(Blooming) O Bierzo

As I mentioned, this year I didn't experience any new Entroido traditions, but I couldn't just stay at home for five days in a row. So we took an express trip east to neighboring O Bierzo. Centuries ago, when Galicia was a kingdom (O Reino de Galiza), the region of O Bierzo was considered part of it. Nowadays, it's technically part of Castilla y León, even though there are some sections where they speak Galician. 

Pretty start

First stop: Corullón, a small village with specific hiking trails around their cherries. Since during the week before Entroido plenty of trees had been in bloom around town, I was hopeful. Cherry blossoms! Unfortunately, we are destined to not see cherry blossoms by the millions. This is the second time I have jumped the gun in terms of the spring visual treat. In the neat rows of around one hundred cherry trees, only ONE was blossoming. Thank you, early bloomer! I insisted I would go back later on this year, when cherry blossom season is in full swing. But now-- especially with the price of gas soaring-- I think it will once again have to wait til next year. We did spot a Romanesque church, however, so not all was lost in Corullón.

San Nicolás

Next stop: Villafranca del Bierzo. More of a town than a village, this was our home base for the night. At lunchtime it was sunny so first we got a drink in the main plaza which had a good amount of people. We sat at a terraza that seemed to be for the fashionable old ladies to socialize before going home to lunch. And here they also gave a hot tapa, garlic soup. For lunch we ate in a bar/restaurant decorated with dark wooden beams on the ceiling and a fire burning in the corner. Now that's what we call enxebre! But here's how you can tell O Bierzo is no longer in Galicia: when they serve a ¨spoon dish¨ such as soup or lentils, they don't leave the entire pot. This would be considered a crime in Galicia! I've heard of families who never return to a restaurant not because of poor service, high prices, or bad food, but because they didn't leave the stew pot for them to help themselves to seconds. It seemed weird to me that the waitress even brought the small serving pot of soup out. If she wasn't going to leave it, why not just bring out a bowl filled with soup? But I digress 😉

After that grave offense at lunch, we decided to get the coffee on the road. After a copious meal, we almost always stay to have a coffee and a shot of digestive liqueur. I myself don't usually partake in this tradition. On this occasion, getting our after-lunch drinks somewhere else encouraged us to walk around the rest of the town. Originally we had planned to explore in the late afternoon before dinner, but we saw just about everything in the hour after lunch. Aside from the aforementioned plaza, in Villafranca there is also a tree-lined avenue that seems to be the other area to get a drink on a terraza. For some reason, it was easy to imagine the town bustling in summer months. But at the end of February and on a Monday, it was pretty much dead. 

As far as sightseeing goes, Villafranca has two churches. It's on the camino to Santiago, and one of its churches is also called Santiago. It was a valid stopping point in case of injury. If someone had been walking for a spiritual debt, but got injured on the way, they could go to the puerta del perdón (door of forgiveness) in Villafranca del Bierzo and it would be considered forgiven. Then there's San Nicolás, an imposing building which has had a variety of uses including school, city hall, and church. There is also a round castle, but it's private so you can only observe it from afar. In general the town has lots of old architecture, and in some cases dilapidated. One cobblestone street is house after house with coats of arms, clearly the old wealthy road. 

Coat of Arms, Calle del Agua

The ¨Royal Road¨

The following morning, we continued east, past Ponferrada, just to see the town of Molinaseca. The place is listed as one of Spain's Most Beautiful Villages. The moniker and village did not disappoint. Despite the rain and near-emptiness of streets, it was still an absolutely lovely town for a quick stroll. I'm adding it to my own personal list of places that remind me that I'm in Europe. That would be due to the cobblestone streets and dark beams on buildings. Flashback to the Middle Ages! It seemed more well-kempt than Villafranca del Bierzo. You could tell they lived off tourism and the Camino de Santiago. Leading out of the village is a Roman bridge, and on the outskirts is Shrine to the Our Lady of Sorrows. The doors are coated in metal sheets because apparently all the pilgrims used to want to take a splinter from the door. The view from this church was the trip's grand finale-- a blooming tree framing the village's other church in the background. Finally, some blossoms in O Bierzo!

World Heritage Sites Visited in Spain

As I've been trying to be ¨productive¨ this summer for once, I've been tidying up old blog entries. Not the content so much as correcting spelling mistakes (apparently I wasn't a fan of spellcheck), fixing confusing (or just plain bad) grammar, and the like. I've also been improving and increasing the tags for posts. One of the things I've noticed reading through old entries-- aside from the fact that I use the word ¨STROLL¨ entirely too much...maybe because it's the Spanish way-- is that throughout my travels I've seen a lot of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. So I've decided to compile those I've seen in person. Not all received an entry the first time around. That's due to my own laziness, not their lack of ¨blogworthiness.¨ So now's the time to briefly summarize those places that didn't make the cut. And if I wrote about it before, the title is a link to the original post about each place.

Since there are a ton of World Heritage Sites throughout Europe, I thought I'd start off with those visited closest to home, in Spain. It's no surprise that Spain is high on the Eurocentric (four of the top five are in Europe) list of countries with the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites. As of 2019, Spain is ranked number 2 or 3, since first place is a tie between China and Italy. Again, this is only a collection of places I've personally visited. The full list of sites is available here. And because I'm not one to make a countdown list (one might say that I've picked up the Galician traits of diplomacy and indecisiveness in my years living here), they are in no particular order.

 Get ready, this is gonna get long!

Gatinhas en León

The first Friday of May is Labor Day in Spain. And often my best friend's birthday falls on that weekend so we have double the reasons to celebrate! This year we went to León (I made that sound like it's a lifelong tradition of ours to travel...but I guess I hope it turns into that), a few hours away from homebase.

We really had a great time, because it's hard to have a bad time in such fun company, but 3 days in León became more than necessary in my opinion. One thing that León definitely has going for it is the atmosphere. People had said there was a good ambiance, but I didn't imagine it was to such an extent. At any hour of the day, you could find bars with people and terraces close to full. In my opinion, Spain in general is much more into café/bar life than America, but this was a step beyond what I've been used to. Often there are awkward hours at least in Lugo where it's too early for pre-dinner drinks, but too late for the afternoon coffees. This lull is non-existent in León. As one friend observed, "It's as if they have nothing better to do than meet with their friends and family." But isn't it beautiful? Having that as your number 1 past-time? So although there weren't an abundance of tourist things, the good thing was we could just go out and enjoy the atmosphere when we got bored.

So noble (interactive museum)

Don't get me wrong, León is not completely lacking in activities. We saw the Cathedral, which is quite dark, as my friend pointed out, "because the stained glass is dark" Hahah, she said this right after we had just commented on it, so for the rest of the weekend we teased her about it. Poor H. Andri! We also enjoyed an interactive museum, and free history of León museum. That was actually interesting and included all the time periods from Celts to Romans to Modernity. We went in one of the palaces too, now used as a public office building. It wasn't that fascinating. I much preferred the Pantheon museum next to a Basilica or other church. You couldn't take photos, but in the bottom before reaching the courtyard there was an open space with the ceiling painted with Medieval style Christian scenes. Really interesting, and certainly reminiscent of a cool pantheon.

Excursión: Excelente, un 10

Recently I went on a week-long trip with my 15-17 year-old students. That was an experience, to say the least. Summed up in two phrases we repeated during the trip, it was "Excelente, un 10" because "en Estados Unidos eso no pasa!" (that doesn't happen in the USA!) Something unexpected happened every day. The trip was almost surreal at times. Chaperoning is a loose term here: because of the age we tried to promote independence. For example, a lot of these kids have probably never been on the subway before, so we taught them to use public transportation. Also, we'd go around in a group for the cultural visits in the morning, and then set them free with a time to meet back with us in the evening to make sure they were alive.

Salamanca
We only spent a few hours at our first stop. Everyone told me how much I'd love the city, so I guess it fell short of my expectations. It was nice to look at, and I'm sure it's fun to go out in since it's a big university city, but it didn't blow my mind. We got to go up the Cathedral, which was very cool but also nerve-wracking. We went up so many winding steps, all the way to the bell tower. Great views of the city though. We also saw the cathedral and university walls which are covered in elaborate sculptures, and you have to find the hidden astronaut and frog. Then we had lunch and were off to...

Mérida

The theater, where they still hold plays in the summer

I loved it, and although some of my students would say they hated it, that's only because there was no nightlife ON A TUESDAY. Jeez, what did they expect? But also they'd be lying if they said they had a bad time by the end of the night--after walking around for an hour we finally found a karaoke bar. There was just one man there, plus our group of ~20. The kids had a blast singing Spanish pop hits together. I even learned some catchy tunes (si hay que ser torero oléeee). But the best part of Mérida is the Roman presence. It's like Lugo, except more like Rome or Athens. In the middle of the city there were random Roman ruins. Not to mention the glorious and pretty intact theater and amphitheater. Why pay hundreds on a flight to Greece when you can see some great ruins here in Spain? Also Mérida has the national Roman art museum. Very cool, even if we didn't have time to see it all.

Mosaic in the museum

Temple of Diana, in the middle of a plaza

Lisbon
I guess you could call it the main attraction of the trip, since we spent 3 nights there. We saw the typical things: a cathedral, the port, a castle, and that great Portuguese tiled architecture. With the other teachers I

Super Chaperones in the
 Castelo de San Jorge

saw the Café A Brasileira and an overpriced fado show. It's a trap! One day we took the kids to Belém--a neighborhood or suburb 20 mins away--when the bus drivers just happened to be on strike. Despite the fact that when the bus pulled up it was already standing room only, we manged to cram our group of 32 onto the bus. Uncomfortable, for sure. When we drove by stops people were indignant at the amount of people on the bus, and yet tried to cram in with us. I was basically sitting on the dash for part of the trip. In Belém we saw the necessary Monastery, Monument to the Discoverers, and Belém Tower. Of course I also deemed it necessary to get custard pastries from the famous Pasteis de Belém.

Here comes a surreal episode: One of the nights we all had dinner in this elegant ballroom. It was just our group, but people would walk up to the door to take pictures, that's how glam it was. Anyways, then the other two chaperones (a priest and a middle aged woman) started to waltz. The students were flabbergasted. Shortly afterward, the priest started singing the "Vals de las Mariposas" and about 5 pairs of students got up to dance! I couldn't believe my eyes! But wait, it gets better--one of my students asked me to dance! I don't know how to waltz! But I tried anyways, with my two left feet. For the rest of the night I didn't hear the end of it. "Americans can't dance! You need to learn how to dance. Dance is the language of love" Hahaha. Strange and amusing times.

In Lisboa I also learned to accept the Spanish hands-off approach to chaperoning. Like when we told the kids to meet us in the lobby at 2 AM. Then we'd go out for some wine. But we definitely had our kids under control compared to another group (there were 5 school groups in the hotel at once. I feel bad for any adult guests trying to have a nice getaway). The other group threw a bed out the window. Do you believe that?! I'm telling you, it was an unexpected trip.

Porto
Our last overnight stop was Porto. I can't really tell if I like it better than Lisbon. Since it was the last night, by that time I was pretty much mentally checked out. The weather was excellent, and we had lunch on the docks where they were having a little street fair. Some students were attacked by seagulls haha. We also saw a cathedral where they stored some bones, but frankly it was disappointing--you just looked through a small hole in the ground to see a few bodies worth of bones below. At night I know the kids were hoping to go out with a bang, but unfortunately for them, Porto's abundant nightlife is full of adults. People my age! I did feel bad that they were left so disappointed on the last night, though. We all went out together, then gave them a curfew of 3 am. Oddly enough, when we returned to the hotel at 2:30, all of the kids were back already. I also imagine they were tuckered out after a week of sleeping probably 2-4 hours a night! Ah, youth.

Tiles in the train station São Bento

Galician Coast
On the way home we drove along the west coast instead of the freeway. Lovely views! We then stopped in Santa Tecla, a huge Castro with amazing sea views. Then we went up to Vigo where we spent the afternoon on the beach. I didn't bring my suit, but did enjoy a nice nap in the sand. The kids got in the water...I dipped my toes in and it was freezing, so I dunno how they did it. I was also happy to see them playing volleyball, since we teach that in gym class and often they're a bit uninterested. So Vigo concludes this trip of unexpected moments. Glad I was able to go and bond with the students.

Las Médulas

Part 2 of our day trip weekend reminded us that Spain seriously has a bit of everything. While the first day found us in green and flowery gardens, Sunday we went to a park reminiscent of Arizona or Utah. Orange! Except it wasn't natural, it was caused by the Romans who in their time mined and exploited the area for gold. We took a little hike under the hot "desert" sun to check out two caves left from the mining "la cuevona" and "la encantada." In the "enchanted," you can still see the large holes that the Romans tunneled into. Their method was to tunnel down then across, and further down and across a few times and then blow it up. Olé! But northern Spain is not the desert. The orange rocks of las Médulas contrasted with the white, snow-capped mountains of the Ancares in the background. Ah, northern Spain!

BURGOS

Last week we took a school trip to Burgos, about 2.5 hours from homebase. I think I actually learned a lot on this trip! But too lazy to detail, so I'll just post some pictures with captions. WHooopy!

Catedral de Burgos, a stop on the Camino de Santiago and a reason  Burgos is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Ceiling of the sacristy in Roccoco style. Our guide was fun and made sure we learned plenty of new Spanish vocab words

Maqueta, model, of the Catedral. It's a seemingly endless place.

Abuelitos!

Statues.

Kelsey and I decided the orange roofs make Burgos look "Spanish".

We decided to visit the castle and well, unbeknownst to us the tour included going into the tunnels surrounding the well where there were boobie traps over 700 years ago.

La Catedral de nuevo, con mejor tiempo, better weather

El Cid Campeador. We read his tale (in English don't be impressed) last year in a Spanish lit class. He is buried inside the cathedral.