September 6^th, 2003

When we finally set out from Zaragoza, for good this time, we heading to Madrid 300 km to the southwest, the sky was clear and blue. From Zaragoza, we passed through a lot of typical Spanish landscape; rolling golden dry hills with shrubby green plants, and the ribbon of road ahead of us undulated with the hills while heading straight west. The rivers we crossed were thick brown with mud from the recent rain storm. Every so often we would see the iconic Osborne bull in the distance, as if surveying his territory from a hilltop. Originally an advertisement for Osborne Sherry Brandy, the bull is an enormous black silhouette usually set in a field on top of a hill so you can see it for miles. It seems natural that this bull would become sort of a national symbol of Spain.

When we got to Madrid, we now had the challenge of finding the hotel where we had reserved a room; all we had was a vague idea of where it was. Getting off the highway, we started looking. We could have circled for hours, so we stopped at a hotel called Sofitel to ask them if they knew where it was. They did, and got a map out to show us. We weren’t far, just on the other side of the highway. Just out of curiosity, we asked if they would take talones for two nights and were surprised when they said they would take one talone per night.

With the help of the map they gave me, we had little trouble finding the other hotel, but it turned out to be in a neighborhood that looked a bit run down. The only place to park the motorcycle was in a garage and they wanted to charge €11 a night. The first hotel had looked so nice, although a little remote, but it seemed nicer, so we decided to go back and check in to the Sofitel. We didn’t care much that it was so far from town because Mike was planning on hanging out at the hotel watching the Motorcycle Grand Prix which was being run that weekend in Portugal. I still find it a bit amazing that they accepted one talone per night; a €50 talone for a room that is regularly €280?! What a deal!

The room was nice, a huge cushy bed with down pillows and a palatial bathroom, a nice plush place to hang out for a few days. They let us park the bike out front (no charge), in this quiet area, no one would disturb it even if there were no guard outside all night. Not far from the hotel was a stop for the Metro which we took into town for dinner that night. We ate at our favorite restaurant, Casa Mingo, that is famous for their Asturian style cider and roasted chicken. After dinner, we went to see a movie, starved for something in English. We found a theater which shows movies in the original language with Spanish sub-titles. It is difficult to find movies in English except in a few of the larger towns in Spain - of course the selection is a bit limited, but Pirates of the Caribbean turned out to be amusing so I can’t complain too much… We discovered that Starbucks is now in Madrid so we went to get a nice cold frappuccino to sip on this balmy evening

On our way out of Madrid, we stopped in town; it was time again to find a used book store and trade in some books, and we had found the address for a self-service laundry on the internet. It is hard to find a laundry in Spain so we were quite happy to find this one, a clean well-run laundry with an attendant who helped us through the process of putting our money in the machine, getting soap, etc. This laundry was one of a Italian chain called Ondablu, and one bonus was that they have a few computers, where for €1 per ½ hour, you can surf the internet while washing your clothes. We had gotten the address for a bookstore that sold English books, but it turned out to be a new book store. They directed us to another place back in the center near the laundry, which sells used books in English as well as French, German, Italian and Catalan, where we were able to get rid of some books and get some new ones.

From Madrid, our plan was to revisit a few places we had gone to earlier this year; the first stop was Avila, a little more than 60 miles away. We still remember the bodega that we had discovered the last time and wanted to go back. We had tried several times to get a reservation in the hotel we had stayed in last time, trying both the internet and at a travel agent but couldn’t get a reservation through the talone system, so we decided to walk in when we got there and see what they say. No problem, was the answer. When we first started using Bancotel Talones, we thought reservations needed to be made through travel agencies but we were having a lot of luck just showing up. This is such a great system.

Oh yea, the bodega was just as we remembered it. Built into the outside of the wall just outside the Puerta del Peso de la Harina (the gate of the weighing of flour), it is called Bodega San Segundo. Walls covered with shelves packed with bottles of wine, barrels set along the walls as tables. The bar was set up with several groupings of opened bottles of wine; red wine from the area, white wine in a huge silver bowl of ice, more reds from other parts of Spain. We tried the wine we had enjoyed last time, Convento San Francisco, and it was just as good as we remembered. With each glass of wine, we got a complimentary plate of tapas; a few boiled new potatoes covered with a garlicky mayonnaise, a couple slices of baguette with a piece of cured ham, a plate of olives…

Drinking wine at the bodega and trying different ones was like a journey of discovery of Spanish wines for us. Ribera del Duero. We bought a bottle of the Convento San Francisco to take with us, a whole €12 – expensive for Spanish wine but worth it. I hope it survives the trip back to Paris…(we asked if it were possible to mail back to Paris. Yes, it’s possible but the cost to send it would be more than the cost of the wine itself, since to mail it to France would be international. So much for an economic union.)

The walls of Avila were a wonder of military architecture for their time, and today the well-restored walls still completely encircle the rectangular old town. The walls were started in 1090 to stave off the Moors, taking advantage of stones left from ruined Roman walls and buildings in the area. In fact, you can clearly see the ‘recycled” stones in the wall; various stones bearing an inscription (and set into the wall up-side down) taken from the roman cemetery, while other stones are carved with a hole or basin, possibly altar stones. I took a walk around the walls one afternoon, about 1 ½ miles around. The old town is set on a bluff, as is typical for a fortress town, at an altitude of about 3600 feet. The view frozm one end, the paseo del rastro, affords a great view of the wide Ambles Valley, a viewpoint where hundreds of years ago, Avilans would watch for the arrival of invading armies. The town was very prosperous during the 16^th century, and all over the old town you can see splendid old palacios and the home of noblemen, coats of arms carved in stone and set over the doorway.

The next night we spent in Salamanca, at a newly built “boutique hotel” called Melia Las Claras. A travel agent had gotten us a good deal, normally requiring 2 talones per night, we got a special price of only one talone. The room was nice, but the bed was so hard that it was like sleeping on a board. Needless to say, neither of us slept well that night.

Salamanca’s old town is mostly old buildings faced in a yellow sandstone, that at sunset turns golden in the sunlight. The tourist map we were given explained some of the monuments to look for, such as the Plaza Mayor, which it described as  “doubtless the most beautiful arcaded square in Spain”. It goes on to explain that it is Baroque in design and the Town Hall is built into the north side. As far as I could tell, it looked pretty much like the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, only a little smaller and missing the statue in the center. But like the one in Madrid, it had plenty of cafes along its inner arcades with tables spilling out of the shade into the sun.

Salamanca also boasts Europe’s oldest university and there are many intricately decorated buildings influenced by the Italian Renaissance style. Salamanca also has not one but TWO cathedrals to its name, one built in the medieval period. The other, finished in the early 1700’s, was lit by the waning sunlight as we walked past, glowing bright gold. The plaza in front of it was crowded with people, as a free concert was going on. The city was celebrating a weeklong annual festival with music and performances going on. Passing the cathedral, we walked down to the river to look at the stone bridge and passed a magnificent art-deco house with amazing stained glass windows. It was an art deco museum, but was just closing. We’ll need to come back another time to see the house and museum, as it looked really interesting.

We asked at the hotel if we could stay a second night so that we could go to a concert the next night. Yes, they said, but it would cost us two talones. Oh, well, never mind. We’ll have to plan better next time. We walked back into town and to get a cup of coffee on the pedestrian street and all of a sudden I started hearing some commotion down the street with music and shouting. From a side street, we saw a crowd emerging with a band of musicians playing some traditional music. The thing that all the kids went running to see were the Cabezudos, people dressed in costume with a huge fiberglass head. There was a bullfighter, a senorita, a policeman, a bull; about a dozen figures in all, teasing the children and collecting money in a small plastic basket as the parade moved slowly down the road.

Another interesting building is called the Casa de las Conchas. Its outer walls are adorned with a multitude of scallop shells carved in stone built by Don Rodrigo Arias de Maldonado as a wedding present to his wife. The shells represent the shells worn by pilgrims on the road to Santiago and are also the emblem of the Order of Santiago to which the Don belonged. The outer wall is broken by three gothic window, all different, with intricate wrought iron grills. Entering the building through heavy wooden doors and passing through a short hall, we found ourselves in a beautiful interior courtyard, square pillars supporting upper floors with a series of arches and columns of Italian marble and a railing of flashy carved stone that looks like wickerwork. Along the eaves a row of gargoyles spout water into the courtyard after a rain, and heraldic shields and carved lions complete the decoration.

Under the “traditions” section of the tourist map text, I read an amusing story about how “in the old days”,  the university students would gather on the roman stone bridge on Lunes de Aguas (the Monday following Easter). It goes on to explain that during holy week, the prostitutes were sent out of the city to a brothel set up in 1498 on the other side of the river and not allowed to come back until after Easter. Not knowing what time the prostititutes would return in their boats, the people would gather on the bridge to await their return and have a picnic featuring the local specialty, a sausage-filled pie. The tradition of having a picnic on the bridge is still celebrated, but the brochure says nothing about whether the prostitutes still arrive by boat…

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The Ondablu laundry in Madrid can be found

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