The modern parts of Barcelona are a triumph of urban planning. We were staying in the Eixample district which was planned and built about one hundred and fifty years ago by a man called Ildefons Cerdà and is characterized by long straight streets, a strict grid pattern crossed by wide avenues and square blocks with chamfered corners all of which means that the traffic always flows freely in a slick one-way system and it is easy to navigate on foot.
“The celebrated plateresque façades of Valladolid strike me as being, when one has recovered from the riotous shock of them, actually edible.” – Jan Morris – ‘Spain’
Valladolid is a very crimson city, the reddest that I have ever seen, a sprawling industrial metropolis, the capital of Castilla y León, the tenth largest city in Spain but with its medieval heart ripped out and trodden under foot in the post civil war industrial boom and it does not feature on many tourist itineraries.
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, Food, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Castilla y Leon, Life, Medina del Campo, palencia, Tordesillas, Travel, Valladolid
I visited Tenerife in 1989 and stayed in the tourist resort of Los Christianos near Playa de Los Americas in a hotel complex called the Parque Santiago. One day I took a coach tour to the Teide National Park. It wasn’t a long trip in terms of kilometres but the bus left early because it happens to be an awfully long way to climb to the top.
Posted in Beaches, Childhood, Europe, Food, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Canary Islands, Culture, Life, Los Christianos, Mount Teide, Tenerife, Volcano
Oviedo is only a small city, only just scraping into the top twenty largest cities in Spain and it isn’t even the largest in Asturias so it didn’t take that long to walk around the historical centre and after a brief stay we continued our drive south.
Posted in Cantabria, Cathedrals, El Cid, Europe, Food, History, Literature, Natural Environment, Postcards, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Asturias, Cantabrian Mountains, Castilla y Leon, Culture, Life, Lyon, Mountains, Oviedo
Gran Canaria was formed by a volcano that grew out of the sea and continued to spew enough lava onto the surface to break through the ocean and form an island. It is circular in shape with a mountain peak in the middle which separates the island into two distinct sectors, north and south. Viewed from above it looks rather like a beached jellyfish.
Posted in Beaches, Cathedrals, Childhood, Europe, Food, History, Literature, Postcards, Spain, Travel
Tagged Canary Islands, Culture, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Life, Palmitos Park, Sioux City Gran Canaria, Sioux City Iowa
This part of the journey was reminder of just how big Spain is as we motored for mile after mile without meeting any other traffic or without passing through towns or villages. The road just kept grinding endlessly on in an easterly direction in a way that reminded me of the tortuous journey through Andalusia in a clapped out Ford Escort in 1986.
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Natural Environment, Postcards, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Almagro, Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Culture, Extremadura, Life, Olives, Spain, Trujillo
I had always thought of Spain as a Mediterranean country but closer inspection of the map shows that a third of the Country’s coastline is along the much more dramatic Atlantic Ocean and the Cantabrian coast is over two hundred kilometres of panoramic beaches, hidden coves tucked into the pleats of the cliffs, green headlands and little towns where fishing boats shelter below harbour cafés.
For a small town the cathedral is an immense building and one of the most important late Romanesque buildings in Spain which was built to symbolise the power of Bishop Don Bernardo who began construction in the twelfth century. It has three naves and a main chapel with an ambulatory and a dome and around the outer walls are a series of commemorative chapels which reads like a who’s who of the local campaigns of the Reconquista.
Posted in Cathedrals, El Cid, History, Literature, Postcards, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Atienza, ‘el doncel de Sigüenza’, Cathedral of Siguenza, Culture, Don Martín Vázquez de Arce, El Cid, Life, Sigüenza
“Catedral?” I enquired and the poor man (victim) that I had selected just stared back at me with an expressionless face as though I was a visitor from the planet Mars.
So I tried again but this time, remembering that upside down question mark thing at the beginning of the sentence I tried to sound a bit more Spanish, “¿Catedral?” but his face went so blank that I though rigor mortis had set in. I have to say that Catedral sounds a bit like Cathedral to me so I don’t know why this was so difficult but his solution was to call someone else over who was an obviously educated man who spoke excellent English and with optimism I tried again “¿Catedral?”
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Literature, Postcards, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Canal de Castilla, Canal du Midi, Castilla y Leon, Culture, Life, Paencia, Plaza Mayor, Spanish language
Oviedo is only a small city, only just scraping into the top twenty largest cities in Spain and it isn’t even the largest in Asturias so it didn’t take that long to walk around the historical centre and soon there was only one thing left to do – visit the Cathedral.
The building was severely damaged during the Spanish Civil War when the conflict more or less started here and there was fierce Nationalist oppression inflicted by General Franco but it has been restored now and has been returned to its former medieval grandeur.
Posted in Cantabria, Cathedrals, Europe, History, Literature, Natural Environment, Portugal, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Asturias, Castilla y Leon, Cudicillo, Culture, Life, Oviedo, Photography
Have Bag, Will Travel 