Yesterday I took the public bus to my pick up point. I was there plenty early because I wasn’t sure how long it would take exactly. Put I went into the office a punctually at 8 a lady named Carmen came and took me to our touring bus. And to my surprise, I was the only traveler. It turns out we were going to pick up the rest of the group down near the Portuguese border. So I had a private tour with Carmen, the guide, and Felipe, the bus driver. So I got a lot of questions answered and lots of things explained.
So, we stopped in the town of Caceres, where we were to meet the rest of the group. I had two and a half hours to explore the walled city on my own. I visited the two ancient cisterns and climbed the tower in San Francisco church. Then I sat down to try the local specialty, ham. I first had a sausage tapa with my wine, the. I had a tapa with pork, peppers and asparagus. It was really delicious. And it was served with very thinly sliced friend potatoes which were excellent.
Random info:The ham in this region is particularly good because the pigs are fed lots of acorns. The major groups here are, olives, wine and grain. There are many cork trees and a tree takes 9 years to recover after the cork has been harvested. There is a very strict seatbelt law. There’s a 200 Euro fine if you don’t have one on, even on the bus. Catalonia is the only region of Spain that outlaws bullfighting. Spain is covered with roundabouts. It turns out that the European Union likes to give subsidies for roundabouts so spain keeps asking to build them just to get the money. There are roundabouts on roads out in the middle of nowhere. There are lots of solar panel farms. The southern part of Spain is one of the poorest regions. They asked the federal government for money to help build a railroad, the money ran out, and now there are half-finished bridges just standing in the middle of nowhere too.
Then the group met us at the bus at 2:45 and we headed for Cordova. Carmen gave us lots of information along the way and the bus has WiFi, so if I’m not watching out the window, I will be able to keep current with the blog. When we got to Cordova, the bus was not able to drive down the street the hotel is own, so we transferred the luggage to a van and walked the 7 minutes. We all freshened up and met for supper.
I sat with a family of 5 from Paraguay. The two older daughters are studying in Germany, so it is a good opportunity for me to speak German. Sonia, from Argentina, also sat our table. And interestingly enough , we are the people who do things together. They are a great group to talk with.
This morning after breakfast we toured the cathedral in Cordova which was built on the site of a mosque. Stunning architecture. As a mosque, it was built to hold 20,000. The church kept most of the structure standing, but place the Christian structure right InThe middle of it. The enormity of the structure takes your breath away.
We then had to wait a few minutes longer because sonia had left her wallet in the hotel and had to go back and get it so we had time to walk across the bridge that was built by the romans.it is only open to pedestrian traffic and is also very impressive. And there were loads of cranes wading in the river.
Sonia got back so we walked to the bus and took off from Seville. Since tomorrow is Jan. 1, Carmen told us that the Castile would be closed on that day and if we wanted to see it , we should try when we arrived. We are split up in two hotels in Seville. I’m with, the Paraguayans, Sonia, Felix and Lisa from Malaysia and another family.
So after we got settled in, Gabi, Paula, Anita, Sonia Headed for the Castile. We got in line and we’re told 10 minutes later that we could only get inif we had made a reservation. Fortunately for Felix and Lisa, they had googled it while we were still on the bus and they got it,
So, we walked over to the cathedral because Anita and I wanted to climb thr tower. It used to be the minaret of the mosque, but when the Christians reconquered the area, the destroyed the mosque but incorporated the minaret ad the bell tower. And, of course, in preparation for the New Year’s Eve mass, the church was closed. Maybe tomorrow after our tour of the city it will work.
So we basically just walked around town and then sat down for a cup of tea. I also had an ice cream bar! The waitress was very flirtatious with Rosanna, but it was in no way offensive. He was a genuinely friendly guy who knows his income depends on the tourists.
We slowly walked back to the hotel where we had about an hour to rest before we had to walk to a restaurant for supper. We all had been talking about going to the square to see the fireworks afterwards, but we are all so exhausted, I don’t think anyone’s leaving our hotel.
Tomorrow breakfast starts at 8 and the the tour at 10. So at least we can rest a little longer. I’m quitting now. I need to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment