Iberia: Reminders that Power Can Vanish and What Turns Out to Be Important is How You Can Live Today
Juan said in Spain you eat every three to four hours. ”It’s a sin to be hungry in Spain,” he said. Yet, I saw few obese people on the trip. Undoubtedly, they are aided by daily exercise, a function of the steep walks up into old towns that were once fortresses in most cities. In Lisbon, built on seven hills, walkways all over the capital were covered with small slithery tiles that only added to the precision required in retaining your foothold.
Not to shortchange the historic part of our tour, in Lisbon, we visited monuments to the Portuguese explorers who ushered in the great Age of Discovery in the late 15th century, including Vasco da Gama, who is buried in the Jeronimos Monastery. He was the first to sail from Europe to India by way of Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, opening the connection between the West and Orient.
View from the Cloisters of the Jeronimos Monastery, Lisbon; Wikipedia
Once we hit the road, we stayed in the government-run inns of Portugal and Spain. The “pousada” where we stayed in the medieval Portuguese city of Evora was a former monastery, where we spent the nights in the old cells of the monks with all the modern conveniences. Right next door was one of the best preserved Roman ruins, the temple of Diana. Breath-taking in the early morning mist of a December morning.
Not far way we visited another reminder of the need to enjoy every day, the bone chapel in the Church of St. Francis, where thousands of skeletons and skulls have been arranged along the chapel walls, ceilings and columns. The visitor is greeted by the message “we bones in here wait for yours to join us.”
In Spain, we stayed in similar state-run historic sites called paradores. The luxury hotels are located in castles, palaces, fortresses and other historic buildings in areas of outstanding beauty. In Carmona we stayed in a parador that had been a fortress. The thick walls looked from on high onto the river below.
Notably our parador in Ubeda was known for a poltergeist who was said to slam doors and play other tricks. I said hello on entering my room, which was located next to an upstairs balustrade. All night long I heard the wind grinding away in the outside corridor. One of my fellow travelers was spooked enough to sleep with the lights on. For me just a hall light, but I did dream there were ghosts in that hallway, albeit in my dream state, Disney-like conquistadores.
One of the most thrilling moments was our visit to the Alcazar in Segovia, the castle with foundations that date to Roman times, where Isabella and Ferdinand reigned in the 15th century. We stood in the very throne room where Christopher Columbus once knelt before her. The very same Christopher Columbus who inadvertently discovered America.
In our journey to our final destination in Madrid, we made one troubling stop, at the Casa Pepe, a roadside restaurant that has become a shrine to the former dictator Francisco Franco who died in 1975. The owner has died, Juan Pedro informed us, but his children continue the restaurant. A surprising number of people were coming and going from the restaurant which sells endless trinkets honoring Franco.
Franco had the Valley of the Fallen built near Madrid before his death to honor the soldiers who fought with him in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s when he took over power. Currently, there is controversy over proposals to move his grave from there to Madrid. Our guide said we made the stop at Casa Pepe for historic reasons but that it made him very uncomfortable. He urged us not to leave any money there, noting that nearly every family in Spain still has connections to lost fighters, including himself.
The country like much of Europe today faces immigrant flows and moves to the right. Spain has also been holding corruption trials for years now.
The visit was too short. Yes, I would like to come back to roam these rolling hills, the home of the “pata negra.” My thanks to the pig.
But better than in another life, perhaps to come myself again as a human retiree, a “jubilada,” to sit in a café, to spend long hours working on my Spanish, getting to know the place and its customs. My tour, a kind of snapshot of the back roads of Portugal and Spain, helped me understand a bit more of the character here. One that I would like to know even better.
©2019 Sonya Zalubowski for SeniorWomen.com
*Sonya's blog can be read at http://seniortravelswithsaz.blogspot.com/ ...
** If a prospective traveler mentions Sonya Zabulowski's name and Overseas Travel Adventure number,002462497, they can receive a complimentary $100 savings on their first trip.
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