Days 6 and 7  Holy Toledo!

What a place!  The walled part of Toledo is all one national monument  The only sense of the modern world is the few cars and buses that operate in the city and all the modern-looking people.  The small walled city sits atop a sizable hill with a river on three sides, and with these elements, the city was very defendable.  Over many centuries entry to the city has been through gates (or portals) such as this one:

It looks medieval and it almost feels medieval.  Shops sell daggers and swords hoping you are in the mood for ancient combat.  Most of the city walls are still very much intact, unusual for a European city after all the centuries of wars.

This city has a very interesting history.  When Europe plunged into the Dark Ages 1500 years ago after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Moors (Muslims) conquered much of Spain.  They ruled for several centuries and contributed their architectural design.  They lived peacefully with both Jews and Christians, especially in Toledo.  There was much respect among the religions, and the churches, mosques, and synagogues all thrived here.  My dad used to use the expression ‘HolyToledo’, and I always thought it had something to do with that other Toledo in Ohio. Not so . . . it was this one in Spain, a very holy city.  We were in Toledo on a Sunday, so I got to use the phrase a few times when I saw the long lines for some of the historic places like the cathedral.  The entry way is on the side, BTW.

The ancient walls and buildings are accompanied by ancient streets.  The cobble-stoned streets are a little hard on your feet if you walk for hours.

It seemed like the cathedral was visible from every narrow little street.

We realize that many of the larger towns and cities have an alcazar.  The one in Segovia has Disney-like features, while the one in Toledo is more Pentagon-like (Shari and Jan are across the street from it).

This city is so historic that you start to differentiate the old and the very old.  On one of our walks, we ran across this building.  There was no sign of life here, but I would have liked to have seen a plaque telling me how many dozens of centuries it had lived through.  

Like Segovia, Toledo gets two thumbs up from Shari and me as a place to see!

Day 5 Segovia

Once upon a time, Spain was one of many parts of the Roman Empire.  Roman engineers were geniuses at moving water around Europe in aqueducts, and the picture shows a still solid structure now over 2000 years old!

We traveled by bus 50 miles north to the town of Segovia, far from the maddening crowd of Madrid, to see the aqueduct and more.  As we do in most places in Europe, we book hotels in the oldest part of the towns and cities.  Our hotel is center right in the picture.

Segovia is not very big, but it has so much to see for its size.  The Alcazar, or fortified palace, sits at one end of the town.

If you think you have seen this before, you probably are thinking of Cinderella’s castle at Disneyland as Disney borrowed some of the architecture from this medieval castle.  Once upon a time, the aqueduct delivered water to the castle and the water was stored in what looks like a wishing well.

The views from Alcazar were great as it sat at a very defensible point in the City.

One view is of the Cathedral and the center of town.

As mentioned, the Cathedral is the center of town and a stones through from our hotel.

One last thing about this town to note is that suckling pig is the dish of the region.  I can only imagine what you think of eating this dish, but I can tell you we were very happy to eat it.  You might say we ‘pigged out’.

Days 3 and 4 Spain and Morocco 2015

We continue to explore Madrid, but for the last two days, we have done so exclusively by foot.  Here is a picture taken from our balcony at midnight. There is a party every evening!  

We’ve been enjoying all the historic buildings, fountains, and parks that the Spanish Kings have built over centuries.  One good thing about royalty seems to be the emphasis on beauty and art.  

I don’t think you’d call Shari and I great art lovers, but we loved the Prado Musuem with such artists on display as Goya, Rubens, Raphael, Rembrandt, Da Vinci and a host of other artists we’ve never heard of.  These artists are comparable to Michelangelo.  We thought we could handle a couple of hours of art, but we liked it so much, we went back the second time in the same day.  So incredible!  No photographs allowed, but they have individual audio guides that help you appreciate great art.

The highlight of the trip so far was the Walks of Spain Wine and Tapas tour last night.  Our private Spanish language interpreter, Jan Studer, found the tour on Trip Advisor, and it is given great reviews.  

There were only 10 people on the tour including our tour leader, Andres Jarabo.  He walked us through the oldest and most interesting part of Madrid.  We stopped and sampled more than wines and tapas (a Spanish appetizer).  We had some very unique foods including butterfish and roasted Iberian pork on heated ceramic slabs that you’d first think was beef tenderloin.  Those of us on the tour loved the food so much, my camera could not get a picture fast enough (because it got eaten immediately).  Wine is hard to capture in a picture, but it was even more spectacular than the food!

One of the places where we stopped is the oldest restaurant in the world (founded 1725) according to the Guinness World Record.  If you know anything about the restaurant business, being around for 300 years is a very long time.

We’ve had a memorable 4 days in Madrid.  Tomorrow we go to the old town of Segovia, north of Madrid, traveling via Spain’s train and bus services.  We hope we will be smiling when we get to our destination.

Spain and Morocco 2015

Days 1 and 2 

¡Hola

Being in the big city of Madrid has meant being on the go all day and part of the night.  We are literally in the center of this big city and also in the middle of country.  Here are 3 of the 4 of the travel companions with one foot on the plaque marking the center of the Spain.  

BTW - Click on pictures if you wish to enlarge them!!

The weather is a little warm and we are adjusting to the 8 hour time change, so during the beginning of the journey, we travel by double-decker open top bus where they provide tours.  It’s a great vehicle for seeing a lot . . . and also a good place for a quick siesta. 

Our hotel location is also near much of the historic parts of Madrid such as the Palacio Real (Royal Palace).  

I’ve been thinking some of the new houses are big in St. George.  The Royal Palace has 2800 rooms.   The decor in each of the 24 rooms would be the subject of a coffee table book.  

The view from some of the 2800 rooms would be of the Almudena Cathedral, conveniently located next-door for the King and Queen.

We discovered that we could view an entire Egyptian Temple relocated to Madrid.  It seemed weird, but 50 years ago, the Egyptians dammed up the Nile River and moved the ancient ruins that were to be inundated.  

The Temple of Demod probably does not ring any bells for you, but they have the whole temple, and the historical interpretation was very good.  

There are many art museums in Spain thanks to having so many famous painters over many centuries.  I’m not a Picasso fan but always find something that catches my eye.  Usually the museums don’t allow photography, but this sculpture worked for me.  Look closely and you'll see this from a butcher's perspective.

Our first days have been hectic but fun.   They are memorable already and we’ve just started the journey!

Days 27 and 28

Budapest Finale

This will be a long entry because we did a lot in a short amount of time.  There are many pictures!  IF any picture looks interesting, you can click on the picture to enlarge it!

The river (the Danube) continues to rise!  They are trying to limit the flooded area and we are amazed at the amount of work they continue to do.

Our last days in Budapest were excellent - good friends, good fun, and good food!  This is a biking city with lots of bike paths.  Unfortunately, many paths are under water, and once we left the area near our bike shop, the crowds of people looking at the flooding clogged the dry sidewalks along the river.

Not everyone rides solo.  There is the beer drinking option where you have a designated ‘steerer’ and the rest of the riders pedal and drink beer.

We didn’t see TV monitors for ESPN, but if nothing else, you get to claim the whole designated bike lane.

Once upon time, there was an empire in Central Europe called the Austrian-Hungarian or Hapsburg.  The church above is one of several examples of the Austrian-Hungarian empire that existed until the end of WWI. They, along with Germany, lost that war, and the empire collapsed.

The spectacular structure (above) and other beautiful medieval architectures (below) can be seen within what they call the Castle District.  

From the Castle District, you get great views of the Hungarian Parliament Building on the other side of the Danube.  If you don’t make it to London to see their parliament, this one is almost as big.  We learned hey were happy to have become a democracy after years of Soviet rule as well as being under Nazi control (World War II).

We found that getting around to see all the sights is best accomplished from an open-topped tour bus.  The head-set for each seat lets you choose your language, and the sombreros keep the sun out of your face and tell people it’s finally sunny weather.

The beauty of the city is in lots of places.  If you like to take pictures, this is a great place to be with a camera.  It’s probably one of the prettiest cities in the world.   

Opera House - like many buildings, this one is decorated with beautiful statues and/or gargoyles

The facade of the upper four floors has etched ‘grafitti’

One of many buildings with domed roof(s)

Devilish ornamental light fixtures 

Gellert Bathes just beyond trees

There are over 50 mineral bathes in Budapest. We went to the largest and most famous one on our last afternoon in this city. It was quite an experience!  

And the food was excellent, too.  While there were lots of outdoor eateries along the Danube, our favorite place was TomGeorge Italiano.  One night, Dan and Jan wanted something other than goulash.  Italian food sounded good, so even though we were in Hungary, we tried the italian restaurant with the non-italian name.  The food and wine here are five-star but the price is reasonable.  Over a few nights, we tried many things including the ‘Strangled Priest’ pasta dish.  

There is only one thing you need to be wary of food-wise in Budapest.  Hungarian paprika tends to be very spicy - hot!!

We head home today and Jan and Dan head to Prague so they get some more vacation.  Even with the rain and swollen rivers, our journey and our company was great!

We will come back for a river cruise some other year.  It was a great idea, but it was an unfortunate time this year because of the floods. 

Days 24-26

Days 24 and 25 were travel days.  Our journey on Day 24 was from Rovinj to Zagreb, Croatia, by bus.  In past visits, we had rented a car as we were going to the airport.  This time, we were headed to the center of the largest city in Croatia to be ready to take a train to Hungary.  It turned out to be a good (or lucky) choice as it poured rain and a professional driver who knew the route took care of getting us to Zagreb.  While in Zagreb, we got word that the river cruise, which was to start in 36 hours, was going to be converted to a bus tour due to flooding on all the rivers we were to cruise!  

This is the Danube in Budapest 

We had been watching the news in Europe for several days and wondering if and how the cruise could take place.  Other river cruise operators had canceled their cruises.  Ours, unfortunately, waited until the last minute, and several people traveled to Europe with no idea that the cruise was about to change to a bus tour.  Included in that unfortunate group were our traveling companions, Jan and Dan Studer.   We tried to forewarn them, but they were already on their way and didn’t have a phone or computer.

When we got to Budapest on Day 25, we got a first hand look at the worst flooding in Central Europe in 400 years!  We would have much preferred not being part of this history.  The cruise ship boat launching docks were inaccessible due to the flood water. This picture shows where we were to have boarded our Viking river boat.

It was great to tie into Jan and Dan.  We were walking to the hotel from the subway station and they were headed to dinner in a city of almost 2 million people.  We were very lucky to find them a few blocks from our hotel and quickly headed to a dinner reunion.

Someone claims that the French stole the recipes they call theirs from the Hungarians.  All we can say is the food was mostly excellent as evidenced by this fillet mignon wrapped in bacon and served with miniature dumplings and mushrooms with a cheesy-meat gravy.  

None of us was pleased with the late cancelation of the cruise.  We recognize and understand natural disasters, but we don’t appreciate the late cancelation that Viking made when the rivers had been flooded for several days at least.  For Dan and Jan, they had just flown to Budapest to start a vacation, and the news was worse for them than for us as we’ve been on vacation for almost four weeks!

Jan and Shari looking for the cruise boat to board.

As we have done in the past, we adapted.   Budapest is a very interesting and BEAUTIFUL city - more in the next post!  We were to stay in our hotel, the Starlight Suites, a four star hotel only one block from the Danube, for only one night, but now we are staying for a few days.  

Those of you into pickleball have probably heard us discuss sandbaggers a time or two.  Rarely have we captured a sandbagging moment in one photo, but here it is:

We will do our best to make lemonade (or limoncello) out of lemons.  We always do!