Whistle Stop Tour of Spain

Hello – we are still here! We have just been in a bit of a travel slump lately. Actually, let me rephrase that, we have been in a travel BAN lately! We spent a large chunk of the last school year stuck in the Granada province here in Spain. Being our local province, we had already hit all of the highlights before our provincial lockdown, so we really ended up scraping the bottom of the barrel when wanted any adventure (our spring break to visit not-very-impressive dolmens (aka piles of rocks) will hopefully go down in our family history as the least exciting spring break ever).

The weather is warming up and the COVID numbers are going down (actually they are still pretty high, so maybe it is more accurate to say that everyone is just O.V.E.R. it and so the government has agreed to let us travel within the country again). We decided to take advantage of the freedom and nice weather to take a quick long weekend trip to all the spots in Spain that have been on my “to visit” list for last four years.

We were happy to have our friends, the Bs, join us on our trip. Nothing makes kids whine less on a trip than having friends to distract them!

La Mancha

First stop on our tour was the land of Don Quixote – La Mancha. A few friends and I are (very) slowly making our way through the famous novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha. This classic Spanish novel is widely considered the “first modern novel”. It was written by Miguel de Cervantes in the early 1600s and is the story of a nobleman who sort of loses his marbles, decides he is a Knight from the Middle Ages and rides off to right the wrongs of the world with his trusty sidekick, Sancho Panza. The book is actually funny in parts, though it does drag a bit, but I’m very glad I took the opportunity to read it while living here in Spain. The kids and I also read a kid’s abridged version together before our trip, so they would appreciate the stop.

One famous scene in Don Quixote is where he battles “giants” that are in fact big windmills. The windmills where this took place (or at least the best approximation) are atop a hill in the middle of the La Mancha plains, and we enjoyed a quick stop to tour around them.

N was the most curious about the logistics of Don Quixote’s battle with the windmills, so it was fun to talk through it with him – how Don had confused windmills for giants? How exactly did he attack them? Would he be tall enough on his horse to reach the windmill arm?

After walking around the windmills, we took a quick stop at a playground (which got me another great “Playground with A View” picture from around the world – probably one of my last as the kids are starting to outgrow them 😥 ).

We had a great lunch in the courtyard of a local restaurant, and, because this is a whistle stop tour, we headed back to the car to drive to our next stop, Toledo.

Toledo

Toledo is medium-sized city in Spain with a charming old town center. It is only about an hour train ride from Madrid, so I do think some of its popularity comes from its proximity to Madrid for day trippers. That said, we enjoyed our short overnight stop there, spending most of our time just walking around the town. We attempted to follow a walking tour described in Lonely Planet, but we got a bit lost and went off track.

We detoured from our Lonely Planet described tour to stop at a brand-new museum (we were the first Americans to have ever been there!) called Cromatica. It was small, but with interesting premise. It displayed musical instruments that had been painted on by different artists, so each reflected the individual artist’s style. It wasn’t a huge museum, but a great place to pass an hour.

After the museum stop, we wandered around a bit more, but the kids were tired (so were the adults!) and we decided to head to a Mexican restaurant to get some very-much-missed Mexican food!

The next morning, with a very full day ahead of us, we went to a Churreria (without churros – we instead ate porros – which are just large churros) before hitting the road.

Romangordo

Our first stop of our second day came courtesy of Atlas Obscura and was indeed obscure, but perfectly situated just off the road on which we were driving. This tiny village, Romangordo, was given some money from a local nuclear power plant, and the village used the money to hire artists to paint rural scenes on the facades of the buildings around town.

It was a fun hour or so walking around. The paintings were great – the amazing skill required to work on those large and not flat walls is crazy!

The town was rural in a way I had never seen before in Spain (I suspect most villages that still exist like this would not have any reason for me to stop in), but also had bits of new in it too.

I suspect the newer stuff is due to the little bit of tourism brought by the art work. It was a quick but fun stop. Thumbs up, Atlas Obscura.

Mérida

We went from little to big time, with our next stop, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Merida. It was a very important city in Roman times, and has absolutely amazing ruins.

It was pretty scorching hot by the time we got to the main ruins of the Amphitheater, so after a sweaty hour or so, we were happy to hop on the little tourist train to buzz through town to see the rest of the Roman highlights, including an amazing aqueduct and bridge.

Zafra

The day still wasn’t over yet, so we hopped back in our car for another 45-minute drive to our accommodation for the night, a Spanish Parador, a hotel located in a 15th century palace built for the Dukes of Feria.

The hotel was nice, though inside it was hard to tell we were inside a castle, which is probably good, since it means the rooms and modern and updated. We arrived late in the day, so we just had time for some quick drinks and tapas in the cute little town of Zafra, while the kids played football with local kids in the nearby square.

The next morning, we had a great breakfast buffet (my kids are SUCKERS for a breakfast buffet, so they were thrilled! They are much harder to come by in Europe than in the US), then headed back on the road.

Jamones Eíriz

Our next stop was a tour at a small, local producer of the Spanish delicacy of Jamon Iberico, a special ham that comes from pigs raised in this area of Spain, who are free roaming (each pig has a hectare of land to graze) and fed solely on acorns (for winter anyway – in summer the acorns don’t grow, so they are still free range, eating grasses and mushrooms, but also supplemented with corn feed).

We got to meet the pigs (they only have 11 hectares of land, so only 11 pigs – the rest they buy from local farmers at processing time).

Next, we got to see how they process and preserve the meat after the pig has been (humanely) killed.

Finally, like every good tour, we got to taste the jamon, experiencing for ourselves the difference between the meat that came from pigs fed typical grains and living in less pleasant environments and the high quality meat produced by them that meets the strict standards required to label it Jamon Iberico Bellota.

It was a great tour and a great tour guide, though I will admit, I ate so much jamon, that it will be a while before I can eat it again!

Córdoba

Though we had already packed a ton into our long weekend, the fun wasn’t over yet. After the tour, we had another drive to Cordoba, the closest stop to home, and a place that has been high on my “must see” list for the last four years!

We were lucky to arrive in Cordoba mid-week, so we could snag a stunning home to rent right in the middle of the historic quarter, with three stories built around an inner courtyard, with traces of its Moorish and even Roman history throughout the house.

The kids were thrilled with the secret rooms located through a cupboard, and we loved the location and its mosaic tiles. However, this trip was at top speed, so we didn’t settle in the house for long before it was time to grab dinner.

We had what was honestly another mediocre Spanish meal, but at least we ate slightly different mediocre foods, including Cordoba specials like Salmorejo (cold tomato soup with hard boiled eggs and ham in it) and Flamenquin (fried pork filled with ham – kind of like a turducken made with all pork).

We finished with the city’s signature dessert, Pastel Cordobes, made with – not kidding – spaghetti squash. Yum! (sarcasm)

Another late night was had, with an early morning appointment for the Piece de Résistance of the entire trip (besides the spaghetti squash cake of course) – a visit to the impressive Mezquita de Cordoba, one of the most impressive and most famous sites in all of Spain.

There is a considerable amount of history rolled into this one building, but first and foremost, it is known for being a great mosque built in the 700s when Cordoba was one of the most important cities in all of the Western world, ruled by the Moors. The mosque was built on the top of a Visigoth church, which was in turn built on Roman ruins. The scale of the mosque is hard to show in pictures. It was built large enough to hold up to 12,000 people at a time (more than the entire population of London in those days!), and the beauty of the architecture, with high ceilings and double arches, along with columns made of marble, granite and jasper “recycled” from Roman and Visigoth ruins in the town, is stunning.

We wandered around the interior of the building for a few minutes before deciding to hire a guide at the door, and it was a great choice! She charged us €50 total for the 4 adults and 5 kids for a tour that lasted almost 1.5 hours. Her insight and commentary was totally worth it. She also helped us realize just how lucky we were to visit during the pandemic, as she said it normally saw upwards of 5,000 visitors a day, and, at peak time when we were there, we had plenty of space to ourselves and had no trouble getting right in front to view (and photograph) the most impressive parts.

After the Reconquista in the 1200s, the Catholic monarchs took control over all of Spain and kicked the Moors out of the country completely. Cordoba waned in importance, and in a stroke of luck, the great mosque was not torn down, instead the building became a church. The beautiful architecture remained and even the most holy part of the mosque remained untouched (probably a quirk of fate – a wealthy family built a chapel covering the most holy part, which ended up preserving it until a time where it could be uncovered and appreciated for its significance).

Since Cordoba was so much less important on the world stage after Spain took control back of the peninsula, it took a lot of time to raise money to build the church sanctuary. It is a funny juxtaposition, with the “church” part of the building just smack dab in the middle of the original mosque. It almost seems like as soon as you leave the small “church” part with the altar and choir behind it, you are back in the mosque. I’m very grateful they didn’t change it too much, because the building is absolutely beautiful as it is and we are lucky it has been preserved through time!

The visit to the Mezquita was a great finish to our trip, and after that, we headed back home to rest from our busy, adventure filled weekend! It was a great trip, and I’m glad we got to visit these places before we leave Spain.

Also, if you notice that any of the pictures in my post are a higher quality than what you usually see from me, they probably were taken by my friend, @dpagsbelincreativestudio, she being a much better photographer than I 🙂