On leaving Sevilla, we were headed north to the small city of Merida. As with many of our journeys in Spain, our transportation took the form of a Blablacar. Blablacar is a ridesharing platform whereby drivers can offer up spare seats in their cars for journeys they have planned. In return, passengers pay a portion of the trip costs. For most (though not all) journeys in Spain, we'd found that Blablacar was considerably less expensive than travelling by train or bus. And often it would get you a direct ride between places that would otherwise require changing vehicles or ones that had infrequent connections. Plus you sometimes got to meet friendly locals, such as Ivan, the driver who dropped us in Merida on his drive home to Salamanca.
Our stop in Merida was a short one, with just enough time to check out the city's collection of Roman ruins. These began with a walk into town across the 792m long bridge over the Guadiana River (one of the longest in the whole Empire). From there we peered in to the complex containing the theatre and amphitheatre. These were a bit pricey for us to visit, but conveniently it was a free day at the associated museum.
The museum was one of those whose impressive collection was challenged by the architecture of the building that housed it. We loved the mosaics. It would have been cool to see them in situ as at Volubilis in Morocco, but seeing them occupying whole three storey high walls of the airy museum space was pretty darn cool too. Also great was the open-air cellar, where many of the artifcats discovered during construction of the museum were displayed in situ, with “dim lighting that enhances the experience,” as the interpretive placards said.
From the museum we had a nice walk through town, stopping by the many of the ruins that had been restored and sat surrounded by city plazas. The best of these was one of those places with history piled on history piled on history, with a church built next door to the remains of a mosque which was built adjacent to a Roman temple, whose remains a visigothic knight had incorporated into his small palace. Signs of all of these were still visible all at once!
Finally, we had a lovely picnic in the shadow of a spectacular five story aqueduct before taking the train north to Caceres.
The modern city of Caceres is pleasant, but not all that spectacular. The walled medieval town, however is an amazingly intact bit of thirteenth and fourteenth century history. Walking around it, as I did on my first night in town, gave you the feeling that the whole place must have been a from set. And it was virtually empty! In the largest of the squares within the walls I sat taking photos of the church, accompanied only by bats and, once every fifteen minutes or so, other tourists appearing out of the dark narrow cobbled streets and carrying on their way leaving me entirely alone again. (Sarah even wrote a little jingle about it: 🎶Med-ee-eval town with bats! Med-ee-eval town with bats! Med-ee-eval town, Med-ee-eval town, Med-ee-eval town with bats!🎶)
Sarah and I explored again in more depth the following day, visiting the inside of the Francis Xavier church that I'd been photographing with the bats the previous night. Even though much of it was closed for renovation the one Euro admission to the choir gallery, the modest museum of international nativity scenes and both of the bell towers made it one of the best value paid attractions I've been to anywhere in Europe.
Before heading home to our Airbnb for lunch we just caught the final opening hour of one of the old city's three convents where the sisters sell baked goods through charming little revolving doors (presumably so as not to expose themselves to the prying eyes of the outside world unnecessarily). We got a large box of very yummy almond cookies that didn't quite last 24 hours in my presence.
Sarah rested at home for the afternoon, while I went for a walk in the countryside around Caceres. I'd been hoping for spectacular views of the hilltop fortified city, but even though it was a solid uphill climb, by the time I got to the walk's summit I was a bit too far distant for it to really show off. But it was a very nice stroll through the countryside that almost immediately supplanted the urban areas once you walked outside the walls, and felt like a nice preparation for our big walk to Santiago de Compostela (which, believe it or not, begins in the next 'blog entry!)
The next morning our very kind host gave us a ride out to the village of Casar de Caceres. Especially kind as it was not on her way to work at all, being in the exact opposite direction. Casar is home to one of Spain's most celebrated cheeses, the soft and stinky Torta de Casar. We visited the little cheese museum and picked up a small wheel to eat ourselves. Sarah loved it, but it was a little to washed-rind-smellgly for me to really enjoy.
From Casar, buses took us to our final stop in Spain, the city of Salamanca. We'd already told Ivan (our Blablacar driver to Merida if you recall) that we'd be making a stop in his hometown, but before we'd even got to our accommodation we ran into him just walking down the street and made plans to meet the next day so he could show us around.
As we were beginning a long distance walk the morning after departing from Salamanca I spent our first afternoon outside of the historic city doing a bit of shopping and preparation for the journey. Low to moderate end outdoors goods at Decathlon stores in Europe are ridiculously cheap. I got us two (very light, admittedly) sleeping bags for under NZD25! It was all I could do to not go crazy buying clothes and footwear as well, but I restrained myself.
After arriving home from my shopping trip, and trying out a selection of 1€/750ml bottle ciders with Sarah, I still had time to take a quick walk around the old town to see it lit up at night. It really is an amazing sight, with another ornate barpque building around every corner, and the whole old quarter uniformly constructed of the golden, but ever so slightly pink sandstone from a nearby quarry.
The next day we had a nice sleep in before meeting Ivan for our tour of Salamanca. It was really fun walking around with him. He pointed out a lot of the stuff you'd get from a guidebook, but heaps of other more personal stuff too. He took us to his school, the University of Salamanca this is the “new” university, being only three hundred or so years old. And he gave us lots of great eating and drinking tips (“that place has cheap drinks and really big tapas.”) We visited several out of the way parks with great views of the city. And were just generally touched by Ivan's willingness to spend his time showing his hometown to two near-strangers who he had only about two thirds of a language in common with. But as he said, and as we've often felt ourselves, he's received similar kindnesses while travelling and believes he ought to pay them back by geing kind to others himself.
We took Ivan's cheap drinks and big tapas recommendation and joined the after-class crowd at a bar near the university, where I had a beer and Sarah (due to some confusion, though I don't exactly know/recall on whose part) finally got around to having a tinto veranno, which is (invariably cheap) red wine mixed 50/50 with lemon Fanta. It's not as bad as it sounds, though that's admittedly not saying a lot…
On our way home we walked through the Plaza Mayor (main square) for the second time, catching it all lit up for the evening. It's impressive by day, but even better by night. It's surrounded on all four sides by grand renaissance buildings and windows, and with ground floor colonnades and relief sculpted portraits of famous Spaniards (including the controversial and regularly vandalized one of Franco).
Our final morning in Salamanca (and, for a while anyway, Spain) was just a walk to the bus station via the mercado central. Salamanca is in the very heart of Spain’s (or as Sarah called it, “Hamland”’s) ham producing region. And while I'd been eating a fair bit of ham (and other cured meats) in Hamland, I'd yet to have any real Jamon Iberico. This is the genuine stuff, made to strict production and aging standards from 100% Spanish pork. So pretty much my final purchase in Spain was 100g of Iberico ham. A simple sandwich of ⅓ of a baguette with two slices of Iberico and nothing else made it clear why it costs so much, or at least why people are willing to pay so much for it (€40/kilo for the low end stuff!) A little goes a long way, and it's just sooo soft and flavoursome. Sliced paper thin, with a marbling of fat and just enough salt, it practically melts in your mouth.
What a way to spend an hour or so waiting for a bus! Said bus took us on a journey out of Hamland and into its neighbour Portugal, from where we'd be starting out on a different sort of journey entirely the following morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment