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Published: August 1st 2010
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Breakfast: Madrid
Cafe con leche, zumo de naranja People here used to live in castles. Or behind fortified city walls.
There are whole layers of human history to explore in Spain that aren’t available to touch and see back home.
Case in point, the Castillo de la Mota. This brick castle built in Mudejar style back in the 1400s still stands proud overlooking the sleepy town of Medina del Campo, which is an unassuming dot on the map between Madrid and our Day 2 destination of Galicia, Spain’s far northwest region.
The castillo’s battle-scarred walls, deep, dry moat and narrow downward passages into black nothingness each have stories to tell that could fill books. Maybe Isabel I even wrote one while she was living here in the years before her death. I wouldn’t know, because when we stopped to see the castle there was no guide or rental headsets for an audio tour. Just let yourself in across the wooden bridge spanning the moat and have a look around for as long as you can stand the merciless sun.
Vanessa and I were fascinated by the hundreds of strategically placed tiny openings in the walls that would allow marksmen to defend the castle from inside
with incredibly small odds of ever being hit themselves. And should the moat and the outer wall be breached, it was evident that everyone would retreat into the safety of the high inner walls, after slamming shut the massive doors behind them.
Even after stopping to marvel at the Castillo de la Mota, and later to eat an excellent lunch of tortilla rellena (the extra filling was ham) and ensalada mixta, and once more to get gas,
Vanessa still managed to get us to our lodging in Dodro, Galicia in less than the six hours estimated by the GPS.
The woman can drive.
And it certainly wasn’t a case of having a turbo-charged muscle car at her disposal. The compact Ibiza just barely holds our two small suitcases in its trunk and I imagine it’s the same tight squeeze where the four tiny cylinders are housed up front.
The signs that lead to the highway read Autovia, which was close enough to Autobahn for Vanessa to feel free to “open her up.” Plus, the Tom Tom GPS has a radar-detector feature that proved most useful.
For my part, I sat back with the bag of
oranges we bought at a Madrid market and watched the scenery change as it passed quickly by.
We did not get up bright and early to hit the road, which suited us well.
Breakfast at a sidewalk café introduced Vanessa to the tortilla española - a thick wedge of egg and layers of tasty potato that I think either of us could live on contently. After eating, we walked two blocks up the Gran Via to the Corte Inglés, Spain’s premier department store, and bought an outlet converter so we can keep the laptop and phones charged.
We began our travel day at the airport, after a failed attempt to avoid the taxi ride and secure a car from the small Avis office across the street from the hotel. No worries, though. Our cab driver did a great job of explaining the atmosphere in town earlier in the month when Spain was making its way to the World Cup championship. To be in Madrid, watching along with thousands on the outdoor screens set up along streets blocked to traffic would have been an experience. Our cab driver described it as crazy and claustrophobic, but you could tell
he was still on a bit of a World Cup high.
No line at the car rental check-out at 2 p.m., so we were on the road quickly. Central Spain is sunny and flat with arid ground covered largely by fields of sunflowers, hay and olive trees. I was also impressed to see installations where dozens of huge solar panels soaked in one of Spain’s greatest resources.
As we made our way north and west, small hills and green trees began to emerge. As the hills turned to mountains we began to see rows of modern windmills. At one point we went by a huge truck carrying what we later realized was a single, enormous white windmill propeller. It was as big as a building. Don Quijote de la Mancha would have thought twice about charging this thing.
As we made our way into the region of Galicia, the trees and the mountains got taller and taller, and the clouds that once hovered far above got closer and closer. A/C off, windows open, Portuguese radio stations (at times we were less than 30 min from the border) blaring an eclectic mix of questionable 80s music, Juanes and
Ace of Base.
Roundabouts are big in Galicia, and we navigated several between the highway exit and the entrance to Hotel Pazo de Lestrove in tiny Dodro. A pazo, from what I gather, is an historic building that private owners have restored and made into a hotel. There’s a whole association of pazo owners in Galicia and, like ours, these places all look way more interesting than your standard Best Western.
The Pazo de Lestrove (or Lestrobe) was built in the 1500s as a holiday residence for the archbishops from nearby Santiago de Compostela. As you pull in, you’re greeted by a multi-tiered fountain with a small statue of St. James (looking rather lost, actually) at the very top.
We found our room through a series of stone corridors and stairwells. Two walls seem to be of the original grey stone, and I’m pretty sure my suitcase is sitting in what was once a small fireplace.
We wasted no time in making reservations at the hotel restaurant for dinner, and at 10 p.m. we were some of the first diners to arrive. Our first lesson in Galician dining was that portion sizes here seem to be
Ibiza
Vanessa at the wheel of our rental car way larger than in Madrid. I ordered the pulpos a la parilla (grilled octopus - this is a specialty in Galicia) as an appetizer and the portion could have fed three adults for dinner. Even with Vanessa helping (she liked it when you cut the suckers off the tentacles) we couldn’t finish it. And that was before our arroz con gambas (rice with shrimp) arrived. The portion for two came in a bowl, filled to the rim, that I would serve to a group of six and not worry about running out. It was awesome - wet, spicy rice mixed with shrimp, eggplant, broccoli, peppers, zucchini and carrots - but there was no way we were finishing it.
Luckily, waiters here don’t bug you much. In fact, they mostly ignore you - which allows you to sit and talk, enjoying meal and company without intrusion. If you’re in a rush, it can be a pain, because you literally have to wave down your waiter for every little thing (more water, butter for the bread, the check). But we enjoyed the lack of pressure to eat quickly and give up the table for another guest. In fact, we ended up
sitting and talking for an hour after we’d stopped eating, and then for another half hour - appetites slightly renewed - over coffee and a white chocolate panacotta, which was like a firm custard that started smooth, then would fizz in your mouth, as if it was slightly carbonated. Not sure if this is what it’s supposed to be like, but we found that while it was strange, we couldn’t stop eating it.
Another late night, but at least we would be well-fueled for the next day’s activities: a trip to the village of Catoira for the annual Romeria Vikinga!
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