Today is our final day as we’ve got to be at the airport by 8:30 tomorrow morning (we’ll probably be there at 7:00), so we’re just having a quiet day round La Rambla today.
The breakfast at the market was the usual fair of wine, beer, whisky for the locals and a Tortilla and a steak sandwich for us. The temperature here is hot as well (31 degrees at 10am), but the humidity is what weighs you down. Like Paris, Barcelona also shuts down in August and this is starting to happen now, with some of the stands in the market closed. Out on La Rambla and Placa de la Catalunya tourists are everywhere and it seems busier than when we were here at the start of July. The queue to the topless tourist bus is over 100m long – you’d think it would be quicker to walk, or do your own thing, but that doesn’t stop people queueing in the full on sun.
We had lunch down on the wharf and will then go to Placa Reail for a Sangria this evening followed by a light dinner somewhere later on.
From Barcelona, we retrace our steps, stopping briefly in Milan (to pick up the bulk of the passengers on the plane, I suspect), before heading on to Singapore, where we have only an hour before we catch the flight to Auckland (no time for the regulation BK double whopper this time), where we arrive about midnight on Saturday night. We get back to Wellington 10:00 on Sunday morning.
Hope you’ve enjoyed the blog, thanks for reading and we’ll see you soon.
Cheers,
David and Anne.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Week 5 – Wednesday 30th July – Barcelona
Everybody has their funny little quirks and ours is that on travel day, we like to get to the airport WELL in advance of the flight to make sure that we have plenty of time to get to where we need to be, beat the queues and if we have any unforeseen glitches that we have time to remedy them so that we don’t have any hassles with getting on the designated plane.
The flight to Barcelona that we had changed onto was at 11:30, but before then we had to negotiate our way around Madrid’s ring road, drop the car off and get to the airport. Leaving at 8:30 would have been fine, and 9:00 a tight fit, so we left at 6:30 to make sure we missed all of the traffic and got very close the airport in masses of time.
Fortunately (??) Mum and Dad were leaving Milan today on their way to Australia, and had to get to there from Nice, so they had an early start and were up at 5am to text the family. This gave us an ever earlier start and so we were parked back outside the car drop off depot at 7:15 in the morning. Fortunately (and this time it was), the drop off point is beside a very large airport hotel, so we were able to head in there for an extended breakfast (with the Spanish Olympic Team, who were all decked out in there very smart outfits – blue track pants, and bright yellow shirts with red highlights).
The trip to Barcelona is 1 hour 15 minutes and we were boarded on time to a half full flight. Actually to say it is 1 hour 15 is not quite right. It’s a 50 minute flight, with a 25 minute taxi to get to the start of the runway in Madrid. The plane is in two classes – business and ours. The curtain that is always so tightly closed in New Zealand was only partially closed, so I was able to see that the business class customers were having a pleasant time and also that the pilot’s view was unobstructed, as the cockpit door was open from two minutes into the flight, until a couple of minutes before we landed. Security doesn’t seem to be quite as tight here as it is in other places.
The scenery on the flight to Barcelona astounded for how dry and flat all the land between Madrid and Barcelona is. It’s just a sea of beige for as far as the eye can see. The landscape only changed minutes before we got to the sea at Barcelona.
Barcelona airport is under reconstruction, so we were parked out on the runway and bused from one end of the airport to the other, then walked back to the other end of the terminal building to wait for our bags to be delivered, which were duly delivered after a 30 minute wait.
The taxi into town was back to quick and efficient and after checking back into the hotel, we headed up La Rambla, past Plaza de la Catalunya and up the next Rambla to find a place for lunch.
This evening, we’ve just had another walk down La Rambla and onto the Marina area amongst all the crowds of people. The living statues are still there, but in four weeks seem to have transformed themselves into an almost totally new cast. There are also a number sci-fi moonscape artists here that weren’t here last time, so I guess they travel around to different places, so as to always have a new audience to perform to.
The flight to Barcelona that we had changed onto was at 11:30, but before then we had to negotiate our way around Madrid’s ring road, drop the car off and get to the airport. Leaving at 8:30 would have been fine, and 9:00 a tight fit, so we left at 6:30 to make sure we missed all of the traffic and got very close the airport in masses of time.
Fortunately (??) Mum and Dad were leaving Milan today on their way to Australia, and had to get to there from Nice, so they had an early start and were up at 5am to text the family. This gave us an ever earlier start and so we were parked back outside the car drop off depot at 7:15 in the morning. Fortunately (and this time it was), the drop off point is beside a very large airport hotel, so we were able to head in there for an extended breakfast (with the Spanish Olympic Team, who were all decked out in there very smart outfits – blue track pants, and bright yellow shirts with red highlights).
The trip to Barcelona is 1 hour 15 minutes and we were boarded on time to a half full flight. Actually to say it is 1 hour 15 is not quite right. It’s a 50 minute flight, with a 25 minute taxi to get to the start of the runway in Madrid. The plane is in two classes – business and ours. The curtain that is always so tightly closed in New Zealand was only partially closed, so I was able to see that the business class customers were having a pleasant time and also that the pilot’s view was unobstructed, as the cockpit door was open from two minutes into the flight, until a couple of minutes before we landed. Security doesn’t seem to be quite as tight here as it is in other places.
The scenery on the flight to Barcelona astounded for how dry and flat all the land between Madrid and Barcelona is. It’s just a sea of beige for as far as the eye can see. The landscape only changed minutes before we got to the sea at Barcelona.
Barcelona airport is under reconstruction, so we were parked out on the runway and bused from one end of the airport to the other, then walked back to the other end of the terminal building to wait for our bags to be delivered, which were duly delivered after a 30 minute wait.
The taxi into town was back to quick and efficient and after checking back into the hotel, we headed up La Rambla, past Plaza de la Catalunya and up the next Rambla to find a place for lunch.
This evening, we’ve just had another walk down La Rambla and onto the Marina area amongst all the crowds of people. The living statues are still there, but in four weeks seem to have transformed themselves into an almost totally new cast. There are also a number sci-fi moonscape artists here that weren’t here last time, so I guess they travel around to different places, so as to always have a new audience to perform to.
Week 5 – Tuesday 29th July – Madrid and Toledo
Today we planned to see both the Thyssen Bornemisza gallery and the Prado gallery. After breakfast at the hotel we packed up the meager possessions that we’d bought in from Toledo and headed for the Thyssen. I’d seen the Thyssen many (many, many) years ago when it visited Dunedin and was interested to see it again. The sun was already high in the sky (9:45am) as we made our way to the gallery, so we had to chose the side of the street that would protect us from the sun.
The Gallery is now owned by Spain, but at the time I had seen it in Dunedin it was still a private collection that was on a world tour. That was about 1982-83. In 1988 the Spanish government agreed to host the collection for 9.5 years (don’t know why that long) and then in the early 1990’s, they had agreed to buy it from the TB family. We were interested to learn why it was sold, as it had been brought together by the TB family over two generations since the 1920’s. We never did find out, but given that it had been on tour in the early 1980’s and was then farmed out for 10 years at the end of the 1980’s, maybe they just felt like something new.
The collection is amazing, but like all art galleries, I find that there is only some art that I am interested in and the rest I can only give a passing interest to. My interest is mainly in 19th and early 20th century art – particularly the impressionists and post impressionists, but as this collection dates from the early 15th century it was good to see a wide range of art, appreciate the early stuff for what it was and then spend time looking at the art that I really enjoyed.
Art for me is a bit like a switch – it’s on or it’s off – I like it or I don’t, so we spent time at the stuff that we liked and moved more quickly past the stuff that didn’t interest us. Having said that, by the time we left it had been over 3 hours at an art gallery and that is as much as I can handle in one day.
Emerging just after 1:30, we went for a walk around some of the gardens, with the intention of catching the 3:50 train back to Toledo. Fortunately, we were close to the train station at 1:30, so went in to buy our tickets back to Toledo. This was fortunate, as we then found out why catching the train in Madrid can be difficult.
Expecting to get a self service vending machine, where you punch in your destination, chose your trip time and seat number, we were surprised to find that there were only very long queues to buy your tickets off a human ticket seller. The queues were for either the individual trains if they were about to leave, other ticket sales for that day and ticket sales for other days. The queues were huge and so we decided we’d better get our tickets before we did anything else. The whole process was massively inefficient and even the locals were getting very frustrated by it. The sellers in the queues for the upcoming trains, wouldn’t sell tickets for any of the later train services that day, the sellers in the other days sales were completely under utilised and the sellers of the rest of today’s sales were completely over worked. People were pushing to the front of the queue to try and get tickets for soon to be departing services.
Once we’d got our tickets, we were able to go and have lunch at a nearby café and wait for the return train to Toledo.
Dinner was a quiet affair that night, catching up on part of this blog entry, before we head for Barcelona tomorrow.
Every night, we get musicians coming round the restaurants and playing to the crowd in general. It ‘s good to hear them and we always give them a Euro for their trouble. There’s only two instruments they play – piano accordion or guitar, but there is one song that we get every time, it’s always played really fast and we’re over it – “Those Were the Days my Friend”. Here’s a little bit of it just to get you in the mood.
“Once upon a time, there was a tavern, Where we used to raise a glass or two. Remember how we laughed away the hours, Think of all the great things we would do.
Those were the days, my friend, We thought they'd never end, We'd sing and dance forever and a day, We'd live the life we'd choose, We'd fight and never lose, For we were young and sure to have our way.”
Now my recollection of the song was that the first verse was slow and the chorus was medium paced. The way the musicians play it, “Those were” is played slowish, and from then on, it’s a race to prove your manlihood and virility by playing it as fast as is humanly possible. From Barcelona, to the Costa Verde, to Segovia in Central Spain it is the same. I was reminded of this last night when we were watching the video that Anne has been creating, and there in the Placa Reail in Barcelona was that same bloody song again. Musicians playing that particular song are on the exclusion list when it comes to donations.
Fortunately, in the malls you also get musicians, but they are more varied in both their choice of instrument and the songs they play. Two that come to mind are the classical violinist in Salamanca and the guy playing a very good rendition of dire straits Sultans of Swing, so it adds a nice atmosphere while you are walking home from dinner.
The Gallery is now owned by Spain, but at the time I had seen it in Dunedin it was still a private collection that was on a world tour. That was about 1982-83. In 1988 the Spanish government agreed to host the collection for 9.5 years (don’t know why that long) and then in the early 1990’s, they had agreed to buy it from the TB family. We were interested to learn why it was sold, as it had been brought together by the TB family over two generations since the 1920’s. We never did find out, but given that it had been on tour in the early 1980’s and was then farmed out for 10 years at the end of the 1980’s, maybe they just felt like something new.
The collection is amazing, but like all art galleries, I find that there is only some art that I am interested in and the rest I can only give a passing interest to. My interest is mainly in 19th and early 20th century art – particularly the impressionists and post impressionists, but as this collection dates from the early 15th century it was good to see a wide range of art, appreciate the early stuff for what it was and then spend time looking at the art that I really enjoyed.
Art for me is a bit like a switch – it’s on or it’s off – I like it or I don’t, so we spent time at the stuff that we liked and moved more quickly past the stuff that didn’t interest us. Having said that, by the time we left it had been over 3 hours at an art gallery and that is as much as I can handle in one day.
Emerging just after 1:30, we went for a walk around some of the gardens, with the intention of catching the 3:50 train back to Toledo. Fortunately, we were close to the train station at 1:30, so went in to buy our tickets back to Toledo. This was fortunate, as we then found out why catching the train in Madrid can be difficult.
Expecting to get a self service vending machine, where you punch in your destination, chose your trip time and seat number, we were surprised to find that there were only very long queues to buy your tickets off a human ticket seller. The queues were for either the individual trains if they were about to leave, other ticket sales for that day and ticket sales for other days. The queues were huge and so we decided we’d better get our tickets before we did anything else. The whole process was massively inefficient and even the locals were getting very frustrated by it. The sellers in the queues for the upcoming trains, wouldn’t sell tickets for any of the later train services that day, the sellers in the other days sales were completely under utilised and the sellers of the rest of today’s sales were completely over worked. People were pushing to the front of the queue to try and get tickets for soon to be departing services.
Once we’d got our tickets, we were able to go and have lunch at a nearby café and wait for the return train to Toledo.
Dinner was a quiet affair that night, catching up on part of this blog entry, before we head for Barcelona tomorrow.
Every night, we get musicians coming round the restaurants and playing to the crowd in general. It ‘s good to hear them and we always give them a Euro for their trouble. There’s only two instruments they play – piano accordion or guitar, but there is one song that we get every time, it’s always played really fast and we’re over it – “Those Were the Days my Friend”. Here’s a little bit of it just to get you in the mood.
“Once upon a time, there was a tavern, Where we used to raise a glass or two. Remember how we laughed away the hours, Think of all the great things we would do.
Those were the days, my friend, We thought they'd never end, We'd sing and dance forever and a day, We'd live the life we'd choose, We'd fight and never lose, For we were young and sure to have our way.”
Now my recollection of the song was that the first verse was slow and the chorus was medium paced. The way the musicians play it, “Those were” is played slowish, and from then on, it’s a race to prove your manlihood and virility by playing it as fast as is humanly possible. From Barcelona, to the Costa Verde, to Segovia in Central Spain it is the same. I was reminded of this last night when we were watching the video that Anne has been creating, and there in the Placa Reail in Barcelona was that same bloody song again. Musicians playing that particular song are on the exclusion list when it comes to donations.
Fortunately, in the malls you also get musicians, but they are more varied in both their choice of instrument and the songs they play. Two that come to mind are the classical violinist in Salamanca and the guy playing a very good rendition of dire straits Sultans of Swing, so it adds a nice atmosphere while you are walking home from dinner.
Week 5 – Monday 28th July – Madrid
Set the alarm today (woohoo…almost like being at work), to get up bright and early to take the RENFE fast train into Madrid. We’d read that catching the train was problematic, but after a brief taxi ride to the train station we purchased a ticket for the train – no problems. Seriously, it’s a train service, they sell tickets to allocated seats, how hard can that be……read on gentle reader – the situation in Madrid tomorrow will be a totally different matter, but at this stage, we are living in blissful ignorance of what was to confront us.
The train service is great – very modern fast trains, that don’t go clickety-clack, clickety-clack. There is a security check before you get onto the train, so it was good to see that the ETA threat is being taken seriously and it did make us feel safer, particularly as our seats were right beside the luggage rack at the very front of the train. The trip into Madrid takes 28 minutes , with no stops. The thing that amazed us was that for all but about the last two minutes of the trip you are in the baron, arid countryside around Madrid. I had expected that for a city of 3.5 million people that we would spend most of the trip winding through the outer suburbs of Madrid.
The impression that we got as we left the train and headed through the Railway Station was that everything about Madrid was big, modern and efficient. The railway station itself is an impressive building, built as two long parallel brick buildings, about the length of a rugby field, built about the width of a rugby field apart, with a huge roof arching between the two of them. The centre section under the roof contains an indoor tropical garden that has humidifiers atomizing water above it constantly.
Heading into the city, we walked up Paseo de Prado, toward the Prado Museum. The Paseo is a 4 lanes each way artery, with trees lining one side, and a large tree lined Rambla style centre section. At 10:00am, the temperature was already at 30 degrees, but with the big oak trees all the way up the road, the walk was very cool and pleasant.
Finding an information centre outside the Prado (where perfect English was spoken), the first bit of news was that the Prado was closed on Mondays, so having obtained a map we headed further up Paseo de Prado to the Grand Via to head in the direction of the hotel we had booked for the night.
As I said, Madrid is magnificent – the buildings, with their ornate decoration, the monuments, fountains, tree lined streets were great to walk amongst and this was before we even got to the palace. It’s a very fast paced city, particularly the traffic and has many more multi laned streets and more fast moving traffic than we had seen even in Barcelona. The much lower population of scooters and what two wheeled transport there is, is much larger motor bikes seems to be testament to this fact.
Finding our hotel, right in the centre of the main pedestrian precinct, we were fortunate to be able to check in early and were really impressed with the service that we got from the hotel staff. It’s a very nice hotel in a perfect location and we’d only checked in early so I could drop off our bag and not have to carry it all day.
We spent the next couple of hours on a walking tour, taking in the main sites of Madrid. The Placa de Sol, with its statue of Madrid’s symbol, the bear eating out of the strawberry tree (??? – who came up with that), Plaza Mayor – big central town square, with three storey buildings on all sides – similar to Salamanca, but not quite so impressive and then on to the Palace and the areas surrounding it.
The day was hot, sunny and clear, but as I’ve mentioned above, it’s a very dry heat, so quite manageable and walking in the middle of the day was no problem for us. Leaving the Palace, we went into Plaza D’Espagne, which is a much more intimate area that the other squares we had been in – trees all around it and a big monument in the centre. We stopped there for a while and had a seat under the shade of the trees and observed the mounted police loading their horses into their very plush truck float.
After a further walk to another square, which didn’t rock our world, we headed back down towards the royal palace for lunch. This was back to our preferred standard – white table cloths, large wine glasses, cane chairs – and settled in for a relaxed and lengthy lunch people watching. The food was very nice – grilled monk fish, a mushroom risotto and an seafood salad, so we were pleased to be back into good food again. The mist dispensers we’d seen in the railway station were also in action here, and this time it was us who were being “misted” upon. I’m not sure how much good it does in the open air, as all the mist just seemed to blow away.
After lunch, we walked back to the hotel via the pedestrian precinct that makes up a good portion of central Madrid. On the way, we found a leather shop that had an orange leather jacket which Anne fell in love with, so it was good to buy that for her, as we’ve bought very little on this holiday. The jacket was on sale at 40% discount, but while Anne was trying it on, the woman informed us that “just today” it was on 60% discount. While I was paying for it, she fastidiously prepared a tax return voucher to make sure that we got a further 10% discount on the price we had paid.
After an evening siesta, we retuned to the Palace area, where we found a restaurant serving Montadito’s – small bread rolls with a filling. After a large lunch, these were just what we felt like, so we devoured a couple of courses of them and some beer and wine.
The train service is great – very modern fast trains, that don’t go clickety-clack, clickety-clack. There is a security check before you get onto the train, so it was good to see that the ETA threat is being taken seriously and it did make us feel safer, particularly as our seats were right beside the luggage rack at the very front of the train. The trip into Madrid takes 28 minutes , with no stops. The thing that amazed us was that for all but about the last two minutes of the trip you are in the baron, arid countryside around Madrid. I had expected that for a city of 3.5 million people that we would spend most of the trip winding through the outer suburbs of Madrid.
The impression that we got as we left the train and headed through the Railway Station was that everything about Madrid was big, modern and efficient. The railway station itself is an impressive building, built as two long parallel brick buildings, about the length of a rugby field, built about the width of a rugby field apart, with a huge roof arching between the two of them. The centre section under the roof contains an indoor tropical garden that has humidifiers atomizing water above it constantly.
Heading into the city, we walked up Paseo de Prado, toward the Prado Museum. The Paseo is a 4 lanes each way artery, with trees lining one side, and a large tree lined Rambla style centre section. At 10:00am, the temperature was already at 30 degrees, but with the big oak trees all the way up the road, the walk was very cool and pleasant.
Finding an information centre outside the Prado (where perfect English was spoken), the first bit of news was that the Prado was closed on Mondays, so having obtained a map we headed further up Paseo de Prado to the Grand Via to head in the direction of the hotel we had booked for the night.
As I said, Madrid is magnificent – the buildings, with their ornate decoration, the monuments, fountains, tree lined streets were great to walk amongst and this was before we even got to the palace. It’s a very fast paced city, particularly the traffic and has many more multi laned streets and more fast moving traffic than we had seen even in Barcelona. The much lower population of scooters and what two wheeled transport there is, is much larger motor bikes seems to be testament to this fact.
Finding our hotel, right in the centre of the main pedestrian precinct, we were fortunate to be able to check in early and were really impressed with the service that we got from the hotel staff. It’s a very nice hotel in a perfect location and we’d only checked in early so I could drop off our bag and not have to carry it all day.
We spent the next couple of hours on a walking tour, taking in the main sites of Madrid. The Placa de Sol, with its statue of Madrid’s symbol, the bear eating out of the strawberry tree (??? – who came up with that), Plaza Mayor – big central town square, with three storey buildings on all sides – similar to Salamanca, but not quite so impressive and then on to the Palace and the areas surrounding it.
The day was hot, sunny and clear, but as I’ve mentioned above, it’s a very dry heat, so quite manageable and walking in the middle of the day was no problem for us. Leaving the Palace, we went into Plaza D’Espagne, which is a much more intimate area that the other squares we had been in – trees all around it and a big monument in the centre. We stopped there for a while and had a seat under the shade of the trees and observed the mounted police loading their horses into their very plush truck float.
After a further walk to another square, which didn’t rock our world, we headed back down towards the royal palace for lunch. This was back to our preferred standard – white table cloths, large wine glasses, cane chairs – and settled in for a relaxed and lengthy lunch people watching. The food was very nice – grilled monk fish, a mushroom risotto and an seafood salad, so we were pleased to be back into good food again. The mist dispensers we’d seen in the railway station were also in action here, and this time it was us who were being “misted” upon. I’m not sure how much good it does in the open air, as all the mist just seemed to blow away.
After lunch, we walked back to the hotel via the pedestrian precinct that makes up a good portion of central Madrid. On the way, we found a leather shop that had an orange leather jacket which Anne fell in love with, so it was good to buy that for her, as we’ve bought very little on this holiday. The jacket was on sale at 40% discount, but while Anne was trying it on, the woman informed us that “just today” it was on 60% discount. While I was paying for it, she fastidiously prepared a tax return voucher to make sure that we got a further 10% discount on the price we had paid.
After an evening siesta, we retuned to the Palace area, where we found a restaurant serving Montadito’s – small bread rolls with a filling. After a large lunch, these were just what we felt like, so we devoured a couple of courses of them and some beer and wine.
Week 4 – Sunday 27th July – Toledo
Breakfast saw what looked like a nomination for this year’s Darwin awards. Hotel toasters are always a lottery and if they’re the press down kind you never know if your toast is going to “pop”, barely warmed, or completely black. My solution is to try and look down the side of the bread while it is cooking to determine when it is changing colour and then pop the toaster. One of the other guests had a much better idea. She grabbed the metal tongs that you use to pick the bread up with, stuck them in the toaster, pulled out the toast, saw it wasn’t done so dropped the toast back in. I was so ready to see her get flung to the other side of the restaurant as 240 volts surged through the tongs, but fortunately her sensitive woman’s touch prevailed and she was able to complete the maneuver without incident.
All the hotels we’ve stayed in in Spain have been designed the old fashioned way, with a central lift shaft, with a stair well that wraps around the lift shaft. The stairs are wide and although this is not a good design for minimising fire risk, the stair well is at least available and not hidden behind fire doors that only open one way. These stairs are inviting to people to use them and Anne and I do. It was only the Royal Ramblas in Barcelona where we caught the lift to the 5th floor, but always walked down.
Leaving breakfast this morning to our room on the second floor, we walked up 10 stairs, crossed two steps on the landing, then another 10 stairs to the first floor. Pausing briefly to say “ola” to the guests waiting for the lift to take them down to breakfast (they weren’t checking out as they had no bags with them), we thought “come on you lard arses – do some exercise – it’s only 22 paces and the lifts are so slow in these buildings, you’d get to breakfast minutes before you will at your current rate”. Continuing on to the second floor (that’s another 22 steps), we noticed that the lift was actually on the second floor and were tempted to jam something in the door, but then thought the better of our evil thoughts.
At this hotel, the car is parked in a parking building which is about 10 minutes walk away. It’s just beyond the end of the old town, so it’s a pleasant walk through the old town and it’s all down hill. The drive back up to the hotel is however, not so pleasant. I did say I’d video it in a previous post, but then forgot the video camera, so sorry about that. It’s only a couple of minutes from the time that you come through the gate in the city wall at the bottom of the town until you are parked outside the hotel, but in that time I had to stop and reverse twice as the car wouldn’t make it around the hair pin bends, avoid cars on one side of the road while buffing the outside of the tyres on the opposite curb because it was so narrow, pull in the external mirrors to avoid hitting the stone walls on the really tight sections, get hassled by taxi drivers who know the roads so much better and attempt (successfully) in Spanish to get an electronic bollard in the middle of the road lowered so that I could get right to the centre of the historic city.
The drive from Segovia to Toledo was an easy couple of hours on motorways. We are due to drop the car off next Thursday, so we decided to break up the trip with a quick detour to the Peugeot depot to make sure we knew where we had to go. Jane threw us a bit, by taking us straight through the centre of Madrid, rather than round the ring road as we’d expected. We didn’t know anything about Madrid and were a bit shocked when we were instructed to go past the ring road exit at the top of Madrid and continued on into the centre of the city. Fortunately, it was a Sunday so there wasn’t too much traffic around, but Jane had a fast route and what we didn’t know was that there are lots of tunnels under Madrid and that was indeed the fastest way (how could we ever have doubted her).
Having found the industrial waste land where Peugeot takes customers to pick-up and return their leased cars to, we continued on to Toledo. The last stop on our trip before we turn for home next Friday. We stayed in Toledo as the first stop on our trip to Andalusia and Portugal 4 years ago, so were looking forward to a return visit – even staying in the same hotel we stayed in last time.
As you will have learnt from our recent postings, the food in Central Spain hasn’t been of the same quality as we had been experiencing earlier in the trip, so for lunch today, we found a nice little restaurant (although a bit noisy) in the main square in Toledo that had a meal that sounded just perfect – 2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickled onion on a sesame seed bun (remember the ad) – and just today I’m loving it!
Lunch was followed by a walk around the town – with the temperature flirting with 40 degrees. It’s a very dry heat and is what, at the time of writing this (Tuesday night), we have experienced for the last 3 days in both Toledo and Madrid.
As I said before, Toledo was our first stop on our last trip and the last stop on this one, and after the time we’ve spent in Santiago DC, Salamanca and Segovia – this time it seemed to pale in comparison to those wonderful cities. The shops that were open were all selling exactly the same tourist tat – swords, armour, ornate porcelain, chess sets etc and this time the city feels very much like it’s turned into a cheap day excursion for tourists from Madrid.
We stopped at two information centres in Toledo to get a map and ask directions to some attractions. We stopped at two because the woman at the first one didn’t speak any English. But then the man at the second one didn’t either. This is the first time in all of Spain that we had experienced this and although there was one more information centre in Toledo, we didn’t rate our chances of having any more success with it, so didn’t go to find it.
During our early evening break, we connected the video camera up to the TV in our hotel room and started watching the footage that we have shot over the last 4 weeks. Seeing the sites and sounds of Barcelona all over again, made us realize what a great city that is and that just having one night there before heading home wasn’t the best use of our remaining time. We decided then and there that we should leave Toledo a day earlier after visiting Madrid. That then required reworking some of the logistics of changing flights, hotels and the return of the car. With the wonders of the internet and a mobile phone that was all achieved in reasonably short order, particularly thanks to Jodi our travel agent in New Zealand who changed our flights over with an absolute minimum of fuss and a maximum of efficiency.
When we booked the hotel in Toledo, we got a deal of 4 nights for the price of 3 With all the rearranging and staying the night in Madrid, we had now achieved the remarkable feat of paying 5 nights for four nights accommodation.
All the hotels we’ve stayed in in Spain have been designed the old fashioned way, with a central lift shaft, with a stair well that wraps around the lift shaft. The stairs are wide and although this is not a good design for minimising fire risk, the stair well is at least available and not hidden behind fire doors that only open one way. These stairs are inviting to people to use them and Anne and I do. It was only the Royal Ramblas in Barcelona where we caught the lift to the 5th floor, but always walked down.
Leaving breakfast this morning to our room on the second floor, we walked up 10 stairs, crossed two steps on the landing, then another 10 stairs to the first floor. Pausing briefly to say “ola” to the guests waiting for the lift to take them down to breakfast (they weren’t checking out as they had no bags with them), we thought “come on you lard arses – do some exercise – it’s only 22 paces and the lifts are so slow in these buildings, you’d get to breakfast minutes before you will at your current rate”. Continuing on to the second floor (that’s another 22 steps), we noticed that the lift was actually on the second floor and were tempted to jam something in the door, but then thought the better of our evil thoughts.
At this hotel, the car is parked in a parking building which is about 10 minutes walk away. It’s just beyond the end of the old town, so it’s a pleasant walk through the old town and it’s all down hill. The drive back up to the hotel is however, not so pleasant. I did say I’d video it in a previous post, but then forgot the video camera, so sorry about that. It’s only a couple of minutes from the time that you come through the gate in the city wall at the bottom of the town until you are parked outside the hotel, but in that time I had to stop and reverse twice as the car wouldn’t make it around the hair pin bends, avoid cars on one side of the road while buffing the outside of the tyres on the opposite curb because it was so narrow, pull in the external mirrors to avoid hitting the stone walls on the really tight sections, get hassled by taxi drivers who know the roads so much better and attempt (successfully) in Spanish to get an electronic bollard in the middle of the road lowered so that I could get right to the centre of the historic city.
The drive from Segovia to Toledo was an easy couple of hours on motorways. We are due to drop the car off next Thursday, so we decided to break up the trip with a quick detour to the Peugeot depot to make sure we knew where we had to go. Jane threw us a bit, by taking us straight through the centre of Madrid, rather than round the ring road as we’d expected. We didn’t know anything about Madrid and were a bit shocked when we were instructed to go past the ring road exit at the top of Madrid and continued on into the centre of the city. Fortunately, it was a Sunday so there wasn’t too much traffic around, but Jane had a fast route and what we didn’t know was that there are lots of tunnels under Madrid and that was indeed the fastest way (how could we ever have doubted her).
Having found the industrial waste land where Peugeot takes customers to pick-up and return their leased cars to, we continued on to Toledo. The last stop on our trip before we turn for home next Friday. We stayed in Toledo as the first stop on our trip to Andalusia and Portugal 4 years ago, so were looking forward to a return visit – even staying in the same hotel we stayed in last time.
As you will have learnt from our recent postings, the food in Central Spain hasn’t been of the same quality as we had been experiencing earlier in the trip, so for lunch today, we found a nice little restaurant (although a bit noisy) in the main square in Toledo that had a meal that sounded just perfect – 2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickled onion on a sesame seed bun (remember the ad) – and just today I’m loving it!
Lunch was followed by a walk around the town – with the temperature flirting with 40 degrees. It’s a very dry heat and is what, at the time of writing this (Tuesday night), we have experienced for the last 3 days in both Toledo and Madrid.
As I said before, Toledo was our first stop on our last trip and the last stop on this one, and after the time we’ve spent in Santiago DC, Salamanca and Segovia – this time it seemed to pale in comparison to those wonderful cities. The shops that were open were all selling exactly the same tourist tat – swords, armour, ornate porcelain, chess sets etc and this time the city feels very much like it’s turned into a cheap day excursion for tourists from Madrid.
We stopped at two information centres in Toledo to get a map and ask directions to some attractions. We stopped at two because the woman at the first one didn’t speak any English. But then the man at the second one didn’t either. This is the first time in all of Spain that we had experienced this and although there was one more information centre in Toledo, we didn’t rate our chances of having any more success with it, so didn’t go to find it.
During our early evening break, we connected the video camera up to the TV in our hotel room and started watching the footage that we have shot over the last 4 weeks. Seeing the sites and sounds of Barcelona all over again, made us realize what a great city that is and that just having one night there before heading home wasn’t the best use of our remaining time. We decided then and there that we should leave Toledo a day earlier after visiting Madrid. That then required reworking some of the logistics of changing flights, hotels and the return of the car. With the wonders of the internet and a mobile phone that was all achieved in reasonably short order, particularly thanks to Jodi our travel agent in New Zealand who changed our flights over with an absolute minimum of fuss and a maximum of efficiency.
When we booked the hotel in Toledo, we got a deal of 4 nights for the price of 3 With all the rearranging and staying the night in Madrid, we had now achieved the remarkable feat of paying 5 nights for four nights accommodation.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Week 4 – Saturday 26th July – Segovia
I got into trouble this morning. Anne called out to me from the shower, so I dutifully went to find out what assistance she required. “Can you pass me a face flannel please”. This sort of question always gets me, it’s a bit like asking for a desert spoon and not a tablespoon – Que. Anyway, I had a look around the hotel bathroom and their were a range of towels for me to choose from. There were the showering ones, so not them, some smaller ones – hand towels I thought, and some small ones hanging on a rail in the far corner. “That must be them”, I thought, so grabbed one and passed it to her. Anne stared at me disbelievingly and didn’t extend her hand to take the “face flannel”, so I sort of shook it at her – you know, take it. “There’s a reason there hanging beside the bidet, you know” Oops.
Actually, the morning didn’t get off to a great start. We got a text from Mum and Dad at 6am to say that their cruise ship was docking in Nice at 8am at the end of the cruise, so they were up early to get ready to disembark. You might have seen it on CNN if you were watching, it was obviously news worthy. Then at 8am, the alarm clock that had been silent the previous morning decided to burst into life to get us into the day. The towel incident happened after we got up at 9:30.
Anne has just reminded me about breakfast. The waiter was a real treat. He was obliging, without being friendly and effective without being efficient. Everything we asked (which wasn’t much) could be done, but it seemed to pain him that we were there. Anyway, while we were munching our way through breakfast, it was obvious that we were late, as there were several tables with dirty dishes on them. The waiter very carefully and meticulously cleared the tables, stacking plates and cups on his hands and wrists and arranging things neatly to maximise how much he could carry. All this was done with the usual waiters grace, and once he had loaded himself up, he would glide out of the restaurant to the kitchen. It seemed that as soon as he passed through the doors into the kitchen there was some miraculous transformation and Jeeves became the belligerent kitchen hand as there was an almighty crash as all the dishes were dumped unceremoniously into the sink. This would have been OK if it happened once, but it was a regular occurrence over the entire time we were in the dining room.
Today we were sightseeing locally and the transport was all on foot. First stop was the Alcazar, which is a magnificent building and grounds at the foot of the town. We’d driven past in on our way into town two days ago, but such is the abundance of sights to see in Segovia, we hadn’t been back to it since. The pictures on Flickr show the building, which was built in the 15th century, gutted by fire and fully restored in the 19th century and now is owned by a trust and houses Spain (and one of Europe’s) top military academies.
Again we had an audio guide, which gave us just enough information. Impressive things about the Alcazar (which is an Arabic word for Royal Palace) were the reconstructed armour in the first few rooms, the stained glass windows, the ceilings in all the rooms. (I’ve put up some photos to show you) and the tower, with its 152 steps.
After the Alcazar, we went for a walk round the town on the way to the aqueduct, which we were going to walk from one end to the other. Now that we have been here a couple of days, we realize what the local cuisine is like. Walking past the restaurants we checked out what people were eating, and it was all pork, which in one extreme case was a whole baby piggy, head and all – a bit gross really, unless its your custom I suppose.
One thing I’ve noticed over the last two days is the babies have pierced ears and I mean tiny babies – new borns. Again, I guess this is a custom thing. Some societies circumcise their baby boys, so why shouldn’t the girls get pierced ears. Besides which, given that Spanish woman seem to exit the womb with matching shoes, belts, necklaces and earrings, having pierced ears is probably as natural as cutting the umbilical chord. (Note: As I write this at 11:30 at night, the most popular drink being served is warmed water to new mothers, so that they can formula feed their babies. The children are still playing soccer in the pavilion in the centre of the square. The teenagers were playing tag, but they seem to have left, so I’m not sure what that lead to. Grand parents are sitting on the chairs in the centre of the square talking and some people have just arrived for dinner. This is what we love about Europe.
Our time in Segovia is nearly over, we head to Toledo tomorrow morning. Segovia is a very ‘local’ town. The receptionist at the hotel speaks English, but nobody else does and they speak Spanish to us at 100mph and give us funny looks when we look gormlessly back at them. They watch us going over the menu with our phrase book (this is the first town to have no English menus), but are appreciative of our attempts at Spanish when we have finally interpreted what we would like and are ready to order.
Actually, the morning didn’t get off to a great start. We got a text from Mum and Dad at 6am to say that their cruise ship was docking in Nice at 8am at the end of the cruise, so they were up early to get ready to disembark. You might have seen it on CNN if you were watching, it was obviously news worthy. Then at 8am, the alarm clock that had been silent the previous morning decided to burst into life to get us into the day. The towel incident happened after we got up at 9:30.
Anne has just reminded me about breakfast. The waiter was a real treat. He was obliging, without being friendly and effective without being efficient. Everything we asked (which wasn’t much) could be done, but it seemed to pain him that we were there. Anyway, while we were munching our way through breakfast, it was obvious that we were late, as there were several tables with dirty dishes on them. The waiter very carefully and meticulously cleared the tables, stacking plates and cups on his hands and wrists and arranging things neatly to maximise how much he could carry. All this was done with the usual waiters grace, and once he had loaded himself up, he would glide out of the restaurant to the kitchen. It seemed that as soon as he passed through the doors into the kitchen there was some miraculous transformation and Jeeves became the belligerent kitchen hand as there was an almighty crash as all the dishes were dumped unceremoniously into the sink. This would have been OK if it happened once, but it was a regular occurrence over the entire time we were in the dining room.
Today we were sightseeing locally and the transport was all on foot. First stop was the Alcazar, which is a magnificent building and grounds at the foot of the town. We’d driven past in on our way into town two days ago, but such is the abundance of sights to see in Segovia, we hadn’t been back to it since. The pictures on Flickr show the building, which was built in the 15th century, gutted by fire and fully restored in the 19th century and now is owned by a trust and houses Spain (and one of Europe’s) top military academies.
Again we had an audio guide, which gave us just enough information. Impressive things about the Alcazar (which is an Arabic word for Royal Palace) were the reconstructed armour in the first few rooms, the stained glass windows, the ceilings in all the rooms. (I’ve put up some photos to show you) and the tower, with its 152 steps.
After the Alcazar, we went for a walk round the town on the way to the aqueduct, which we were going to walk from one end to the other. Now that we have been here a couple of days, we realize what the local cuisine is like. Walking past the restaurants we checked out what people were eating, and it was all pork, which in one extreme case was a whole baby piggy, head and all – a bit gross really, unless its your custom I suppose.
One thing I’ve noticed over the last two days is the babies have pierced ears and I mean tiny babies – new borns. Again, I guess this is a custom thing. Some societies circumcise their baby boys, so why shouldn’t the girls get pierced ears. Besides which, given that Spanish woman seem to exit the womb with matching shoes, belts, necklaces and earrings, having pierced ears is probably as natural as cutting the umbilical chord. (Note: As I write this at 11:30 at night, the most popular drink being served is warmed water to new mothers, so that they can formula feed their babies. The children are still playing soccer in the pavilion in the centre of the square. The teenagers were playing tag, but they seem to have left, so I’m not sure what that lead to. Grand parents are sitting on the chairs in the centre of the square talking and some people have just arrived for dinner. This is what we love about Europe.
Our time in Segovia is nearly over, we head to Toledo tomorrow morning. Segovia is a very ‘local’ town. The receptionist at the hotel speaks English, but nobody else does and they speak Spanish to us at 100mph and give us funny looks when we look gormlessly back at them. They watch us going over the menu with our phrase book (this is the first town to have no English menus), but are appreciative of our attempts at Spanish when we have finally interpreted what we would like and are ready to order.
Week 4 – Friday 25th July – El Escorial and Pedraza
We’re sitting in the square in Segovia at 9:15 on Saturday night, with hopefully an hour of daylight left to get the blog all up to date. A band is playing outside a couple of restaurants away, children are tearing around the square, the café’s are filling up and the temperature has dropped to a very respectable level from the highs we’ve been experiencing the last couple of days.
Anyway, off cruising in the car today. Being Friday, we decided we’d do the traveling today, so that we could be around Segovia on Saturday and avoid the Madrid traffic that might be escaping the city on the weekend. Two quite different stop offs today – firstly El Escorial – the monastery of San Lorenzo el Real. It’s a very austere building that was built in the 16th century to reaffirm the Catholic faith in central Spain and fight off the threat that was coming from the upsurge in Protestantism. The monastery is situated between Segovia and Madrid about ¾ of an hours drive away.
The drive out was on the motorway and uneventful, except for the 3.5k tunnel, which is quite an airy experience to drive through with the roof down. The exit to the tunnel was only a couple of ks from the exit to El Escorial and as we came out of the tunnel, we noticed the traffic going in the other direction backed up for miles. Never mind, we’d be in the monastery for 2-3 hours, so it would be well cleared by then – yeah right.
When I say the Monastery is austere, I mean it is very plain on the outside. Although it is a large building, there is no exterior decoration and as you can see from the photos it is somewhat plain. For the tour inside, we picked up an audio guide, which was great as you can listen to what interests you and not get bogged down if the detail gets too much to bear. We passed several tour groups on our way around and I was glad not to be with them, having been talked at on enough tours in my life where you are given an endless stream of immediately forgettable dates and facts.
The monastery houses many works of art, tapestries, architectural tools and models of the monastery, books and dead monarchs and these were on display as part of the tour. Unlike the Guggenheim, the art was “real art”, people painted pictures, which suits me much better. We particularly liked the war art. It came in two sorts – the war journalist type that was a painting of a battle scene that was reasonably reflective of the “what” and “where” of the battle, and the “propaganda” art that was usually created for a monarch so that he could boast to all who would listen of his magnificence and military prowess. The interesting thing was the perspective and scale used in the propaganda art, where the people were made much bigger such that they were about the same size as the castle they were conquering. There was one long room – 52m – which had been dedicated to this propaganda art, which the kings of the time obviously entertained in. Historians found the art interesting as it showed the weapons and tactics that had been used in various battles, but from a lay mans perspective, it appeared more as a monument to the kings ego.
There were some very good exhibits of the building tools and models to show the construction techniques that had gone into building the monastery.
As a purchaser of an audio guide, we were privileged to get to see the royal mausoleum and this was very impressive. The first room you go into contains marble caskets containing the remains of the past kings and queens. It is a very impressive room, all the caskets are black marble, with gold plaques identifying who is in each casket. The room has been in use since the 16th century and there are two un identified caskets that are for the current King and Queen of Spain, so I don’t know what they do when it goes beyond that – maybe build a new room. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos, so I can’t show you what the room was like, but it was very impressive.
After that, were 9 rooms with white marble caskets that contained the remains of the Princes and Princesses of the Spanish Monarchy. Again, it was impressive.
As we finished the tour, we stopped in for a comfort stop. Nothing unusual about that, except that the loos were at the end of a long corridor that had some of the most impressive murals we’d seen on the whole tour and if you didn’t go to the loo you wouldn’t have got to see them.
Outside the monastery in the grounds they were setting up a massive stage for a concert that night. All of Europe is either a soccer ground or a concert venue, but what is frustrating is that you can’t find out what the concerts are, as there is no banners advertising who is playing. It could have been anybody from the 10 tenors to the wiggles, but we will never know because there was nothing around the stage to tell us who was playing and even google could give us the answer.
We went for a walk around the town of El Escorial and then headed off to our second stop Pedraza de La Sierra. Heading out of El Escorial and onto the motorway, we immediately hit the same traffic ham we had seen building up 3 hours earlier. Needless to say, it delayed us for a while and caused us to take some detours to try and get past it, but never mind, it’s the first traffic jam in the entire holiday, so we can’t complain. Unlike the guy in the new Citroen C5. We noticed him pull over a few hundred metres ahead of us pop his bonnet up and as we went past him, there was this dreadful stink – an engine awfully overheated stink. “He’ll be here for a while”, I thought. Five minutes later he cruises past on the hard shoulder, with his hazard lights flashing and the same dreadful smell in the air. We passed him another couple of times before we got fully clear of the jam, so that will be one sick Citroen for someone to buy down the track.
Anyway, Pedraza, when we got there, was a tiny Spanish town, with it’s car park at the far end of the town. The gates into the town (shown in the photos) should have been an indication, but we charged on in, and then had to wind our way through ludicrously narrow streets, past parked cars, pedestrians and rock walls to the car park. The town which is a rated Michelin stop is very small and not any better than other little towns that we’ve visited, so we did the customary walk around the town before heading back to Segovia, and beers, wines and blogging in the square before having dinner.
Anyway, off cruising in the car today. Being Friday, we decided we’d do the traveling today, so that we could be around Segovia on Saturday and avoid the Madrid traffic that might be escaping the city on the weekend. Two quite different stop offs today – firstly El Escorial – the monastery of San Lorenzo el Real. It’s a very austere building that was built in the 16th century to reaffirm the Catholic faith in central Spain and fight off the threat that was coming from the upsurge in Protestantism. The monastery is situated between Segovia and Madrid about ¾ of an hours drive away.
The drive out was on the motorway and uneventful, except for the 3.5k tunnel, which is quite an airy experience to drive through with the roof down. The exit to the tunnel was only a couple of ks from the exit to El Escorial and as we came out of the tunnel, we noticed the traffic going in the other direction backed up for miles. Never mind, we’d be in the monastery for 2-3 hours, so it would be well cleared by then – yeah right.
When I say the Monastery is austere, I mean it is very plain on the outside. Although it is a large building, there is no exterior decoration and as you can see from the photos it is somewhat plain. For the tour inside, we picked up an audio guide, which was great as you can listen to what interests you and not get bogged down if the detail gets too much to bear. We passed several tour groups on our way around and I was glad not to be with them, having been talked at on enough tours in my life where you are given an endless stream of immediately forgettable dates and facts.
The monastery houses many works of art, tapestries, architectural tools and models of the monastery, books and dead monarchs and these were on display as part of the tour. Unlike the Guggenheim, the art was “real art”, people painted pictures, which suits me much better. We particularly liked the war art. It came in two sorts – the war journalist type that was a painting of a battle scene that was reasonably reflective of the “what” and “where” of the battle, and the “propaganda” art that was usually created for a monarch so that he could boast to all who would listen of his magnificence and military prowess. The interesting thing was the perspective and scale used in the propaganda art, where the people were made much bigger such that they were about the same size as the castle they were conquering. There was one long room – 52m – which had been dedicated to this propaganda art, which the kings of the time obviously entertained in. Historians found the art interesting as it showed the weapons and tactics that had been used in various battles, but from a lay mans perspective, it appeared more as a monument to the kings ego.
There were some very good exhibits of the building tools and models to show the construction techniques that had gone into building the monastery.
As a purchaser of an audio guide, we were privileged to get to see the royal mausoleum and this was very impressive. The first room you go into contains marble caskets containing the remains of the past kings and queens. It is a very impressive room, all the caskets are black marble, with gold plaques identifying who is in each casket. The room has been in use since the 16th century and there are two un identified caskets that are for the current King and Queen of Spain, so I don’t know what they do when it goes beyond that – maybe build a new room. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos, so I can’t show you what the room was like, but it was very impressive.
After that, were 9 rooms with white marble caskets that contained the remains of the Princes and Princesses of the Spanish Monarchy. Again, it was impressive.
As we finished the tour, we stopped in for a comfort stop. Nothing unusual about that, except that the loos were at the end of a long corridor that had some of the most impressive murals we’d seen on the whole tour and if you didn’t go to the loo you wouldn’t have got to see them.
Outside the monastery in the grounds they were setting up a massive stage for a concert that night. All of Europe is either a soccer ground or a concert venue, but what is frustrating is that you can’t find out what the concerts are, as there is no banners advertising who is playing. It could have been anybody from the 10 tenors to the wiggles, but we will never know because there was nothing around the stage to tell us who was playing and even google could give us the answer.
We went for a walk around the town of El Escorial and then headed off to our second stop Pedraza de La Sierra. Heading out of El Escorial and onto the motorway, we immediately hit the same traffic ham we had seen building up 3 hours earlier. Needless to say, it delayed us for a while and caused us to take some detours to try and get past it, but never mind, it’s the first traffic jam in the entire holiday, so we can’t complain. Unlike the guy in the new Citroen C5. We noticed him pull over a few hundred metres ahead of us pop his bonnet up and as we went past him, there was this dreadful stink – an engine awfully overheated stink. “He’ll be here for a while”, I thought. Five minutes later he cruises past on the hard shoulder, with his hazard lights flashing and the same dreadful smell in the air. We passed him another couple of times before we got fully clear of the jam, so that will be one sick Citroen for someone to buy down the track.
Anyway, Pedraza, when we got there, was a tiny Spanish town, with it’s car park at the far end of the town. The gates into the town (shown in the photos) should have been an indication, but we charged on in, and then had to wind our way through ludicrously narrow streets, past parked cars, pedestrians and rock walls to the car park. The town which is a rated Michelin stop is very small and not any better than other little towns that we’ve visited, so we did the customary walk around the town before heading back to Segovia, and beers, wines and blogging in the square before having dinner.
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