Summer 2021 - Spain and Portugal Part 1

The trip to Spain and Portugal started with a very odd detour to Seattle, so I could use the air ticket I had booked at the beginning of the summer. I was entering the European Union in Portugal, and the silly Portuguese required me to have a negative Covid test that was no more than 48 hours old. So I did it at the Seattle airport for the outrageous cost of $250!

From Seattle I took United to Newark (full flight), and then TAP to Lisbon in a huge AirBus where I had the four middle seats all for my own. Yipee!

As I recall nobody asked me to see the results of my superexpensive test in Lisbon, and when I landed in Madrid all they asked was the QR code of my own self-registration as being vaccinated against Covid. I imagine than in a few more months they will have the digital vaccination certificate worked down to an art, but for the time being it is a pain.

At the airport I rented a car and went down to Guadalajara, about an hour travel time, where I had booked a hotel. The manager there indicated to me the good walking streets and in no time whatsoever I found a cellphone store, where I went in to see if I could have my iPhone 5 unlocked. The young Asian man looked at it with pity, as if I had handed him a stone artifact, and bluntly told me that it would be worthless to unlock it and that I would be better off buying a new one. He offered me a used iPhone 6 for 100 euros, and a few minutes later I walked out with a new phone that two blocks down the promenade I loaded with a Vodaphone sim card. Ha, ha! I now have a European phone 😊

By then it was getting late, and the restaurants were starting to open, so I chose a Grill Restaurant where there were no menus (you are supposed to scan the menu). I didn’t really know how to do that, so I looked at the chalkboard and saw “Cabrito al Horno” (baby goat). So I ordered that and the young man went in to ask and came back to say that they had a back leg if that would suit me. Sure, I am sure I can get enough out of a back leg to make a good meal. They must have started it in the oven from a cold slab of meat because it took forever for them to get back to me. In the meantime, I noticed that a lot of people around me were sharing a dish between two to four people. How neighborly of them. Then came my cabrito. It must have been a giant cabrito, because the piece I got was huge! It overflowed the plate and would have been for at least four people. So I ate, and I ate, and I ate, not willing to waste an excellent dish. I finally asked for the bill, which was alarmingly steep, and rolled up the hill to my hotel, in as close to a food coma as I remember ever being.

The following day I used my brand new phone to navigate my way to Zorita de los Canes, the little old town by the side of the Rio Tajo where my maternal great-greatgrandfather came from. I had been there ten years before, and came to say hello to my only living great aunt, Tia Petra, and to my cousins Laura, Charo, and Miguel. Tia Petra looked remarkably well for being now 90, was as sprite and loving as I remember her, but is definitely living in a much more limited world. She entertains herself coloring, and the fridge door and any other free surfaces are covered with pages from her coloring books. My cousins Laura and Charo are happy Spanish women and share the care of their mom with good humor. We had an excellent lunch of Spanish tapas, rabo de toro, and cocido, and afterward we three cousins went down to the town pub by the river for a cold expresso and a coke. It is very hot!

I hung around Zorita for a couple of days. The first day I went to visit the towns of Almonacid de Zorita and the Albalate de Zorita, where I had a delicious breakfast of café con leche and a bocadillo de morcilla (delicious Blutwurst). Later I walked along the Rio Tajo, visited the archaeologic site of Recópolis, where cousin Angelica, the wife of cousin Miguel is in charge. Recópolis was established in the VII century by Visigoth King Leovigildo (whose reigning seat was in Toledo). By now my head is swimming on who was where, but as I understood it the land was occupied by the Iberians, who got conquered by the Romans in the I century, who brought in their allies from France, the Visigoths, to manage the Iberians. Pretty soon all Spain is being ruled by the Visigoths. In the VII century, shortly after Recópolis was established, the Arabs invaded Spain, formed the kingdom of el-Andalus, took over Recópolis in the X century and built a castle on the adjacent ridge (el Castillo de Recópolis), and remained the lords of southern Spain until the XII century, when the Catholic Kings, Isabella and Fernando, finally expelled them from Spain. El Castillo de Recópolis was then transferred to the hands of the Caballeros de Calatrava, who were an order of fighting monks that acquired much power over the Catholic world in the time of the crusades. Angelica guided me through the castle, which has its foundations on a limestone reef; the underlying lagoonal calcareous sandstone served as building stone (sillar) for both Recópolis and el Castillo itself.

After the hot visit to el Castillo Angelica and I went down to the river for a cold beer, and were pretty soon joined by Miguel, his daughter Martha and her family. I was introduced to the drink called Tinto de Verano, made with red wine, lemonade, and a spritz of vermouth, all within an glass filled with ice. Heaven!

Afterward I went to have lunch with my Tia Petra, followed by an escapade w made in the car to Lago de Bolarque. My intention was simply to take my Tia out of the house, and the way there was very pretty and enjoyable. Once at the lake, which is ensconced between deep barrancos, I took a wrong turn and we got lost in the mountains. I think my Tia felt the joy of adventure as we climbed and descended deep canyon slopes, and when we were at the crest of the mountains she got some glorious views over the lake to the left and the valley of the Rio Tajo to our right. Finally, in a God-forsaken dirt road we came across a Guardia Civil patrol, who very kindly guided us to the exit of the maze we were in. Imagine the surprise my cousins might have had if the following morning they were to read in the local newspaper that their mother had been rescued by the police!

That late afternoon, solo, I went to the town of Pastrana, which is one of the most beautiful towns I have seen in Spain. A real treasure.

The following day I left early for the town of Alcalá de Henares, famous for having been the Roman city of Complutum, and for being the seat of one of the oldest universities in Spain, the Universidad Complutense (during the Guerra Civil, in the 1930’s, the administration of the university disbanded it, and Madrid took some of the faculty to form the Universidad Complutense de Madrid). During the 1970’s a group of citizens created a non-profit to revive their university, as “dueňos conjuntos”, but Madrid refused to return the name, so the current university is simply named the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares). They still hold that it is them who have the oldest university.

Another important claim to fame for Alcalá is to have been the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and to be the cradle of the Golden Age of Spanish Literature, where Cervantes was joined by other grandees such as Lope de Vega and Quevedo. The city crackles with the spirit of academia and the fine arts.

After a lunch of paella and calamari, generously irrigated with a glass of Tinto de Verano, I was ready to change gears and immerse myself into the history of Complutum, by paying a visit to the little-known archaeologic site where the public market and public baths used to be, and the Boy’s College now named the “House of Hippolytus” after the artist who laid down the mosaic decorations and who, with a clear lack of modesty, signed his work in big bold letters. The mosaics were beautiful indeed.

The following morning, at 4 am, I left Alcalá to catch the 7 am Air Europa flight to La Coruňa, in the northwesternmost part of Spain. The airport is high in the surrounding mountains, so I had to walk down the hill to take the bus that would bring me down into town. The bus left me at the long-distance bus station, where I was able to stick my heavy backpack in a locker and thus turn tourist. La Coruňa is really two harbors separated by a narrow neck of land. The one to the east is the port (where I bought a pocket knife and a flashlight), and the one to the west is where the beaches are. In the grand scheme of things, La Coruňa is at the west end of a very large bay, and for the next few days I was going to walk along the east side of the bay, from Ferrol to almost Santiago de Compostela. The Spanish and the French fought many sea battles, and the bay of La Coruňa saw a lot of action. I walked along the waterfront for several kilometers from the port to the north, until I got to the Torre de Hercules, first built by the Romans in the I century, and was destroyed and rebuilt many times as both a lighthouse and a watchtower.

 La Coruňa was established by Roman Emperor Claudius in the I century, and is now within the autonomous region of Galicia, where they speak Gallego (which to my untrained ears sounds a lot like Portuguese). It is a lovely town and I had great fun walking through it, but at some point I had to get back to the bus station to pick up my backpack, which I did by a felicitous combination of bus transfers.

Loaded like a burrito I took yet another bus to the university campus of Zapaterias, where my guesthouse was located. I met a young couple and after explaining where I was going she quickly directed her boyfriend to walk me to my destination. If he was disappointed by cutting short his time with his girlfriend he didn’t show it, and we had a nice chat as I huffed up the hill to Rialta Residence, a student dorm that was going to be my home for a couple of days. When I got there and complained that I had to walk up the steep hill, the young woman at the desk looked at me with some astonishment and with a dead-pan expression explained that we were in Galicia, and that here the only way to go was uphill.

Rialta has its own bus that goes down to town every morning, noon, and afternoon, so that afternoon I went back to town for a couple of hours, and the following morning went down for the day, keen on making the most out of my tourist day. I cut across the narrow neck of land where downtown is located and followed the waterfront of west bay. Very pretty.

I stopped at the Museum of Science and Technology, which had little more than a sample of the technologies that had been used in Spain from 1900 to 1910, from 1910 to 1920, …, and from 1990 to 2000. An interesting walk down memory lane.

I also visited the house where Pablo Picasso had lived between the ages of 13 to 15, which had a display to his very prolific sketchbooks of the time. At 13 he was already a fantastic artist! After a couple of years his family moved to Barcelona, and he never came back to La Coruňa.

Where is everybody? It was noon and the city was decked for the celebrations of Maria Pita (a councilwoman who saved the citizens from the threat of a massacre of one type or other) but there is no one to be seen. Being Sunday I thought all cafes would be packed, but nothing was open. At last I found a little “chain” restaurant by the beach and managed to get lunch. It was OK. Only later did I find that everyone was jammed packed along two narrow streets where all sorts of tapas bars had good end expensive food to offer.

Monday. Up at 5 am and ready to go. Breakfast at 8 am and shuttle bus to the bus station to take the 9:30 am bus to Ferrol, where I arrived an hour later. I was here to start walking the Camino Inglés, one of the many routes of the Camino de Santiago, which conveyed pilgrims from England to the famous sanctuary. I had been duped into this adventure by my mal amigo Raúl, who had committed to it months before the pandemic, confirmed two months before, and only last week had bailed out on me because “he had to work”. What a lame excuse. Well, maybe “lame” is not the word I want to use, because as I was trudging along in El Camino, my mal amigo Raúl tripped and broke his ankle something awful. Pobrecito.

Arriving in Ferrol I made my first two amigas del Camino, Susana and Nea, who fortunately knew where the official starting El Camino Visitor Center was down by the port. We got there, got our passports, and to my great delight I found out that there was a backpack shuttle service, that for 5 euros per stage would take my heavy backpack from one station to the other so I could just enjoy walking with my staff and little bottle of water. I was very worried that I would not be able to walk 100 km with my big backpack! I stayed at the Hotel Aurora in Ferrol, walked around the port and had a delicious dinner of salpicon de marisco, and braced myself for the long walk I was starting the following day.

I woke up at 4 am for what seemed like an easy walk of 15 km to Neda, simply following the shore of the bay. At the very far end of the bay there was an interesting tide dam, where in the 1800’s water would be let in at high tide to replenish the reservoir, and then was allowed to flow out through narrow tunnels to turn 8 mill wheels to turn wheat into flour. An early application of tidal power, which I also saw in Portugal at a later time. Fortunately when I got to Neda the small hotel where my backpack was dropped off had an empty room. The available beds in this route are very limited because of the pandemic. And so are the eateries for that matter. I was lucky to found a supermarket where I bought the makings of a bocadillo de jamón serrano for lunch, and an empanada de bacalao and a bottle of wine for dinner.

The following day I resumed my circumnavigation of the greater Bay of Coruňa, which apparently is what I will be doing for the next few days. Something like walking from Marin County to Vallejo to Oakland to Hayward to Milpitas to San José. I finally crossed the medieval bridge over the Eume River to get to Pontedeume (Get it? Puente del Eume). Pretty town that reminded me a lot of Sausalito or Ginebra. I stopped at a supermarket and bough a bottle of hard cider which I enjoyed siting by the waterfront. Unfortunately I missed the window for having lunch (11 am to 2 pm), and by the time I thought about eating something at 5 pm I was informed, with some astonishment at my obvious ignorance of the basic facts of life, that dinner would not be served until 9 pm. Looks like I will go to bed hungry tonight.

The next stage of the trip was going to be a killer, finally saying goodbye to the bay and trudging painfully along the steep climb to Hospital de Bruma, so I decided to cheat and take a bus to Betanzos, and from there a taxi to Hospital de Bruma. Best 30 euros I have ever spent. So I got to the public hostel at 10 am, in front of anyone else, and 30 minutes later a group of 7 young hikers came puffing along. They had left Betanzos at 3 am to make sure they got a place in the only hostel, which because of the pandemic had reduced its maximum capacity to a maximum of 7. Aha, but there I was waiting for the hostel to open at 1 pm, first in line, which meant we were 8 and one of them would not get a place to sleep. Over the next couple of hours many more hikers came along, just to be greatly disappointed and being forced to keep walking to the next town. When the manager came at 1 pm he gave my fellow travelers a little grief, but then he smiled and assured them that all would be well, and we all sighed with relief. Nice old man who, after all paperwork was done, sat with me for a couple of hours discussing everything and nothing in particular.

For no reason in particular I started walking at 5:30 am, in the dark, and enjoyed the full benefit of daybreak at 7 am. Pretty fields all around me. Today was going to be my longest walk, so I had booked a hotel 10 km short of Sigüeiros, but I was too early once I passed it, so I figured out I could complete the walk to this town and then get back. Waste of good leather, really, because the road paralleled the toll highway first and then went through the Polígono Industrial, so I was quite tired by the time I reached the town. I rewarded myself with lunch at a pulperia, where of course I had to have pulpo a la Gallega. Unfortunately it was a ration, rather than a menu, so it was quite expensive (35 euros for the pulpo, 5 euros for the wine, and 5 euros for the dessert). Not that I am complaining, but Spain is no longer the good deal it used to be.

I was too tired to walk back to my hotel, so I took a taxi and arranged for the same taxi to pick me up the following morning to bring me back to Sigüeiros to resume my walk.

The next leg was to bring me into Santiago de Compostela, in what was to be an easy walk, but the approach was through the Polígono Industrial, and later through the suburbia of the city, with no breath-taking views of the cathedral or the old town. But eventually I got there, and once again ascertained that the cathedral is beautiful and I was excited to join the Misa de Peregrinos at high noon. It was not to be, however, because Covid and the reduced numbers allowed in the church. So I missed the mass, and had to ay hello to JC in one of the small chapels that are peppered across the town. I did later visit the cathedral, but skipped the tomb of Santiago, even though 2021 is an Aňo Jacobeo and the tomb is open to the pilgrims.

Santiago is a pretty town, but I am feeling lonely and not inclined to waste money buying souvenirs. I did find a menu restaurant away from downtown where for reasonable money I had an entrée of pulpo and the best fish ever (Dorada al horno).

The following morning I took the long-distance bus to Finisterre. It was a beautiful drive through northwest Galicia, but Finisterre is a good 65 km away (almost all the way to La Coruňa!) so it took a goodly amount of time to get there. The coast, which goes by the ominous name of Costa o Morte, is fabulous and there are many towns on the shores of the ria bays that have very pretty beaches and would be perfect for week-long family vacations.

Galician towns are very attractive, in a Guanajuato style as almost all of them cling to impossibly steep slopes. Lots of houses are built out of blocks of granite and most have cost a fortune. What does this people make for a living, and where had they come up with the money for this expensive style of construction? Spain has definitely taken its place as a part of beautiful Europe.

The bus left me in the town of Finisterre (which incidentally is built on a beautiful porphyritic granite), and from there I had to walk the 2.5 km to Cape Finisterre, where the Lighthouse at the End of the World is located. Because it is the end of the world there is really not much to see past the lighthouse, but it was a good feeling to finally stand there, imagining the travels of bold mariners into the unknown.

Back in town the offerings of enticing seafood were legion, but all of them were superexpensive. On retrospect I should have made it a two-day excursion, spending the night in Finisterre, where there is a very large number of hostels. But alas, I headed back to Santiago, where I arrived at 7 pm. A taxi (7 euros) brough me from the bus station to the huge hostel in Monte de Gozo. It is a bit on the outskirts of Santiago, but it is the best deal in town (20 euros for a bunk bed), and I lucked out by being the only guest in my four-bunkbed room.

My last day in Santiago was a bit of a wash. I spent a good time checking in into my flight the following morning via my cell phone (what a pain, particularly with all the Covid requirements). Afterward I walked to my new hotel in the suburbia of Santiago (in retrospect I should have spent a second night at Monte de Gozo), found where I could take the airport bus (for only 1 euro!), and then walked aimlessly through the university area, which is where my new hotel was located. Pretty part of town. I had my last pulpo a la Gallega dinner before heading to bed!