We took a two-week vacation to Spain with a tour group recently. As a believer in "vacation is for fun, not work," I stayed away from studying the itinerary or reading the tour guides before we got on the plane (well, I printed out the guides for my wife and planned to read it on the trip only to find we lost it). We landed on Madrid, the geo-center of the country, then galloped through a few cities to its northwest,Toledo to its south, then further south to a few historical/cultural heavy-weights such as Cordoba, Granada, Seville, as well as a bull-fighting town, the Don Quixote country, a wine factory, and a couple Mediterranean coastal cities, then flew all the way to big town Barcelona in the northeast, before coming back to LA. All told, 13 cities in 13 days we whizzed through!
So how can I remember them all, like which cathedral sits in which city, or from what town did we buy those "local flavor" souvenir cookies, etc.?
Through "categorize and conquer," I am going to try:
Regions & History
From the outset, Spain looks like a fair size country occupying the lion's share of the Iberian peninsula in southwestern Europe, and with that powerful colonial empire it built in the early Age of Discovery, I imagine it be one contiguous, well integrated country at least. I was surprised to learn, then, the country is actually divided into 17 semi-independent, autonomous regions, each with its own political and cultural identity. So, Madrid and its neighboring country form one autonomy region, those cities to the northwest belong to another autonomy region (Castile-Leon), and Toledo and the central high-land that sports windmills for "Man of La Mancha" Don Quixote belong to yet another region (Castile-La Mancha), and those famed, Muslim influenced old towns in the south belong to the Andalusia country, while Barcelona, the big, modern metropolis in the northeast, is the capital of Catalonia which, like the Basque Country to the north (yet another autonomous region), is trying to break away from Spain for good to become a fully independent country of its own.
Historically, starting early 8th century, the southern half of Spain had been invaded and reigned by the Muslims from North Africa (the Moors), and it took the Catholic kings and queens from the north almost 800 years to "re-conquest" the south back to Christendom. As a matter of fact, modern day Spain owed its formation to the unification of two major kingdoms of the north in the year 1492, when King Ferdinand of Aragon married Queen Isabella of Castile and together kicked out the last remaining Moorish resistance in the south. It was also in this same year Queen Isabella sponsored Christopher Columbus for his exploration to New World, thus starting the great Spanish empire that dominated the world through 16th and 17th centuries.
Castles & Cathedrals
Castles are everywhere in Spain. Here is a castle nestling on a cliff, like one in a Disney movie where a princess is incarcerated on the high chilly tower waiting to be rescued; there is another that is a city all by itself, its watch towers looking exactly like the "castle" (rook) piece made for the chess game. And Toledo viewed from the mid-hill of the hotel we stayed was the most picture perfect, beautiful classy old city I've ever seen!
Cathedrals are everywhere, one grander, shinier, or older than the other. One thing unique about some of those in the south is they started as Christian churches, then got converted into Muslim mosques when the Moors came, then converted back to Catholic cathedrals after the re-conquest. That's property time-share at historic proportion, you may say.
Arts & Architectures
Museums and palaces are everywhere, each hoarding houseful of paintings and art works of its own. Back in the days when there was no print or mass media, and the worshiping mass were illiterate anyway, paintings and sculptures on the church walls and ceilings served as educational tools to tell the stories of Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, angels and demons, while those hanging in the palaces displayed the life and portraits of the rich and the royalties, with hardly any one smiling.
We also visited the modern art museums for Picasso and Dali, and architectures of Gaudi in Barcelona. I had not been a fan or enthusiast of modern art, but after seeing these works up close and personal and hearing their interpretations, those abstract "cubistic" drawings of Picasso's don't look that wacky to me any more, and the mishy-mashy, holographical pieces of Dali's do look quite innovative even today. And Gaudi was yet one other lucky guy who got to realize his artistic talent in the commercial world, whether it be a failed planned community in urban Barcelona, or the grand Church of Holy Family that is still under construction today.
I also enjoyed the statues, fountains, arches, and grand old Romanesque buildings around Madrid and other cities. I remember on the first evening in Madrid, walking through downtown thoroughfares, seeing those majestic old buildings and statues lime-lighted against the lively crowds, the tall trees, and the wide roads, I felt buoyant and optimistic, and somehow got the sense how empire and artistic minds were inspired here...
Tapas & Wines
The food in Spain is in general good. They have plenty of farm produce, great tasting pork, and fresh sea food from the surrounding Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans. Our tour package included all meals, that means typically full course big plates for lunches and dinners (that stored up fat in my body fast), but I was most impressed by those small plate dishes they call "tapas" that exemplified local specialties and were most delicious.
And they served wine with every meal. The Spanish wines we had were blended instead of vintage stock as we usually get in California, therefore tasted smoother and fruitier, to my liking. The wine factory we visited is in the city where the world's first Sherry wine was created--the city name Jerez was Anglicized to "Xeres," then "Sherry." No need to buy the wines there and lug them all the way home with you if you like them, though. I found out later that you can get them at local liquor stores such as Bevmo here in Southern California.
Guides of All Feathers
The guides we met in Madrid were pretty grand-motherly and spoke with heavy accent; the one in Toledo was an energetic hearty-laughing woman who was a devoted Catholic but didn't mind making a joke about some dead cardinals buried underneath the cathedral she was showing us; the guide in Cordoba was a dark, heavy-build man who I suspected may have some Moorish blood in him who always started his session with "ladies and gentlemen"; the guide at Seville was a witty, articulate English speaker who's a seasoned world traveler himself; the guide in Ronda, the bull-fighting town, was a short, stodgy man with Frank Sinatra-ish smiles; the lady who took us around Alhambra palace in Granada spoke slowly but with a mesmerizing Euro-woman charm; and the young girl who guided us through the wine factory was so sweet and bubbly that I should have given her a hug at the end!
New is Old, Old is New
While meandering through one of those Mediterranean towns, seeing its up and down city streets lined with red roof and white wall buildings, back-dropped with bright sunny skies and calm blue ocean, it dawned on me "Doesn't this look just like San Clemente, the city where I live by, whose founding fathers set out to build a 'Spanish village by the sea' on Southern California coast?" And while strolling down downtown Barcelona, the tour guide told us one of the busiest streets here is called "Las Ramblas", which, surprise, is exactly the same name of the major roadway (a Freeway exit, actually) right next to my community! It's not a far-fetched idea that some early Spanish settlers to my city might have come from Barcelona area some 200 years or so ago then.
Have Friends, Will Travel
Our tour group was organized in Taiwan, for the alumni of the mountain climbing club of my college in Taiwan. As non-members, we tagged onto this group through our friends Ray & Jenny who are members and have been enjoying the outdoors ever since their college days, as well as most other members on this trip. I was quite impressed by the camaraderie and the inbred outdoorsmanship of these "mountain people" along the way. They always seemed able to find a little hill to climb or a new place to explore wherever we went, and some of them woke up early to do their daily jogging even during our busy traveling schedule. Doing outdoors surely is a worthy hobby to keep that'll keep you physically and mentally healthy for life, judging from what I saw in these people.
We also met people of various backgrounds: doctors, scholars, media workers, fund manager, art performer, etc. Talking to them and traveling with them expanded our life perspectives and struck up new friendships. As they say in the Chinese proverb: "Rather travel ten thousand miles of road than read ten thousand reams of book." (讀萬卷書不如行萬里路). We all should get out more!
And note it down, so when I look back in five or ten years, everything won't be just a blur!
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