Ávila and Segovia
The next day we went on a tour to a neat town near Segovia called Ávila, one of the only cities in Europe that still has a complete wall around the historic part of the city. The walls were built to protect Ávila from the Arabs during their invasion to Spain in 711.

Ávila city wall

Just outside the main gate was an old Roman church where three Christians were martyred, called St. Vincent’s church. It was also interesting because it was a church that St. Teresa had worked in and is where her finger is today, kind of a strange fact. After touring the church, we headed to the place where St. Teresa was born, and then boarded our bus to head to Segovia for lunch.

Church where St. Teresa was born

In Segovia we had lunch at a traditional Spanish restaurant called Solaire. We got to sit with some interesting people, a man who was a civil engineer from Texas (originally from Cuba) with his wife and two elderly Basque sheep farmers who were very interesting to talk to. We asked them about what it was like farming under Franco vs. now. The Cuban guy also mentioned that their region, Rioja, has some of the best wine in the world, even better than the Napa Valley in California. For lunch, we had our first course of white bean soup, followed by beef and potatoes, and then flan for dessert. I didn’t care for the first two courses, but the flan was good. After lunch, we had some time before our group was to meet at the Segovia Cathedral, so we wandered down to the Roman Aqueduct and got some pictures before wandering up to the Cathedral.


Roman Aqueduct in Segovia

We got a nice tour of the Segovia Cathedral. I don’t remember going through it with my class when I came before, but we saw so many cathedrals in a few days that it all went together. Anyway, it was pretty neat. Then after touring the cathedral we went to the Alcazar. The Alcazar was home to Isabella and was where she first met Ferdinand. It was also a former Arab stronghold, where the name Alcazar (Arabic for castle) comes from. I was hoping to go up into the tower like I did on the first trip, but they had the access blocked off, probably since King Juan Carlos was coming in a few days for an event.

Segovia Cathedral


Segovia Alcazar

El Escorial, Valley of the Fallen and Toledo
On Thursday we went to El Escorial, Valley of the Fallen and Toledo. El Escorial is officially called St. Lawrence’s Royal Monastery of El Escorial. It was built during the reign of Philip II in the 1500’s and amazingly only took 20 years to complete since construction was very primitive at that time. Philip was a very devout catholic and chose to name the place after St. Lawrence in honor of a major battle that Philip had won on St. Lawrence day. Not only is it named after him, but the building is shaped like a grill, since St. Lawrence was burned alive on a grill. I had forgotten how beautiful the place was, they had a set of four doors on the inside that were all mosaics of wood, many beautiful ceiling paintings and incredible views of the gardens and nearby mountains. For the tour, they divided us up into groups, English speaking and Spanish speaking since there was another group from the same company there for a half day tour of just El Escorial and Valley of the Fallen. We went in the English speaking group. Our group went first and we made it through much faster since we had fewer people. I was glad because we got a chance to go to the gift shop and then take some photos of the outside. The tours moved you along pretty fast and most of the time I had to rush to get the photos I wanted. I would have liked to have gotten a couple more at El Escorial, but oh well, what I got was good. After waiting for a bit the Spanish speaking group finally finished and we all left to board our buses for Valley of the Fallen.


El Escorial

Valley of the Fallen, the Spanish Civil War Memorial, was just as cool as I remembered, but it had a new spiritual meaning too since I had become a Christian in the time that had passed between my first trip and then. We got to go into the chapels on each side and see the graves again for Franco and the founder of the Nationalist Party. Unlike El Escorial, we had lots of time here and I was able to get plenty of photos.


Valley of the Fallen

After going to Valley of the Fallen, we had a bit of a drive to Toledo, where we ate lunch. We went to this place that looked very familiar, overlooking the city and when I got inside, I realized it was where I had eaten with my Spanish class when we came before. It was confirmed when I saw the “Julia” bus outside, the name of the tour group that we had gone through with our Spanish class. After lunch we went to the Cathedral, which was a bit disappointing because they were cleaning it, so only about 1/3 of it was open for viewing. I didn’t feel too bad about it since I had seen it before, but I felt sorry for my mom, who really missed out on the coolest parts of it. The Toledo Cathedral is where the Archbishop of Spain resides. Toledo is one of the oldest cities in Europe, it is so old in fact that experts are not sure when it was founded, but they have records dating back to 211 BC, during the Roman Occupation of Spain. Toledo was also the capital of Spain until the late 1500’s when it was moved to Madrid.


Toledo Cathedral

After touring the cathedral we headed off toward the synagogue of St. Mary. On the way there we walked through the narrow streets of Toledo, no more than 10 feet wide in some places! The synagogue was very neat and it was later converted to a church during the Spanish inquisition when the expulsion order was given to either convert to Catholicism or be expelled from Spain. After visiting the synagogue we went to the Monastery of St. John, which I remembered before from going with my class. It had a very gothic look to it (as most stuff in Spain does) and we got to see the church area and the courtyard. On the walls of the courtyard were beautiful carvings that depicted different things. In one corner our guide pointed out a monkey sitting on a toilet reading a book.


After finishing up with the monastery, we walked down the hill and across the famous St. Martin’s Bridge and loaded up on our buses. Before heading back to Madrid we went to a artisan’s shop where jewelry and other items were made by hand out of gold and steel, which Toledo is noted for. I bought a small plate that has the city profile on it, and it was an expensive but worthwhile souvenir.


View from St. Martin's Bridge


St. Martin's Bridge, with St. John's Monestary in the background

Back in Madrid, we were dropped off near our hotel and we decided just to go to Pans & Company again for dinner, since we didn’t feel like walking anywhere. We needed to get packed up and ready to go, since we were leaving for Valencia in the morning.

Driving to Valencia/Meeting up with Laura
We slept in the next day, which was nice since were still getting adjusted to European time. After taking our time to eat breakfast and then pack up, we loaded up on the hotel shuttle bus to the airport where we were to pickup our rental car. Picking it up at the airport was a great idea, since it was outside of the city and right off of the major highway we needed to get to Valencia. We got a brand new BMW for our car (only 30 km on it!) and as we were walking out to it, I was thinking “awesome, we get a nice car with A/C, I may actually be comfortable!”. First thing was first though, I had to navigate my mom out of Madrid and onto the highway to Valencia. It wasn’t too bad, Madrid has a beltway that goes around, so we just followed that until we got to the A7, or their interstate equivalent that went to Valencia. Ok, now to get the A/C working. As I was looking at the control panel on the car, I pushed the snowflake button, and then adjusted the auto temperature to 16 C, a little over 60 F. All I was feeling was hot air though, so I immediately rolled down the windows to keep us from sweating more while I broke out the car manual (in Spanish of course) and tried to figure out how to work the A/C. I started seeing many words I didn’t know, so I reached around to the backseat and grabbed my dictionary to look up their meanings. Eventually I was able to more or less figure out what it was saying, the only problem was the instructions were telling me to do what I had already done. I realized at that point the A/C might be broken, so I just closed the vents off and kept the windows cracked. Needless to say, my mom and I were sweating when we got to Valencia.

Upon reaching Valencia, it was back to navigating duties as I tried to guide my mom to the hotel. The previous night, we had mapped out a plan of getting to our hotel, I had the map ready with the route we wanted to take. Small problem though . . .there weren’t many signs and the ones that were there were too small to read. So we just kept going on the main road. My mom kept asking me if we wanted the next street. I was looking at the map and eventually as luck would have it, it turned into Avenida del Puerto, the street we wanted. We found our hotel with no problems, now to find a parking place. . .we started circling the block and then my mom just decided to pull into this area leading to a garage next to our hotel. I jumped out and ran in the hotel to ask the desk clerk where we could park. The young girl behind the counter said that they had a hotel garage up the street and gave me instructions on how to get in. I felt relief as I returned to the car, that was my one concern about driving was parking the car. I gave the happy news to my mom and we circled around again and this time we made it into the garage no problems. Inside the garage everything was very constricted, so I had to get out and guide my mom into a parking place.

Then we went inside to check in and waited for the time we had arranged to meet Laura. We had talked to her a few days earlier and had told her just to come to the hotel at a certain time. Shortly after, she arrived and she took us out around the city to find lunch for us (since we were starving!) and then showed us around a few places. Later we went by to meet the lady she had been staying with as well as another girl who was in Laura’s program as well, and we all sat down and had a nice chat. After an hour of talking, we went out and found a place to eat dinner and we caught up on things since it had been 6 weeks since we had last seen her.

After dinner, we returned to where Laura had been staying and we collected her bags to head to our hotel. It was surprisingly a teary goodbye for Laura and the lady, but this woman was a little crazy, so I didn’t know what to make of it. Then we returned to our hotel and planned the next day, which was our only full day in Valencia.

Valencia
We decided to not set our alarms the night before, but we were so tired that when I awoke it was already 8:30, so I woke up my mom and told her, since I knew it would take at least an hour to shower and get breakfast. After breakfast, we headed off on the city bus to Serrano’s Towers, the old city gate to Valencia. It was pretty neat, huge towers that you could climb up on top of and see all of Valencia.


Serrano's Towers

After climbing the towers, we headed off towards the Cathedral, which wasn’t far away. As we neared the Cathedral, we came into this beautiful plaza, Plaza de la Virgin with pigeons everywhere. As we went inside the Cathedral, mass was happening, so we had to be quiet and could only go look at a few things. One of the things we got to see, was what they claim is the Holy Grail. It was really weird as they had dipped the whole thing in gold to preserve it and it was in this glass case. There are several churches in Europe that claim to have the Holy Grail, so I didn’t really believe it was actually it, but nevertheless, it was still interesting. After seeing that, we paid the 2 euros it cost to climb the tower where we got a magnificent view of Valencia once again. It reminded me of climbing the lighthouses in North Carolina, but a little different. At the top was a giant bell, and we climbed up next to it and just when I had convinced myself it wasn’t in use, I heard this loud ringing sound and realized it was in fact being hit by a hammer on the outside and that it was very much in use. I was startled and jumped up immediately and listened to the very authoritative sound it was producing. Then, we descended back down to the bottom and headed off in the opposite direction we had come, through the Plaza de la Reina. We were in need of finding a bank, because we were low on cash. As we were trying to get into this one bank, just a couple of blocks going we heard these loud sounds that sounded like gunshots, but were just firecrackers. My mom and I were scared at first, but after I took another peek, I realized it wasn’t gunshots, but just firecrackers that someone was setting off for fun. Anyway, it was a brief moment of panic, and made for a good story.


Plaza de la Virgen


Valencia Cathedral

Having seen the historic stuff, we headed down toward El Corte Ingles, this Spanish department store, where we planned to do a little shopping for souvenirs. I wanted to get a Spanish flag, since I had bought a Bolivian flag in Bolivia. But that was all I really wanted to get. My sister got some castillanets for friends, a traditional instrument used for flamenco music, as well as a few other items. After shopping, we headed over to the beach to find this restaurant Laura’s program director had recommended for eating good paella. We didn’t find it, but all of the restaurants appeared to serve Paella that looked good, so we eventually settled for this one that had a deck area where you could look onto the beach. It was very beautiful, probably one of the most memorable scenes of the trip. The Mediterranean is so blue, very much like the Caribbean, except that the waves are not as big, probably because it is not part of Atlantic Ocean. Anyway, the paella at this restaurant did not disappoint and we were stuffed when we finished. I had forgotten how good Spanish style rice was, and I enjoyed the spicy flavor it had.

After lunch we stopped briefly by the hotel to drop off our bags and headed to L’Oceanografic, this huge aquarium that had all sorts of exotic fish, including an area where you walked through a tunnel with 8 ft sharks swimming around along with other fish. There was also an arctic aquarium where they had a beluga whale, as well as penguins. The place reminded me a lot of Sea World, but many of the fish were from the area.

Then, we headed off to another El Corte Ingles, since my mom was considering buying some Spanish shoes. I was thinking “great, getting dragged on another shopping excursion”. But, we didn’t spend too long, and I actually decided to buy a Paco de Lucia CD. Paco is a famous flamenco guitarist from Spain. After the shopping was over, we just headed back to our hotel, had dinner at the hotel and then planned what we wanted to see on our drive from Valencia to Barcelona the next day. We for sure wanted to stop in Tarragona, this town along the way, but we wanted to make sure there anything else worth seeing.

Driving to Barcelona and Tarragona
We awoke the next morning and after eating breakfast, we had another cultural experience ahead of us . . .pumping gas into our car. As it turned out, most of Spain has full service pumps, so a young Spanish guy came up and asked what kind of fuel we wanted and afterwards began to pump gas. That went smoothly, so now it was just finding the road out of Valencia. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as when we arrived, and before we knew it, we were on our way out of town. The drive was gorgeous, driving along the Mediterranean coast. We decided that we just wanted to do Tarragona, so we headed straight there. When we got to Tarragona, we had a bit of trouble finding the historic part, but eventually we saw a sign directing us, and before long, I found our place on the small map that was in our tourist book. We somehow found a public parking garage, where we left our car and headed out to explore Tarragona.

We walked down a main street with a walking area in the middle, and sidewalks on either side. At the end of the street was an overlook of the Mediterranean and below you could see the Roman Ampitheatre that we wanted to see. We headed down to the ampitheatre and walked through it. It was really weird looking at a structure that was over 2000 years old and it was used for gladiator fights, and to publicly execute Christians. Then I guess after the Romans left, there was a church built in the center of it. Interesting to say the least. After touring the ampitheatre, we walked through this beautiful park with very colorful flowers backdropped with the Mediterranean Sea, another gorgeous place. My sister snapped a few photos. Then we headed up towards these Roman ruins and were able to climb this tower and see all of Tarragona. I took a picture of the Cathedral which wasn’t far away. After briefly viewing the tower, we went and saw what remained of a chariot racing arena, as well as the original city wall and they showed a diagram of what it used to look like.

View of Mediterranean Sea from Tarragona


Roman Ampitheatre in Tarragona

After seeing this stuff, we walked over to see the cathedral up close. It was Sunday, so it was closed for services, but we at least got to see what it looked like on the outside, very different from the other cathedrals, as it had Romanesque architecture rather than Gothic architecture.


View of Tarragona Cathedral

After getting a satisfying picture of it, we headed back to that main street to find a place to eat, as we had passed several restaurants. We settled on a pasta place that was quite good. Then we headed back to our car and headed on to Barcelona. We had little trouble getting back on the highway, except that we ended up being on a toll road. All three of us were searching for Euros as we headed through a series of toll booths. At one of them my mom accidentally drove in the express lane, where people that have cards can go to get through quickly. Having no card and quickly realizing our problem, she started yelling for help, drawing lots of attention to us and soon after one of the booth operators realized what had happened, came over, took our fee and let us through. Needless to say, we didn’t make that mistake again. After that, we headed for the Barcelona airport, where we were to return our car. As luck would have it, they had signs directing rental car returns and we eventually found the Avis lot. We drove through the whole lot before finding a single spot that was open. We quickly claimed it and got out, collected all our stuff and headed off to do the finish paperwork and pay our rental fees. Once we got inside we explained the broken air conditioning and a lady went out to check the problem. She confirmed that the A/C was broken and Avis gave us 150 euros back for a refund. I felt vindicated that we had gotten something in return for being hot and sweaty, and after everything was done, we headed towards the airport to catch a taxi. This time, the taxi drive wasn’t nearly as crazy, and I had a printout of the address of the place. I showed it to the guy and he knew immediately where to go. It was silence all the way to the hotel, and when we got there we saw the beautiful Plaza Catalunya that our hotel overlooked. It was a nice spot to be, close to “Las Ramblas” this famous street in Barcelona where lots of people sold stuff, some people posed as statues, and other interesting things. It reminded me of Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado. Having a little time to wander around, we decided to try and find this restaurant Laura had been told about that had good pizza. It was close to La Sagrada Familia, this famous church/temple that we were planning to see the next day, so I was excited for the sneak preview. It was a fair distance away though, so we took the Metro (subway) and there was a stop right by Sagrada Familia. As we walked up the stairs and were looking for the building to get our bearings, it towered overhead behind us and I said, “whoa, there it is”. It was an amazing building to look at, and I could immediately tell why it had taken so long to build. But, we’ll get back to that later. We headed towards this restaurant, only to find that it was closed Sunday evenings. We were a bit disappointed, but decided we’d try there for lunch the next day, since were planning on coming to La Sagrada Familia around lunch time to tour it. Reluctantly, we walked back to our hotel and found a Pans & Company down the street from our hotel, and ate there for dinner. Then we went back to our hotel room and again planned our next day in Barcelona.

Barcelona
After another cool night in the hotel room, we awoke hungry and in search of breakfast. We wandered around and found a nice breakfast place on “Las Ramblas”. Laura, having eaten fried eggs for weeks, wasn’t about to have those, so she and my mom opted for a chocolate pastry. I was feeling a bit more daring, so I had fried eggs with bacon . .. it was good. Afterwards we wandered down Las Ramblas towards the harbor and came across a Christopher Columbus statue that claimed to have an elevator in it! Intrigued by this discovery, we wandered inside the base of the statue and sure enough, there was an elevator. We paid several euros to be able to go up and a kind man showed us to the elevator and escorted us to the top and then left us alone and said to ring the bell when we wanted to come down. It was amazing looking out over Barcelona and the Mediterranean. You could see everything, including La Sagrada Familia.

Christopher Columbus Statue

After coming back down, we wandered over to what was the Olympic village during the 1992 Summer games. It was all pretty modernized and much of the structures were now private residences. The only remaining reminder were the endless rows of flag poles on each side of the street and some permanent tents with picnic tables set underneath.

Next ,we took the Metro to La Sagrada Familia and decided to opt for the self-guided audio tour, based on the crowd size. This turned out to be a great decision. La Sagrada Familia is a temple that was designed by Antoni Gaudi in the late 1800’s and started construction. Gaudi’s design was so intricate and elaborate that the construction continues to this day and will not be complete until the year 2030, unless of course the project picks up more manpower and financial support. Gaudi was tragically killed in the 1920’s when he was hit by a car crossing the street, but fortunately he was already getting old and had well documented plans. Amazingly, the temple also survived the violent Spanish civil war with little damage. The temple has many symbols of the Bible and the ornate artwork carved into the building is amazing. Being a Christian, I found this very neat and enjoyed all of the symbolism, much of which I understood, giving it deeper meaning. After completing the audio tour we decided to wait in line to climb the bell towers, which ended up being well worth the hour wait, much of which was spent on the narrow spiral staircases that ascended over 300 feet. Again, the view at the top was amazing and to later see Gaudi’s design and realize that the towers were to be the shortest, gave great insight as to the ambition of Gaudi.

  
La Sagrada Familia

  
Passion Facade of La Sagrada Familia                            View of La Sagrada Familia Towers


Hope doorway of La Sagrada Familia

Leaving the temple with a sense of amazement, we headed to the pizza place Laura’s program leader had recommended. We were not disappointed either. After a tasty lunch, we decided all we really wanted to do was shop some more for souvenirs and then see the Barcelona Cathedral briefly before heading to the airport. At the Barcelona airport, we were shocked at the low security, especially after the Madrid bombings, 9/11 and other events. They didn’t even check our passports leaving!

London in 3 hours
We got into the UK about midnight and wearily checked into our hotel, located right at Gatwick airport. We wasted no time in getting to bed and the next morning we awoke and decided to take a couple of hours in downtown London. We got tickets to board the Gatwick Express train from the airport to Victoria Station. After arriving at Victoria station, we found some pastries for breakfast . . .they were good. We ate on the move as were trying to see some things before we had to get back on the train. We walked past Westminster Abbey and also by the Parliament building and famed Big Ben clock. Then, we went briefly out on a sidewalk onto the bridge that went over the Thames River. It was very beautiful. Sadly, it was time to head back to the train station and then the airport. But, it was a taste of another new country for me and I somehow knew that someday I would return.


Big Ben

Reflection
It was interesting returning to a country for the second time, the first country I have done so with. Spain is a country that has found a special place in my heart and being a history lover, I don’t think I can think of a place that has a convergence of more time periods. I will always enjoy the time I can spend there and I hope to return again sometime as there is still plenty of stuff to be seen.