My dad, stepmom Ann, and little sister Emily came to visit us in Spain last week. We lucked out because Emily's school vacation aligned perfectly with my Easter break and we were able to travel around to a lot of places in Spain, including several cities in the southern region of Andalusia, and Barcelona, which we have been looking forward to visit since arriving here.
The Barhams arrived in Madrid and drove straight to Ciudad Real, where they spent a night getting to know our little home base. We showed them a couple of the plazas here in CR and then took them to our favorite restaurant (Miami Gastro) to have some delicious modern tapas for dinner. After a tasty breakfast at the Silken Alfonso hotel the next morning, we set off on our road trip down south to Andalusia!
Our first stop was Córdoba, where we ran into the first Semana Santa procession of the trip. Some background: during Holy Week (Semana Santa) here in Spain, a lot of cities and villages throughout Spain (but especially in Andalusia) put on elaborate parades or procesiones to tell the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. Each day the participants walk through the city wearing costumes and holding pasos, or platforms, that show a part of the story. They also have huge marching bands taking part, and sometimes ladies wearing mantillas, or lace scarfs on their heads. Usually the processions start at a plaza or church and end up at another church. In Córdoba, we happened to be walking by the main Cathedral just when the procession arrived.
Here they are coming through the gate into the Cathedral courtyard:
Some of the people in the procession wear Nazareño costumes, easy to spot because of their long pointy hoods. In this procession there were hundreds of people in the black hoods:
And here's the paso, showing Jesus in the front with some other Biblical characters behind him:
And the crew taking the platform into the church:
Usually after the platform showing a scene from Jesus' life, they come through with another platform holding the Virgin Mary. We saw this same kind a few times in different places, but the first one was in Cordoba. It is a little hard to see her face because of all those tall candles in front, but she's there!
The pasos are amazing because they are all made of wood and look very heavy, and are being held up by a group of people who walk in unison under the platform. In the picture above, you can see some feet sticking out under the red draping. As the pasos go by, members of the audience will walk up to touch them, say a little prayer, and cross themselves. The man in the bottom right of the picture above is paying his respects.
The next day we got to actually go inside the Cathedral, which used to be a mosque before the Christians took over, and is still known as the Mezquita. The result of this mixing of Christianity and Islam is a pretty eclectic monument with symbols and art from both religions.
Here we are with the famous red and white striped Islamic arches inside the Cathedral:
Here's another shot of the arches, so beautiful!
Emily and I also enjoyed the treasury, with lots of pure gold and silver items, some made from some of the first shipments of gold that made it back from the New World!
Also, as an aside, why are there always skull and crossbones in churches? We keep seeing this around Spain, and every time it makes me feel like we're waiting in line at Disneyland for Pirates of the Caribbean:
Córdoba is a beautiful city. So much of the old city wall and other big monuments are intact, and as we walked around the springtime smell of orange blossoms was everywhere (the fruit is too bitter to eat, though). We had a good time just wandering around to check it all out:
After some more walking around we eventually headed back to the hotel and on the way actually ended up having to jump into a procession and walk with them for awhile to cross the street. Luckily there are parts of the procession where normal people without costumes are walking along, so we weren't that out of place, and it was pretty fun to be part of the group for a minute.
One of the things the Andalusia region is known for besides Flamenco music and sherry wine is their trained horses. They have a special way of training the horses so they actually look like they are dancing and hopping along (check out a video here). We went to see the horse show in Jerez at the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Arts. It was pretty cool, but they didn't let me take pictures during the show. Here's Em in front of the performance arena:
The actual Equestrian School grounds were also very beautiful, with manicured gardens, museums in old mansions, and stables. We liked this pretty purple tree a lot:
"Vino de Jerez" is the Spanish word for sherry (the British pronunciation of Jerez) and Jerez de la Frontera is the sherry-making region in Spain, so after the horse show we headed next door to the Sandeman winery for a tour. The tour was pretty adorable (it included a video, projection of fake flames to simulate a fire in the cellar and a tour guide dressed up in cape and hat), but the real highlight, especially for the sherry drinkers in our group, was the tasting after the guided visit. Ann and WP got the reserve tasting of "old and rare" sherries:
Of course they sent us out through the gift shop and we all ended up with sherry to take home. :)
The next night we drove about 20 minutes from Jerez to El Puerto de Santa María to have dinner. Puerto de Santa María is the town from which Columbus set sail when he discovered America (the town lent its name to one of his ships). Pretty awesome. We thought we had chosen an Italian restaurant on a nice, quiet street for dinner, but then the Easter processions struck again! This time we had front row seats and could see the whole thing through the window of the restaurant.
Here's Dad and Ann with the red-hooded procession people in the background:
I ran outside to take this one of the hooded Nazareños and the approaching paso with Jesus on the cross:
During the processions there were often times when everyone would stop for a few minutes to let the people holding the heavy platform catch up. During those times the members of the marching bands would pop into bars to use the restroom, and the little kids would take advantage of the Nazareños with candles. We noticed in Puerto de Santa María that a bunch of kids were working on making balls of wax. Each day the people in the processions have different colored candles, so we assume these kids work on their wax balls all week. Here's a little girl getting some more red wax from one of the people in the parade:
The back of the Virgin Mary paso was really beautiful in this procession. Here's her long cloak hanging down off the edge of the platform, embroidered with golden thread:
The next day we continued our road trip and set out for Granada. On the way we stopped in Ronda, a town up in the mountains that has some pretty dramatic views and buildings perched on the edges of a steep gorge. Here we are on a balcony that hangs out over the edge of a cliff. This was enough to give even the bravest among us a little vertigo:
Our next stop on the way to Granada was to see a couple big Stone Age dolmens. Archaeologists have excavated some pretty cool old caves made of stones that are so large they don't know how the ancient peoples could have erected them.
The bigger of the two dolmens faced this really cool rock formation across the valley. Do you see the face? Archeologists have decided that the reason this dolmen faces a different direction than most other examples is because of this remarkable view of what might have looked like a fallen giant to them.
We got back on the road for a little bit, and about 30 kilometers outside Granada had our next unexpected adventure - the rental car clutch completely failed while we were on the highway. With no clutch, shifting gears is impossible, so Ann very calmly and safely pulled off at the nearest exit, where she parked the car. We were lucky that an exit came up only a few seconds after Ann realized there was an issue.
Here we are hanging out on the off-ramp, Dad getting his safety vest ready:
Here's the view looking back on the off-ramp:
After a call to the 24-hour roadside assistance, the tow truck man showed up within 30 minutes, and a few minutes later the van taxi arrived to take us into Granada to our hotel. It actually worked out pretty well that we didn't have a car to drive into the city - with the Semana Santa processions it might have been pretty tough to drive through the city center and get to a parking spot. We went to the rental office the next morning to pick up a new car for our last day of driving, so it all ended up working out.
After the couple hour delay getting into Granada we got to see the city a little before heading up for our night tour of the Alhambra, the Moorish palaces located in Granada. WP and I saw the palaces during the day back in November when Will's parents were visiting, but it was cool to see it again at nighttime. If you're interested in day time photos, check them out here.
Before heading in for our tour we had some tea at the Parador that is located within the Alhambra grounds. In one of the courtyards at the hotel we even found this cool painting of cherubs having some watermelon. They should have gone for the seedless:
Next door to the Moorish palaces there is the Palace of Charles V, a really neat circular building from the Renaissance that has a Roman Coliseum feel to it. We spent some time walking through the corridors under the light of the full moon (the light behind the clouds in this photo):
The morning after our Alhambra tour we picked up the new rental car and drove to Málaga to catch our flight to Barcelona. We drove along the coast for part of the ride and even got to hop out and touch the Mediterranean. The water was actually pretty warm, which bodes well for our beach trip with friends coming up in a few weeks!
Our first night in Barcelona, we walked around our neighborhood and got to see some of Gaudí's works. Gaudí is a famous Spanish Catalan architect with a really distinctive style and whose buildings draw tons of tourists to Barcelona. I'm sure I'm not the first to say it, but most of his buildings look edible to me - like cakes with colorful icing! Here's the first one we saw on a busy shopping street in Barcelona:
Gaudí's most famous design is still a work in progress, the Sagrada Família church:
They have been working on it since 1882 and expect to be done around 2028. Apparently the end date was moved up after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when people saw it and Barcelona received additional funding for the project. There is a lot of information about the Sagrada Família online and better photos of the outside are definitely available if you want to check it out, go here.
We were amazed by how beautiful the inside of the church is, and they haven't even finished all the stained glass yet!
Here's a unique version of Jesus hanging above the alter. Gaudí used this same design (with the umbrella-like part on top) for the Cathedral in Mallorca that we got to see with Jimmy a few months ago (see this post for more about that trip).
This photo is taken looking down the main corridor of the church toward the alter. The four reddish columns are larger than the other ones in the main hall and have stained glass pieces representing Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The stained glass is lit from the inside of the columns, so inventive!
We only had one day of rainy weather in Barcelona, and the rest of the time we were able to walk around and enjoy the sun!
On our second-to-last night we met up with one of Dad's business contacts, Francesco, who was nice enough to take us to a fútbol (soccer) match! We saw Espanyol (Catalan for "Spanish," one of the main teams from Barcelona) vs. Real Sociedad (a team from San Sebastian, up in the Basque country). We had some pretty great seats, only about 10 rows from the field!
The game ended as a tie, but each team scored 2 goals, so we were happy to get to see some action!
After the fútbol game we went out to dinner with Francesco and got to meet his three very lovely (and multi-lingual!) kids and his wife. I wish I had remembered to take a photo, especially when his youngest, Bruno the nine-year old, showed us his hip-hop dance moves. It was pretty impressive.
The four nights we spent in Barcelona were pretty relaxing, and we got to stay in a really nice B&B-style apartment in a good neighborhood. Here's the entryway with some cool pieces of art and brightly colored walls:
On Easter Sunday we decided to make the trek to Park Güell, a large park on the side of a steep hill which was also designed by Gaudí. Here's Em in the parabola corridor:
And WP with Gaudí's palm leaves:
It was super crowded so instead of shoving our way through the throngs of people to take a photo with the famous tiled lizard, I snapped a quick photo of this cute little girl with the statue:
Here we are with the two big Gaudí buildings in the background. Don't they look like gingerbread houses? You can really tell how many people were at the park on Sunday; it was nuts.
After making our way out of Park Güell, we headed toward the center of the old city to have Easter lunch at a delicious restaurant called Origens. We had a bunch of food (with a lots of vegetarian choices!) and also had some cava to celebrate the holiday. After lunch we went down to one of the beaches in Barcelona and hung out on some lounge chairs for a while. I was surprised how much the beach felt like places in Mexico, with people constantly coming by to sell you temporary tattoos, drinks, massages, braids, and scarfs. There was even an Indian guy coming through with samosas for sale! We didn't feel the need to purchase any of these items, and it was nice just to soak up the sun for awhile.
We had such a great trip and it was fun to get to spend time with family. Thank you Ann, Dad and Emily for coming to Spain and for making our Semana Santa adventure so fun! You're a good crew and we miss you already. After so much travel recently though, it is nice to be home for a week of downtime before we head to Lisbon, Portugal! Stay tuned...
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