.

Outside the Grand Rex. It is only a huge scaffolding as the façade is being renovated.

Throughout all the waiting for the different sessions I took a few strolls around the area of Grand Boulevards after dropping off my luggage at the hotel. I ambled round and saw two smallish triumph arcs – Porte Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin.

Two monumental gates in the middle of crossroads. The traffic is horrible.

Also around the area are Mairie du 10e arrondissement, a Renaissance Revival public building, Église Saint-Laurent (Church of Saint Lawrence), a gothic chapel which was also under reconstruction, Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul (Saint-Vincent de Paul Catholic Church). A bit further away stands Gare de l’Est, one of the six large stations in Paris.

Some buildings, including a gothic church, a neoclassical one, and a 19th century train station.

At 11:00, I finally got into the Grand Rex to watch the rehearsal, which lasted about an hour. I had been lucky to find a staff member who spoke English as I was apparently the only non-French-speaker in the VIP group, and he told me that the artists would come to say hello after the rehearsal. He added that as everything would be French and Japanese I’d be lost. I replied that I had better Japanese than French anyway. After the rehearsal we got to wave hello to the two Japanese special guests – popster NoB (Nobuo Yamada) and soprano Kazuko Ishikawa.

The staff member was very proud to point out the “Spanish person who had come from Spain” to the Japanese staff. Nob said “gracias” to which I replied in Japanese – the standard “we are looking forward to the act today”, which I guess threw everybody off a little, and got me an also standard “nihongo joozu” (you are good at Japanese” that the Japanese tell you when you’ve thrown the curveball of talking to them in their language. At this point, I became noticed.

I left the theatre for a while and came back for the first concert, which started late. The venue was rather empty, and during the break a bunch of people tried to parachute into better seats. I saw some other VIPs who had gotten a complimentary seat. As the lights went out the only thing that went through my head was “I can’t believe this is finally happening” again and again and again.

The inside of Grand Rex. The stage is a great arch with the words Saint Seiya Symphonic Adventure projected on a screen

But it was happening. The recital was divided in two acts – the first one aligned with the first arc of the anime, and the second with arcs two and three, what is call the “classical anime” as the final act was not animated up until a couple of decades later.

ACT 1
Opening
Pegasus Fantasy
The Galaxian Wars
Hyoga and Crystal Saint
Silver and Gold Saints
Zodiac Temples Part I
Ikki’s Wrath
Zodiac Temples Part II
Victory of the Heroes
Eien Blue

ACT 2
Saint Sinwa ~Soldier Dream
The Seven God Warriors
The Fury of Asgard
The Odin Sapphires
Yume Tabibito
Poseidon’s Lair

ENCORE: Pegasus Fantasy

Bluntly put, I loved it, but mostly because of nostalgia. The first one was better than the second, but there were issues with the sound, and the microphones, and at times the orchestra complete swallowed the vocals. The conductor was hilariously into it, bouncing in his platform. The harp was fantastic, and the soprano spectacular. NoB, the pop singer… is showing his age, but did a decent job of getting the audience hyped-up.

The orchestra on the stage. Images from the anime are projected on the screen.

Another of the guests was the voice actor who played the main character in the original French anime version, and boy did he bring down the walls. People absolutely loved him. To be honest, I was rather surprised at the audience’s attitude towards the whole thing, with clapping and yelling and – among everything – parachuting to better seats. I wonder whether this last thing is usual or just due to the stalls being rather empty (after all there was “free seating” in the first-floor paradise).

I went to the hotel between the first and second concert to retrieve my things and get some rest, but eventually I got back to the theatre. There were more people this time around, and my seat was undoubtedly better. It was there when I got “adopted” by the high-class VIPs, who had been very amused at my having been “lost” and then surprised at the fact that yes, I could speak some Japanese. Thanks to them I found my way to the signing session and got my programme signed by both NoB and Kazuko Kawashima. I did trip over my Japanese there, but I should have known I don’t do well trying to learn new words just before post-concert signing sessions.

Merchandise included in the VIP ticket: mug, t-shirt, posters and booklet, all with images from the Saint Seiya anime

A close up of the booklet - showing the signatures of the singer and the soprano, and the VIP badge.

15th May 2022: Angels, Unicorns and Organ Music

I checked in early in the morning and I fought the Paris Metro system to a) find an entrance where I could buy tickets and b) make the machine work so I could buy those tickets. My first destination was the largest cemetery in Paris – Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. This early 19th century cemetery holds the remains of personalities such as Oscar Wilde, whose grave is protected by a glass wall as it became a fad to put lipstick on and kiss it, which was damaging it; the grave looks like a Babylonian bull or angel. Another grave I wanted to visit was that for Jean-François Champollion – the man who discovered the Rosetta stone, whose tomb looks like an obelisk. And after some wrong turns I also found Frédéric Chopin (minus his preserved heart, which was taken to Poland); this tomb features Euterpe, the muse of music, crying over a broken lyre.

Graves at Père-Lachaise: a flying Babylonian angel (Wilde), an obelisk (Champollion), a muse weeping on her lyre (Chopin).

The cemetery was not as well laid-out as I had hoped so after a while wandering around I decided to move on. On Friday I had read that the museum of Medieval History and the old Therms of Paris had been reopened after a long closure. Thus, I decided to skip looking for more “celebrity graves” and headed towards central Paris. The Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge is built in a 1485 “town house” (more like a palace though, usually called a château) that was erected right on the the old Roman Baths that date the city of Paris back into the Roman period. Today it has been refurbished and holds artefacts and artworks from the Upper and Lower Middle Ages that have been brought from over different churches, including Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle.

The most important piece in the museum is a collection of six tapestries, called “The Lady and the Unicorn”, dated from the late 15th / early 16th century. Five of them represent the sentences, and the sixth is a mystery (theories include “love” and “free will” – I’m a fan of the latter). They all feature the same medieval dame in a red background, accompanied by a golden lion and a white unicorn, and they are marvellous.

Collage: The foundations of the manor; an ornate church entryway, carved on the stone; a Virgin Mary statue; the tapestry of the lady petting the unicorn, with plants and a red background

A piece of art in its own right is the chapel of the town house. It was built around the same time of the house in the Flamboyant Gothic style. It contrast with the stark outside of the house, with its sever walls.

$The ceiling of the chapel, which looks like a star fractal, and a view of the whole manor$

I still had some time, so I decided to head over to the church Église de la Madeleine, a catholic church that looks like a classical temple (believe it or not to hail the Napoleonic army). It is built in the Neoclassical style, and it is enormous. However, it was also being renovated, so the outside was covered in hideous publicity panels.

Church of La Madeleine, it looks like a Greek temple, all columns with a triangular front, and the inside, showing Mary surrounded by the saints and the angels.

Finally, I went back to the hotel to pick up my things and walked back to the station – I did not want to carry my luggage around because I worried it would damage the posters I had got at the concert. I actually arrived and left from different airports, so I had to head to Orly this time. However, RER B joins both airports, so the closest station for arrival, Châtelet–Les Halles, was also the closest to leave. Upon coming out on Saturday I had caught eye of a small gothic church, and as I walked past this time I noticed that there was an open door and people went in and out. It was the church of St. Eustache, Église Saint-Eustache. The structure is Flamboyant Gothic, and the decorations are Renaissance and classical. It has one of the largest organs in France, and I was lucky enough that it was being played when I was there. It felt pretty magical, to be honest.

Top: A gothic church from the outside, with lots of windows. Bottom: the same church inside - high columns look like a forest, and the light filters through all the windows outsde, like water from a fall.

Afterwards, I hopped onto the train and headed for the airport. I got there earlier than expected, too, as I had planned according to some traffic restrictions that did not happen in the end. I debated some food, but everything was so expensive! The return flight was plagued with turbulence, and I got home exhausted and with a migraine, but it was well worth it! Also, travelling through Covid-19 was… weird. While I kept my facemask on most of the time, including the plane rides, the concerts, and whenever I was inside, most people would not – even the still-compulsory places. I was also happy to skip the “health checks” because I swear, the way I was feeling after landing, I don’t know if I had been running a temperature, and that would have been… awkward.

A view of Paris from the plane, also showing the wing

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

Posted on 1 November 2021 by JBinnacle

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

22nd October 2021: Churches, Museums and a Palace

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

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

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

Virgin of the Pillar, wearing a mantle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

23rd October 2021: Papercraft and walks

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

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

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

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

Total walked distance: 8.69 km

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

Posted on 16 October 2021 by JBinnacle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Driving distance: around 64 km
Walking distance: 6.79 km

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

Posted on 29 August 2021 by JBinnacle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We ended up at main park Alameda de Cervantes.

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

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

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

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

Posted on 25 August 2021 by JBinnacle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on 18 July 2021 by JBinnacle

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

8th July 2021: The arrival

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

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

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

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

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

9th July 2021: The lady’s town

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10th July 2021: Not much to report

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

11th July 2021: The Tower

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

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

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

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

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

23rd & 24th April 2021: Mental Reset Half-weekend: Cuenca (Spain)

Posted on 9 May 2021 by JBinnacle

With everything going on, travelling is almost impossible, but the stars aligned for a tiinny bit longer than day trip – from Friday to early Sunday morning, with every precaution possible, of course. We ran away to Cuenca for a day and a fifth. As days are becoming a bit longer, when we arrived there were still a couple of hours of light left. We checked in and dropped off the car at the Parador de Cuenca. The Parador hotel chain might be more expensive than standard accommodation, but truth be told, it is upholding the strictest hygiene protocols, even though their hand disinfectants give me allergies. Truth be told, it was spectacular.

The Parador stands in a repurposed monastery, the old convent of Saint Paul, just at the edge of the historical centre of Cuenca. The hotel has a covered cloister and a newer building, and the adjoint church has been turned into an art centre.

The core of the town stands between two rivers, River Júcar and River Huécar. As the area is rich in karst – calcite rocks, which dissolve in water – the rivers have dug parallel gorges around the historical dwellings. The walled city has been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site and one of the keymost point is the hanging houses, Casas Colgadas (now home to the Museum of Abstract Art). While the houses are now rather unique, they used to be the norm in the 15th century. In order to cross the Huécar gorge Hoz del Huécar, there is a(n also) hanging bridge. The bridge of Saint Paul, Puente de San Pablo, was built at the beginning of the 20th century in the typical cast-iron architecture of the time.

Looking back to the other side of the bridge, you see deceivingly high hill, Cerro del Socorro, carved out of karst. I say deceiving because when you actually look at it, you’re half-way up, and you can look down to the bottom of the gorge. At the top of the hill stands a religious pillar to the Catholic Sacred Heart, Monumento al Sagrado Corazón.

We went on walking towards Main Square and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace and Saint Julian – Catedral de Santa María y San Julián de Cuenca. The cathedral is one of the earliest Gothic buildings in Spain (although the main façade has been rebuilt in style). However, it is not the typical Spanish Gothic style, but it is more similar to the Norman buildings in the north of Europe. It was unfortunately not open for visiting though (it’s the third time I’ve been to Cuenca and I’ve never been able to walk in (≧▽≦) ).

There also stands the Ayuntamiento de Cuenca or town hall, a three-arched Baroque building erected around 1760 after the designs of the architect Jaime Bort. The building closes off the square and is the gateway to a maze of chaotic traffic of one-way streets and directing traffic lights.

We turned towards the gorge, Hoz del Júcar on the other side of the town for a view of the sunset, but the clouds seemed to be hiding it.

As we continued on, we stopped by a nun convent Convento de las Esclavas. This Catholic nun congregation leads a contemplative life and they are perpetually praying to the Eucharist – at least some of them, as apparently they bake and sell confectionery to sustain themselves. You can see a nun praying in the church, and to be honest for a second I did not realise she was there, it felt like there was a ghost all of a sudden. The building was erected between the 15th and 16th centuries.

We found the monument to a medieval king Monumento a Alfonso VIII. During the Christian and Muslim wars, the king was the one to conquer Cuenca for the Christians, and assimilated it into the Castilla crown.

Another sculpture we found was, conversely, erected to honour the traditional shepherd from one of the old streets in town, a bronze statue named Monumento al pastor de las Huesas del Vasallo and located next to the bridge.

We also got treated to some nice views as the sun came out the second we turned out backs on it.

After dinner – a really good club sandwich in my case, I walked out to take some pictures of the bridge and the hanging houses after dark, expecting them to be lit up… Which they were. I mean, I was really not expecting the green colours.

In the morning we had breakfast at the old dining room of the convent, the refrectorium, which still keeps its old allure.

Later, we headed out to the local palaeontological museum Museo de Paleontología de Castilla-La Mancha. The museum was inaugurated in 2005, recycling, so to speak, a previous building that overlooks the city of Cuenca. The museum has an inner area with some reproductions and pieces from the different palaeontological sites around the area, and several models of the animals, organised in eras.

The outer part also holds replicas, and it gives a very Jurassic World feeling for a second, when you take the view with the dinosaurs. We had booked first thing in the morning, so we were leaving when the kid-crowd started to arrive, in order to see both the extinct and the extant dinosaurs (a.m., we found a mallard minding his own business at one of the ponds).

We drove back, and unfortunately the Sat-Nav got us lost. However, we dropped the car safely off a the hotel and decided to take the plunge and walk into the museum of Spanish abstract art Museo de arte abstracto Español, home to a number of… works… by Spanish artists from the 1950s and 60s in the Hanging Houses / Casas Colgadas. I… have to admit I am not the biggest fan of abstract art, so I was not terribly impressed – I mean I had been there before and it had not imprinted on me, like at all (≧▽≦).

After the museum we headed back to the Parador for lunch and some rest – and I have to say that the curd I had tried the last time was nowhere to be found any more. Sad.

But not to be deterred, we soon moved to the city museum Museo de Cuenca, which highlights the Roman origins of the city. There are displays from Prehistory to the Middle Ages, but there is either a surprising lack of Muslim artefacts, or they were in the closed-off rooms.

After this, we wanted to check out one of the churches, and on the way we passed by a viewpoint towards the gorge Hoz del Huécar.

We also came across the “Christ in the Alleyway” or Cristo del Pasadizo, which is related to the legend of two lovers – he went to war, she stayed behind and moved on, and then everything ended in tears because how dare a woman in Christian Middle-Ages Spain try to be happy. Anyway, here’s the alleyway and the Christ figure.

After that we ended up at another museum of contemporary art, Fundación Antonio Pérez, located in another former convent built in the 17th century. Honestly? It was slightly interesting but mostly claustrophobic. The majority of rooms do not have windows whatsoever and the fact that there is a one-way itinerary due to Covid, and how dry the air was, made it stressing to an almost ridiculous level.

It was early evening when we came out, and the second we put a foot outside it started pouring, so we headed back – it also made for a few spectacular pictures.

Some cool ones were also taken on Sunday morning just before we drove off early because there was stuff to be done throughout the day.

12th September 2020: Sigüenza (Spain)

Posted on 15 September 2020 by JBinnacle

We took a drive to Sigüenza, in Spain. This medieval town? big village? had a big relevance through the Middle Ages, and the historical centre reflects that. The most prominent point is the castle on top of a hill. The Castillo de los Obispos is a fortress that can be traced to Roman times. However, the actual castle was a Moorish alcazaba. After the Christians took it over in the 12th century, it was remodelled and enlarged. Due to its vantage point, the castle was a key element in different wars and strife, including the Napoleonic invasion and the Civil War, thus resulting pretty damaged. In the late 20th century it was decided to restore it turn it into a Parador with around 50 rooms.

During our planning stage we called and tried to book a restaurant for lunch, and we were told they were not taking them, we had to call on the same day. Of course, when we got there, it was impossible to book – there was a course and the celebration of a communion (seriously, people, learn to say no so others can get organised). Unfortunately, you could not see the interior or even the yard if you had no reservations, so I can only share a picture from the parking lot, where we left the car.

We walked down the main street Calle Mayor, a clobbered slope that ends (well, technically begins) at the town’s main square.

Main Square or Plaza Mayor is home to the Town Hall or Ayuntamiento de Sigüenza, an old palace with a typical Castillian inner yard or patio.

Opposite the town hall stands the cathedral Catedral de Santa María La Mayor de Sigüenza. The Gothic building was built upon a previous Romanesque one and it had some Neoclassical and Baroque additions. Thus, the façade sports Romanesque doors and rose window, and the main body is Gothic. The altar and the choir are awfully Baroque too, and some of the chapels sport Cisneros, Plateresque and Renaissance decorations. All in all, an interesting pout-pourri of architectural and decoration styles.

The most important piece of art of the cathedral, however, is a funerary piece to the right of the altar. It is the sepulchre of Martín Vázquez de Arce “El Doncel” (“The Young Man”). The chapel holds him, his parents and grandparents, but the sculpture on his sepulchre is the most impressive one. The Vázquez de Arce family were vassals of the Mendoza family, the most important family in the area during the Middle Ages. During the war to conquer Al-Andalus, the Vázquez de Arce males followed the Mendoza to the war in Granada, where Martín died in a trap set by the Arabs, which consisted on damming the River Genil to a creek, and then releasing the dam so the water took over the enemies crossing (which… kinda sounds like something out of the Lord of the Rings, doesn’t it? At least, it makes me think of Arwen and Treebeard). The sepulchre, commissioned by Martín’s brother, presents him taking a break during training and reading a book. He even has pupils, so if you could climb up, you’d see what he’s reading!

The cloister is also Gothic, as the previous Romanesque one was torn down. It holds a central garden and a number of side rooms where there is a collection of mythology-themed tapestries. In one of the chapels, there is also a painting by El Greco, a Greek painter rooted in Spain who was one of the key artists during the Spanish Renaissance.

The cathedral ticket also allows a visit to the Diocesan Museum Museo Diocesano, which holds many pieces of religious art, along with a few models of the cathedral in its different construction stages. These days I’m trying to learn some hagiography, which means how to identify religious figures by how they’re presented. Getting there, three out of ten times or so, because half the time they cheat.

After the cathedral we climbed up towards the castle, and we stopped at the former church Iglesia de Santiago, now transformed into a mini-introduction centre for all the “hidden” or “unknown” Romanesque in the area. The church itself had some beautiful paintings, but it was destroyed during the Civil War.

Continuing our way up, we turned a little to see the house where the Vázquez de Arce family used to live, now turned in a museum, Museo Casa del Doncel. There is a little paintings exhibition and a guitar museum, along with some ancient artefacts such as vases or looms. The most interesting part are the Moorish “Mozárabe” decoration. Here is a bit of historic trolling: when the Christian “conquerors” hired Arab craftsmen to do decoration, one of the things the Arabs did was decorate using Quran verses.

Then we saw the outside of the church Iglesia de San Vicente Mártir, Romanesque to boot.

Afterwards, we ended up at the square Plazuela de la Cárcel, where the old ~~gaol~~ jail stood.

Finally, we headed over to the restaurant where we had booked a lunch table, a traditional grill called La Taberna Seguntina where I chose to have a “summer menu” with salmorejo (a thick soup or purée made with tomato, oil, and bread and sprinkled with boiled egg and cured ham) and roasted cochinillo (suckling pig, roasted whole) with potatoes and herbs. For dessert I had a pudding!

And that was it, really – Medieval Sigüenza has nothing else to see. As the façade of the castle was being restored, we did not even take pictures of it as we drove away.

4th September 2020: Alcalá de Henares (Spain)

Posted on 10 September 2020 by JBinnacle

After looking for a place to park the car for 12 minutes, I left the car and I went off on foot towards the centre with a relative who is living in Alcalá de Henares. The town centre has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1998.

Our first stop, at 10:30 almost sharp was the Palacete Laredo, a small palace built in the Neo-Mudéjar style, a type of Moorish Revival architecture. It was designed and built between 1880 and 1884 by the Spanish artist Manuel José de Laredo y Ordoño. After a century in private hands, it passed to the town hall, which allows the university to use it as a museum, showing a collection of ancient documents.

The palace is built in brick, it has two floors and a minaret-like tower. The inside is decorated with coloured-glass window, tiles and paintings. The visible ceilings on the first floor are wooden artesonado (decorative beams joined together). There is also a garden, but it was closed.

Afterwards, we headed off towards the centre. We walked by the church Parroquia de Santa María la Mayor and is inhabitant the stork on photo duty.

We had tickets to see the Corral de Comedias, a theatre built in the site of an ancient “theatrical courtyard”. These were open-air theatres that were common during the late middle ages and exploded in popularity in the 16th century. The Corral in Alcalá de Henares was built in 1601 by Francisco Sánchez, member of the Carpenters Guild. It suffered several changes – the ceiling was built in the 18th century, then it became a cinema, and eventually was “lost” in the 1970s. In the 1980s, it was rediscovered, restored, and finally opened as working theatre in 2003.

Alas, we were too late for the 12:00 visit to the university, so we wandered around the town’s main square Plaza de Cervantes – Alcalá de Henares was Cervantes’ birthplace. Miguel de Cervantes was a 16th century Spanish writer, most renown for his novel “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha”, which many authors consider “the first modern novel” and “the best literary work ever written” (though… I disagree). The square features a bandstand, the statue of Cervantes, and is surrounded by several buildings of importance – the ruins of the church Iglesia de Santa María, the Town Hall and the Círculo de Contribuyentes, former casino, and the Corral de Comedias.

Then we walked down Main Street Calle Mayor, until we got down to the Obispado de Alcalá de Henares, the bishopric, with two towers from the former wall at their sides. That reminds me – we did not visit the cathedral or any religious buildings because they were all closed to tourism.

At 13:00 we took the guided visit to one of the university buildings, the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso. The university was established in 1499 by Cardinal Cisneros, an influential Spanish religious and statesman in the time of the Catholic Monarchs. A colegio mayor is basically a dignified “classic” dormitory. The façade was built between 1537 and 1559 in the Plateresque style, an architectural style that developed in Spain between the late Gothic and the early Renaissance. The architect was Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón.

Inside, we saw the cloisters and yards, the gate of honour (from where the successful students left the university), the classroom where the students defended their final thesis, and the chapel, with the tomb of the founding Cardinal (but not his body, which is in the cathedral).

We had a reservation to have lunch at the Parador de Alcalá de Henares, which is a rather modern building and not a historical one, but a stamp was needed (≧▽≦). Lunch was a looong affair because our waiter might not have been the… most efficient. We tried the combos with a little bit of everything to share (entrées and desserts), and some bull tail. Oh and coffee. Yay coffee. (Also, kudos to me for cutting that nut in half.)

After lunch, we walked down the Calle Mayor again and we made a stop at what is supposed to be the house where Cervantes was born, or at least a reconstruction, with a bunch of ancient objects thrown in – the Museo Casa Natal de Cervantes. There was also a photography exhibition. To be honest, it had a great quality-price relation. It was free, and the quality was… lacking. Or maybe I’m old and I have seen most of the stuff they showed in action, and used a few.

We continued on to the regional archaeological museum Museo Arqueológico Regional, located in the old Archiepiscopal palace. That was unexpectedly good, with the fossil record and the old Roman mosaics.

Pending for a future visit to Alcalá de Henares: Roman and Medieval areas, and the religious buildings, as the day finished up doing some necessary and work-related shopping before I drove back home.

Driven distance: Around an hour? I dumped the car as soon as I could and we walked the hell out of the town (≧▽≦)
Walked distance: 14.61 km