Hello,
All is fine with Espanidense boys. Basically just life as usual.
Today has been a very lazy kind of Sunday. It is chilly and rainy so I
decided to stay in and watch movies, read, clean a bit etc. Frankly, I
needed this as work and all has been very busy of late. And we
definitely needed the rain to cut into our prolonged drought some.
Unfortunately, I dry my clothes on an outside line. After a week of
rain, the pile is getting very high indeed.
We have managed a couple of trips. This academic year I am determined to travel more than the 2 trips we took during the last one. First, we made a day trip to Ciudad Real in late September. Its about 185km/120 miles and a couple of provinces away. But it is reachable in about 50 minutes because it’s one stop from Madrid on the high-speed train line to Sevilla. It’s a rather pedestrian provincial capital of about 65,000. But it has a bit of history and was a pleasant town to walk
around. Which we did. Several times. We did come across a nice little
museum dedicated to a single artist: Manuel Lopez Villaseñor. I had
never heard of him before but enjoyed his work and the museum itself. And as always, we ate well.
This past weekend, we took advantage of the 4 day holiday weekend
(October 12 is Spain’s National Day) and went to La Coruña. It is
located on the Atlantic coast at the northwestern corner of the
country and is one of 4 provincial capitals in the region of Galicia.
It is a striking and fun city of about 250,000 people. And although
the language in Galicia is Gallego, we found it quite easy to
communicate in Castillian.
Galicia is know mostly for two things, cold, rainy weather and
seafood. We had none of either. The weather was gorgeous. We were even able to go to the beach and dip our feet in the frigid Atlantic. And while I did have some fish, I’m not much of one for seafood. Though as I think about it, the boys may have had calamari once there. They like it for some reason that’s evidently beyond me. But I did eat well in Coruña as well.
Besides slumming on the beach, we took in the Aquarium (which was quite good), shopped a bit, rode around on trams and just generally took it easy. We also managed a visit to the Torre de Hercules. Well we at least got within spitting distance of it. The tower is the world’s oldest working lighthouse and was erected by the Romans in the 2nd century AD. We got to the park where the tower is situated and had good intentions of going up the ramp to it. But as we sat on a bench
resting a moment, we looked to our right at the tower and the horde of tourist going up to it. Then we looked at the empty, rolling green field ahead of us and the Atlantic waves lashing the rocks at its edge. We looked again to the right. Then forward. Our choice was made. In retrospect a good one. We romped along tails etched into the field and attempted to cut a few of our own. And then we reclined on a rocky outcrop and enjoyed the sound of water meeting earth for what seemed like hours but in fact was probably about 30 minutes. At any rate, it was what my mind and body needed. A brief sojourn with Mother Nature.
Historic monument be damned!
