Remember from previous journals, anything in Italics is not travel related and represents my view or opinion about some topic that may offend some readers. Proceed at your own risk!! I write this journal as I travel and it's stream of consciousness style. Please excuse any typos or omissions (I think faster than I type and sometimes words are not typed that were actually thought).
May 24 – Lisbon, Portugal –On our own. We decided to take our driver’s advice and ride the #28 trolley from end to end. Breakfast was included at the hotel and it was a typical European buffet, mostly stuff that’s loaded with carbohydrates.
Dietary Note: It’s easy to avoid all that on the ship but I have a feeling it’s going to be very hard on the bus tour. I think I’ve lost about 14 pounds so far on the trip and I’m not trying at all. Most of it results from the fact that I don’t snack on the ship. I eat my meals, avoiding starches all together, and the sweet vegetables. I concentrate on the cruciferous vegetables, summer squashes and other low carb items. I only get desert if it is one of the most chocolate ones HAL offers, HAL Signature Chocolate Cake, Truffle Cake, the bombes (cappuccino, chocolate, and the Chocolate Volcano Cake in the Pinnacle for example). Fortunately they do not have these often, in 73 days I had desert about 8 times. I usually get the cheese palate for desert and this disappointed our waiter, Norman, immensely. He genuinely wants his clients to enjoy themselves. Whenever I would order a sweet desert he would grin from ear to ear and say, “Alright!” Norman was the best waiter we have ever had.
Back to breakfast. Here they serve eggs, actually you have to skim the eggs off the top if you want anything even remotely resembling scrambled eggs in the USA. I don’t know where they learned to scramble eggs but it wasn’t from a competent chef. It is universal however, so it must be normal in Europe. The bacon is also almost raw. I like my bacon a little less than the wooden sticks that Diana prefers, but here it is barely cooked at all and totally disgusting. Sometimes they have sausages but they’re rarely good. The saving grace is that they do have cold cuts and cheese, not perfect but better than pastries and the other starchy, sugar filled offerings.
After leaving the hotel we walked toward the Tagus River to find the trolley. We found some tracks on the third street up from the river. We weren’t sure that they were #28’s tracks so we walked along them until we got to stop where they list the trolleys and busses that stop there and sure enough #28 was on it.
What I’ve been calling a trolley they call a tram here. By whatever name it’s a very retro conveyance. It runs on narrow tracks and is powered by overhead electric lines. It’s small, has 6 windows on each side, three windows around each end and doors at both ends. It’s rectangular shaped with rounded short ends. One of the three end windows looks straight out and the windows on either side are set at 45-degree angles to accommodate the curve. We had trolleys much like these in Allentown Pennsylvania in the 50s. They are partly wood construction, the doors and the window frames and here they come in three main flavors, yellow with green, yellow (#28) and red.
We decided to catch it going west because that’s the first stop we encountered on Rua do Arsenal. It wound through very narrow streets and wide boulevards. When we got on it was very empty and as we passed through various neighborhoods it would fill up and then empty out again. We passed churches, shops, parks and gardens. It was a very pretty ride. The city of Lisbon is divided into six districts and this tram passes through 5 of them. Going west, we boarded the tram in Chiado, which encompasses the downtown area that lies mainly in a valley. Climbing up narrow streets we passed through Bairro Alto (High Quarter) the center for Fado Clubs, Cafes and some chic stores. Here also is the Palace de Sao Benito, the Parliament and Prime Ministers residence.
Next we entered the westernmost district, Estrela (Star) past some beautiful parks and gardens and the Basilica da Estrela. The Basilica is a beautiful mixture of baroque and neo-classical styles. It was built in the latter half of the 1700s to fulfill a vow made by Queen Maria I. She vowed that if she were able to have a son and heir to the throne she would build a basilica for Lisbon.
The tram ends its western journey at the monument to St. John Bosco (João Bosco in Portuguese). Fittingly the statue is of Don Bosco show him with the boys he dedicated his life to saving. After noticing that many poor, abandoned boys wound up in terrible prisons for begging and petty theft he opened an oratory almost my accident. As he was vesting to serve mass on the feast of the Immaculate Conception he heard the cries of a street urchin that was being driven from the church by a church caretaker. He went out and invited the boy back into the church. They became friends and in January 1842 Don Bosco started instructing the boy, Bartolomeo Garelli, on a daily basis. Soon Bartolomeo was joined by others from the streets and in February of the same year there were 20 boys in the oratory and by March of 1846 over 400. At this point you have to get off the tram and then pay again to get back on for the return trip.
While riding down through the very posh Estrela District two very fashionable young women joined our happy throng of tourists for the ride downtown. After retracing our steps through the three districts we started up the other hill to the east of downtown into the Alfama District. We have a guided tour of this area tomorrow morning. This district is the oldest in Lisbon as its foundations are set on solid bedrock and most of the buildings survived the earthquake of 1755 that destroyed the rest of the city. Ironically, much of the middle class had abandoned this area earlier for fear of earthquakes and left the quarter to fishermen and paupers. Today the area remains a maze of narrow streets and four to six story houses all built before 1755. They have added electricity and running water over the years but no elevators.
As we rode through the Alfama it started raining cats and dogs. (I just love that phrase but I have no idea where it comes from and why it’s not ‘fish and frogs’ or ‘eggs and bacon’?) I knew we had traveled a long way from the hotel and the constantly curving streets with odd angle intersections had my usually reliable sense of direction a little bit bumfuzzeled. Just then what should appear but our hotel. Apparently the tram had traveled in a circle and stopped right in front. If it hadn’t been raining we would have stayed on but it was, so we didn’t.
This evening we had dinner in the hotel with our tour group. Our guide, Monica, lives in Madrid and has just traveled down to meet us. There are people from the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the 43-person group. They range in age from about 16, a granddaughter traveling with the grandparents, to 83, a single lady traveling alone. It seems like a congenial mix and as we are going to be traveling together for 16 days, I hope so.
Now starts the dreaded morning routine of bus travel. Wake-up Call, Bags Out, Breakfast, Depart times that run our lives for the next 2+ weeks. I’m already missing the ship. We are pretty lucky this trip as there are 6 cities with 2-night stays so there’s no ‘Bags Out’ time those days.
May 25 – Lisbon, Portugal – Day 2. Today is another day in Lisbon so it’s 6:30am wake up, 7am breakfast and 8am depart for the city tour. Monica will be riding shotgun today as we have a local Lisbon guide. This was a popular tour and our bus in full. Our first stop is the aforementioned Alfama district. When we rode through it yesterday on Tram #28 I thought it had narrow streets. Today we are walking on streets that even the tram couldn’t get through. It’s amazing that these buildings are 250 years old.
While we were stopped in a small plaza in the area, an elderly woman opened her fourth floor window and started letting a large woven bag down on a rope. As she did she called out something in Portuguese. When the bag reached the street level a man came out the door of the building, untied the rope and, after calling up to the lady, took the bag inside. Our guide told us that the people of the area are very loyal to it and won’t move out of their houses even when they can no longer climb the stairs to their apartment. This lady was letting her bag down with a shopping list in it and some money. Her downstairs neighbor will take the bag and the list to the market and do her shopping. When he gets back he ties it on the rope and calls for her to pull it up. If it’s heavy he will take it up to her. The guide said that some people just lower the bag to the street and any passing neighbor will take the bag and do the shopping. Amazing.
All the streets, more correctly paths, are cobbled and that’s giving some people trouble walking but it is very pretty. The Portuguese learned to make glazed tiles, called azulejos, from the Moors during the 700 years the occupied the area and it’s a skill they learned well. The outsides of many of the older buildings here are completely faced in 8-10 inch tiles. I saw a lot of buildings and never saw one with the same tile pattern, as far as I could tell. They are mainly geometric patterns but some buildings have insets of wonderfully artistic scenes and people, also done in glazed tile. It’s not only beautiful but protects the mainly cement construction from staining and looking weathered.
After leaving the Alfama we drove downtown and around the Terrerio do Paço for a great view of the four and a half foot trees that have sprouted like mushrooms all over the square. If you’ve ever been to Berlin you’ve seen the fiberglass bears that have been decorated by various artists on the street there. Well here they have trees. They are also formed of composite material and very mushroom shaped although they are trees. They have been painted by Spanish artists and are on display in the plaza. They will be auctioned off and the money will go to charity. In the meantime they make very colorful companions for the mounted statue of Jose I, a bronze from the 1700s that stands in the center. On the north side of the square an ornate triumphal arch allows you to drive through the old palace to enter the downtown area. It’s a very impressive place on the banks of the Tagus River.
We did an orientation tour of downtown and visited some of the grand plazas and drove by various monuments and sites that we may want to return to this afternoon on our own. Our next destination was Belém, a city nearby on the mouth of the Tagus River. Here we will visit the Monument to the Discoveries, the Tower of Belem and the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Order of St. Jerome Monastery). Those of you who followed our travels in South America know that Belem is Portuguese for Bethlehem.
It was from Belem that the famous explorers set sail for the new world and the Monument to the Discoveries celebrates that fact. It’s a 170 foot high structure shaped like the prow of a caravel, the small, lanteen-rigged ships used by the Portuguese to explore the coast of Africa. It was erected in 1960 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator. Prince Henry was the third child of King John I of Portugal. As the third child he had to try harder to gain his father’s favor and he did that for sure.
Henry organized and financed the early explorations of the Portuguese into North Africa. In fact it was he who convinced his father that they should capture Ceuta. At age 19 Henry was put in charge of raising the army and organizing the fleet needed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and take the Moroccan city. Two years later at age 21 Henry and done just that. His experience in Morocco opened Henry’s eyes to the vast riches to be gained in the Saharan spice trade. He knew that these spices were coming across the continent on arduous desert crossings and wanted to explore the possibility of shipping by sea.
His first success was the discovery of the tiny island of Porto Santo. Not much in the way of real estate or riches but the exploration fever had struck Henry bad. You have to understand that Henry did not personally make any of these discoveries. He planned, organized and executed the sending of others to do the physical; some would observe dangerous, part of the job. Soon after his men discovered Madeira, the island we stopped at just before arriving in Morocco. He also organized that collated all the information that was gathered, producing charts and maps of unknown territories. To say that the Portuguese were the first European explorers and that Henry was the organizer, financier and main impetus for this activity pretty much states the importance of his contribution to the eventual Spanish, English, Dutch and other explorers to come.
As such, Prince Henry stands alone and erect at the bow of the monument. Behind him are two lines, a total of 30 figures, of Portuguese personalities, going down the gunnels of the bow shaped structure. Kneeling behind him are explorers Vasco da Gama (route to India), Cabral (Brazil), Dias (first to cross the Cape of Good Hope) and Magellan (first to circumnavigate the globe) as well as artists, writers and scientists who aided or popularized the Age of Discovery. It’s a great monument, it’s just a shame that those of other countries that made important contributions are not there as well.
Architectural Note: When traveling in areas of the world that have a strong Portuguese influence you see and hear a lot about Manueline style architecture. It derives its name from Manuel I the king of Portugal (1495-1521) and it marks the transition from the local Gothic style, a blend of traditional Gothic with Islamic influences, to the Renaissance. There are not many buildings in this style but the design, very ornate with plants and repeating geometric figures and calligraphy make it more important than the volume would seem to justify.
Our next stop was at the Tower of Belém. This beautiful Manueline tower was build between 1515 and 1519 right in the middle of the Tagus to defend the mouth of the river and the nearby monastery. However, the same 1755 earthquake that destroyed Lisbon changed the course of the river and it’s now on the waterfront in the city of Belém. It has elements of Gothic and Romanesque styles with Venetian-style loggias and Moroccan-style domes. Eclectic, nez pas? There’s an artillery platform facing the river whose crenellations bear the coat of arms of the Order of Christ the successor to the Knights Hospitaler. It’s five stories tall and pretty building.
Just down the riverbank is a monument shaped like an amphibious biplane. Even though I don’t like to fly I am totally fascinated by aircraft so I had to go take a look. It’s a metal replica of a Fairey III-B, a wood and canvas seaplane. Turns out it’s an interesting story. It seems that in 1922 two Portuguese naval officers set out to make the first successful aircraft crossing of the southern Atlantic Ocean going form Lisbon to Rio. The trip took them 19 days, which seems a little long even if you consider that they had to land and refuel several times. Turns out that they had a few problems on the way, not the least of which was sinking 2 planes. While landing at a refueling ship near the St. Peter & Paul Rocks, an outcropping of the mid-Atlantic Ridge between Africa and South America, they damaged a float and the plane sank. Fortunately the ship was close enough to rescue them. They requested another plane and the Portuguese government decided to send one. Shortly after that they had fuel problems and were forced to make a sea landing and again one of the pontoons was damaged and the second plane sank. A passing freighter rescued them and a third plane was sent, which carried them safely to Recife, Brazil and then coast hopping down to Rio. In my personal opinion calling this trip ‘successful’ is about like saying that Hurricane Katrina was successful in killing a lot of termites in New Orleans. The Fairey III was a very successful aircraft with a service life that began in 1917 and continued through WWII so the plane was not a problem. Apparently the pilots were. It seems to me that to be successful they had to arrive in Brazil with the same plane in which they left Portugal. I sure wouldn’t call a trip from CA to TX a success if I arrived in TX after destroying two cars on the way.
From there we moved inland to the site the tower was to help protect, the Jerónimos Monastery. This is not just another Manueline building but the consummate example of the type in the world. Henry the Navigator founded a hermitage on this site and in 1502 Dom Manual decided to build the monastery for the use of the Hieronymites (congregations of hermits living according to the rule of St. Augustine) and named it after St. Jerome the translator of the Vulgate Bible, a Latin translation. Up to this point all translations of the Old Testament were based on the Septuagint, a Koine Greek translation of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. Jerome decided to start anew with the Tanakh and go directly to Latin from the original Hebrew. Other portions of the Vulgate were edited and corrected by him. The resulting translation became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, the Verso Vulgata from which we have taken the common name. It took 50 years to complete the structure.
It is an impressive place. We entered the monastery through the southern arch, a very plain but large opening. From just inside you make an immediate right turn, go up a few steps and you are at the southern portal to the monastery’s place of worship, the church of Santa Maria. The portal is flanked on the left by a sculpture of Saint Jerome with a kneeling King Manuel I; the main sponsor of the monastery and on the right with Manuel’s consort and mother of the next king, Maria of Aragon protected by John the Baptist. Maria was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the patrons of Columbus. Directly above the door is a sculpted nativity directly above the Royal Crest of Portugal in the hands of two angels. The church only has one bell tower but is in the traditional shape of the cross. The nave is tall, vaulted and has a very open and airy feeling. The columns that support the roof are very thin, octagonal structures that look very much like palm trees because the capitals spread out rapidly and integrate themselves into the vaulting of the ceiling. Often Gothic churches seem closed and dark because the columns are so thick and close together. Granted, Manueline architecture could be thought of as the Portuguese variant of Late Gothic but the columns are exceptionally designed, almost delicate in their appearance. The high windows cast more light on the ceiling than the walls reinforcing feeling of openness and naturally pulling your eyes upward. Most of the interior is undecorated, natural stone. The thin columns are caved with geometric and natural designs, but the overall color of the interior is gray. The chancel is the only area with significant decoration. It is lined with two levels of large paintings from the life of Jesus. No in-camera flash could ever illuminate this place so I had to take a very long hand held exposure. It’s not a good picture but it does capture the essence of the place.
Just inside the church on the left hand side is the tomb of Vasco de Gama, whose main claim to fame is the discovery of an all ocean route from Europe to India and the successful completion of a trip there and back. It’s carved from a single block of white marble. Essentially it’s a large coffin with de Gama carved into the lid with his head on a pillow and his hands folded in prayer. The box itself is ornately carved with nautical and Portuguese symbols like a sailing ship, his coat of arms, an armillary sphere and the Cross of the Order of Christ (the successor of the Knights Templar in Portugal after they were suppressed. I’m sure that you’ve seen this cross on the sails of ships from the Age of Exploration. It looks like a Maltese cross in that all four branches are the same length but those of the Portuguese cross are rectangular not triangular and are flat on the ends not notched.) A rope motif outlines the top of the casket, some of the carved images and the slab on which de Gama rests. The entire crypt is supported by 6 resting lions, the symbol of Saint Jerome. Not as large or impressive as some we’ve seen but very nicely executed and impressive nonetheless.
From the Church of Santa Maria we moved to the attached cloister. This structure, built in 1544 by João de Castilho, is the pure essence of the Manueline style. The delicate tracery and ornately carved designs that surround and cover the structure are exquisite. The elements of both Gothic and the later Renaissance styles are included. Every available surface is decorated with religious emblems, animals, plants or geometric designs. The symbols of the armillary sphere and the Cross of the Order of Christ from de Gama’s tomb are repeated here. The four corridors surrounding the courtyard are two stories tall with each constructed with Gothic vaulting. In the center of the courtyard is a simple fountain and in the northwest corner of the corridors there’s a smaller, more ornate fountain in the shape of a lion. One small item of interest occurs in the corner vaults of the upper story. In the special vaults that form the corners the ceiling has a double vault that is foreshortened at the center. The support columns are closer together than normal and the arches that extend to the twin centers of the vault form a very good copy of the MacDonald’s Golden Arches. This observation, of course, caused me to laugh and that in turn got odd looks from the guide and most of my fellow travelers. Oh well, a small price to pay for being both observant and imaginative.
From the cloister we moved to the refectory, the monastery’s dining room. It’s a large, rectangular room with a 5-foot tall belt of azulejos girding the entire space except for the fireplace opening at the northern end. The tiles are arranged in frames about 15 feet long and each frame contains a scene flanked by large urns of flowers. The scenes on the long walls are from the life of Joseph, the north wall has the fireplace opening where the scene would be and the south wall has a scene depicting the feeding of the 5,000 from Mark 6. There are large paintings hanging higher up on the end walls. On the north is Holy Family with the shepherds looking on and on the south is Jerome working on his translations with a lion sleeping at his feet.
As we left the monastery we walked past the South Portal of the Church of Santa Maria that was the main entrance to the entire monastery complex. Designed by the same architect that built the cloister, it’s in the form of a shrine and is 105 feet high and 40 feet wide. It’s a curious mixture of religious themes and veneration of Portuguese royalty. A statue of Prince Henry the Navigator stands between the two entry doors. Above that are high-relief sculptures of Saint Jerome. On the left he is pulling the thorn from the lion’s paw, the act that got him his symbol and on the right he is shown in the desert. Atop the arch over the doors stands Our Lady of Belém with Jesus in her arms. The sides of the tympanum are lined with statues of saints and Portuguese royalty. It is very ornate and pure Manueline style.
Next we drove back to Lisbon and an afternoon on our own. Most bus tours do this if the participants have had long flights to arrive on the previous day. They make you get up the next morning to start the reorientation of your body clock but then give you the afternoon off in case you have to rest up. Since we’ve been here for three days and arrived by ship and we don’t really have any adjustment to make, we took our own walking tour of the central city area.
Our hotel is in the Chiado (downtown) district and a lot of sights are within easy walking distance. About 100 yards from the hotel we walked through Praça da Figueira (Fig Tree Square). Many of the downtown busses and trolleys have stops here and there’s a tourist kiosk where you can get transit passes and book tours. After the 1755 earthquake it was a marketplace and in the 1800 had permanent covered stalls. In the 1900s they were razed and a bronze mounted statue of King Joao I has taken their place. The 1755 earthquake hit this area very hard. In fact the whole city center was completely destroyed and Lisbon was in complete chaos. Into this mess Sebastião José de Melo, 1st Marquês de Pombal and Interior Minister under King Jose I, stepped up like Rudi Giuliani after 9/11 and oversaw the recovery and reconstruction of Lisbon. He would probably just be another forgotten civil servant by this time except for the fact that he rebuilt the entire area using plans drawn up by two military engineers. I know that sounds like the lead in for a great joke, “You see there was this government official and these two military engineers…” The punch line is, “All parties involved did an exemplary job and the result was truly wonderful!” Not very funny but extraordinarily accurate nonetheless.
In fact, the result was so brilliant that it gave rise to the Pombaline style of architecture named for Carvalho’s title, the Marquês de Pombal. It’s an innovative design incorporating the first anti-seismic system and the first pre-manufactured methodology in the world for use in large-scale construction. All of this was way ahead of its time in the late 1700s. The flexible wooden frames of the structures were built in place but the external panels that were hung on them were built outside the city before being transported to the building site connected to the frame. In contrast to previous forms of construction in Lisbon the buildings are very simple in design and largely undecorated with very small or no azulejos displays at all. The height was limited to 4 floors and there were solid walls between each building in the row to help prevent the spread of fires. There were galleries on the first floor to provide for shops with the residences on the floors above. These external attributes were applied to all the buildings including churches. One the inside, however, most of the churches built in this era continued to be ornate and mostly in the Rococo style. Creative use of color, window shape and roofline prevent the cookie cutter look of most public construction, public housing in the USA and worker’s residences in Russia being prime examples of the latter. Fig Tree Square is surrounded by Pombaline buildings, as is Lisbon’s most popular square, the Rossio, which is connected by a very short street to Fig Tree.
Rossio Square is the main gathering point in Lisbon. It’s been the site of protests and the starting point for revolutions in addition to its more traditional uses as a meeting place for friends, lovers and those just looking for a place to sit and relax. It too is surrounded by Pombaline style buildings, most with a café or shop on the first floor. The sole exception is the northern border, that’s now the site of the Dona Maria II National Theater, a large neoclassical building from 1840. Fig Tree Square is in fact square while Rossio Square is rectangular. In the very center is a 90-foot monument to Dom Pedro IV with marble allegories of Justice, Wisdom, Strength, and Moderation, all qualities attributed to the king. In fact, the official name of this square is Dom Pedro IV but locals have not accepted the name and continue to refer to it as Rossio. On each side of the monument are fountains of French design and manufacture that divide the length of the plaza into quarters. The entire area is paved with black and white cobbles set in an undulating wave pattern. It’s a great space that has lots of granite blocks to serve as benches. It’s always an active place with locals and tourists happily mixing.
Looming over the square in the adjacent Bairro Alto “upper quarter” (I know that looks funny, but remember this is Portuguese, not Spanish) are the Carmo Church and Monastery. It was also heavily damaged in the 1755 quake and the church was never fully rebuilt. The Monastery was and served as a military barracks before becoming the HQ for the Municipal Guard. The walls and roof arches of the apse and the nave can be seen from many places in the lower quarters.
Our next destination was the outdoor elevator to the Bairro Alto, the Santa Justa Lift. It’s at the western end of Santa Justa Street, a pedestrians only avenue running east to west one block south of the squares. It was designed by Raul de Ponsard, an apprentice of Gustave Eiffel. Naturally it is built from iron in the Eiffel tradition, both the support beams and the façade. This is easy to understand when you remember that Eiffel was originally a bridge builder. It was completed in 1902. It’s a freestanding structure that’s decorated in Neo Gothic style and each of the 7 vertical tiers (I’d call them floors but it only stops at the bottom and the top) has a different motif in the ironwork. The sides each of tier have four openings that look like the frames for vertical stained glass windows in a church or open arches in a church tower. The base of the lift is in the Chiado District and the top floor connects to the Bairro Alto by means of a walkway from the platform that encircles the central core of the lift at the upper stop. Atop that deck is an observation deck, reached by one of the four spiral staircases located in each corner. There are two wood paneled cars that each holds 24 people. It was originally powered by steam but was converted to electricity before 1910.
Architectural Style Note: I’ve discovered that some sources say the Lift is Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau and Neo Gothic styles share some features but are very different in others. Neo Gothic has pointed arches with ornate tracery while Art Nouveau’s arches tend to be rounded and with less decoration, although some practitioners did have fairly ornate designs. Granted that the Lift was constructed during the Art Nouveau period but the design has more in common with the earlier Neo Gothic. Don’t get me started on the differences between Art Deco and Art Nouveau. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t that interested in architecture. Sometimes it’s a little too confusing.
From the lift we walked down Santa Justice to Augusta Street, another wider pedestrian street that connects Russio Square with Commerce Square on the banks of the Tagus River. After going down to take a look at the square and the arch through which you enter it from Augusta we backtracked to Conception Street to catch a ride on the #37 to Castle Saint George. This is the same street we caught the #28 Trolley on for our city tour yesterday. We had consulted the excellent transportation map we got at our hotel and noticed that there was a route that ran up to the castle entrance. If you ride the #28 you have a pretty steep uphill walk to get there. When we got to Conception we noticed that the #37 was not shown on the bus stop sign so we started walking east toward the castle looking at each bus sign. We discovered that the #37 only stops at 4 places before starting the climb to the castle. Each of those stops is shown as a transfer point from the #28. The #37 turned out to be a very large van or a very small bus, depending on your point of view. It had to be small as the climb from the #28 route up to the castle was on very narrow, very twisting streets.
The oldest parts of Castelo de São Jorge (Castle of Saint George) date from the 6th century when the Celts fortified the hilltop. The original fort was improved by the Romans, Suebics (a coalition of Germanic tribes), Visigoths and Moors. The Portuguese took it back in 1147, with the help of Northern European Christians, during the second crusade. The northerners stopped by on the way to the Holy Land to help and it’s a good thing they did. The siege of Lisbon was the only successful campaign of that entire crusade.
The van couldn’t get to the plaza at the entrance to the castle, so we still had to walk a couple of hundred yards up steep cobbled streets to get in. The old but well maintained buildings on way made the walk a pleasure. The narrow streets were dotted with cafes, boutiques, bakeries, etc. The entrance to the site leads directly into the courtyard, the Praça de Armas. It’s amazing how many cities in Portugal and Spain have the same name for their major squares. In the center of the courtyard is a statue to Dom Afonso Henriques the first King of Portugal. He is shown in full military armor including helmet, sword and shield. This is totally appropriate as he was responsible not only for later evicting the Moors from the area but also for the formation of the country itself. Previously it had been a vassal state of León-Castile, a combined kingdom that dominated the Christian north after 1038.
As you walk uphill from the plaza, the ruins of the Royal Manor are on the left and a smaller open area is on the right. We chose to go to the left and walk along the wall that forms the western outer defense of the castle area. This wall is lined with canon platforms and firing positions. The views over Lisbon were spectacular. We could see all the major squares, Russio, Fig Tree and Martim Moniz as well as our hotel, the Santa Justa Lift and the Carmo Church ruins. Toward the river we could see the Statue of Christ, the 25th of April Bridge and Commerce Square. About half way along this wall is the southern entrance to the castle.
This castle was built in the 13th Century, not long after the Portuguese had evicted the Moors. It’s essentially a square with towers in each corner and at the center of each side. You can walk the entire circumference of the wall, as it is very thick. The southern wall has two additional smaller towers between the standard ones. The western and northern walls are not far from the high walls that form the sides of the hill on which the tower sets so they are not reinforced. The eastern and southern sides of the castle are approachable on fairly flat ground so they have a narrow wall outside the wide wall and a moat outside that. There is a central wall that divides the inner space of the castle with one side about double the other in area and you can walk that as well. We walked every inch of the walls and the views in every direction were fantastic. The day was clear and mostly cloudy providing excellent light for photographs, rich color, great detail and no strong contrasts. There’s not much to see in the castle itself but it’s an impressive fortification and the 360° views are worth the time to visit.
On our way back to the exit we walked through the small upper plaza. Just before reaching the broad stairs that lead to the Praça de Armas there’s a small area where the foundation and floor of a small Roman temple can be seen. It’s shaded by several trees and the base makes a great place to sit and view the castle area. We decided to walk down to the #28 trolley since it was downhill all the way. It was a nice walk past the shops and cafes through the narrow cobbled streets. One unique feature was the wooden deck areas along the street for outdoor seating. Usually the tables just set on the street but here the streets are so sloped that it would be impossible to keep anything on the tables so they build decks that are leveled by longer legs on one end to give a proper base for seating. The structures are entirely in the street leaving the sidewalks open for walking.
At the bottom of the street up to the castle there’s a small church, Santa Luzia, with a belvedere that looks down over the lower Alfama District, which rambles down the hillside to the Tagus River. The buildings in this area are very old and the streets are a jumble of narrow pathways. There’s also a little café at the overlook as well as the #28 trolley stop.
We have an organized dinner this evening at a Fado restaurant. Diana and I had attended a Fado concert at the Barclay Theater in Irvine and enjoyed it so we signed up for this optional excursion. Fado is the Portuguese word for fate or destiny. Often it is described in Portuguese as ‘saudade’, which has no equivalent work in English but could be translated as ‘a nostalgic longing for something or someone who you were fond of but has been lost’. It differs from nostalgia, for which a word does exist in Portuguese, in that is a mixture of happy and sad, a memory of happiness in the past but a sadness that it cannot return and its sole existence is in the past. Saudade is nostalgia but with the possibility that the source of the happiness may return, no matter how slight the chance. It’s the most famous Portuguese music style. It’s fine for a concert but a steady diet of it would drive me crazy. I’m including a link to a Fado page in case you are unfamiliar with the style. The most representative clips on the page are ‘Brado’ by Camane and ‘Tia Delores’ by Raquel Tavares but the others are very good as well.
Click here:http://fado.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=38
The show was great!! The guitarist played some solos that were fantastic and the singers were excellent as well. The songs were obviously tearjerkers even though you couldn’t understand a word. All in all a very fun evening. Tomorrow we head out for our first travel day on the bus. It’s totally full so it should be interesting.
May 26 – Lisbon, Portugal to Seville, Spain. Today was actually a late start for a travel day, up at 7:30am, bags out and breakfast at 8am and on the bus at 9am. This about one hour later than usual and that was a good way to start out. Today we are heading to Seville with a stop in Setubal for wine, on the Algarve coast for some sightseeing and then on to Seville, Spain for a two-day stay.
On the way out of Lisbon we made another short drive through the city to see some of the sights. The Lisbon Railway Station is a great building. Done in Manueline style, the arches around the double doorways look like 2 horseshoes. We left the city over the 25 of April Bridge and past the statue of Christ. It was eerie driving over the bridge. I have crossed the Golden Gate hundreds of times and this bridge is an exact copy on a smaller scale. Pretty cool! The statue of Christ is an exact copy of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio. So the Lisboans have copies of two world famous icons within a few hundred yards of each other.
We arrived in Setubal after driving about 30 miles south. Our destination, the Jose Maria de Fonseca Bodega, is in an old part of town so the bus had to drop us off a little way from the entrance. The walk was very pleasant. The Fonsecas have been making Moscatel wine for six generations in this same location. (Moscatel is a sweet wine like Port. You might remember that on our visit to the bodega in Jarez some of the sherries were mixed with this wine.)
On the way we passed a striking fountain. Done in a mixture of bas-relief and alto-relievo (high-relief – more than half of the figure stands out from the background) in blue white and gold, it was built in the late 1700s directly across from the city church. It’s called the ‘Chafariz dos Pasmados’, the ‘Fountain of the Astonished Ones’, by the locals because of the effect it had on people when they sat and contemplated it. A chafariz is a structure equipped with one or more spigots, where drinking water can be drawn.
I have to admit, on the way out of the bodega I stopped to look at it for some time because I didn’t want to shop for wine and they had allowed us some free time after our visit. I took several pictures of it because it had an emotional effect on me. It’s not the most beautiful fountain I’ve ever seen, not is it ornate or complex. From the top down the major features are, a star, the date it was completed, the royal crest, a large urn of flowers in bas-relief, a dolphin in alto-reilevo flanked by two lion’s heads in bas-relief (these latter three features each have a stream of water splashing into the pool below) and a small semicircular attached pool. The whole thing is about 30 feet high by 30 feet wide so the size is not that impressive either. Its impact was way out of proportion to its appearance. It was not until later, about 30 feet down the street toward the bus that I saw the sign with the name on it and I had to agree with the locals, as I was amazed at the effect it had on me.
The bodega is in an old estate house next to the fountain. We were a little early for our tour but the group that was supposed to be there at that time was late so we started as soon as the ladies were done with the restrooms. The late group arrived just as we were leaving the reception center and had to wait until our tour slot. I guess it’s true the world over, you snooze, you lose. There was a cobbled patio between the house and the gardens. The walls were vine covered and there were flowerpots of all sizes around it. There was a small chafariz in one corner. It has only one water spout but the unique thing about it is the tile picture on the wall around the spout. It’s a picture of a man and a woman seated, leaning up against a large oval wine barrel drinking wine. The water spout is positioned where the tap would be on the barrel. Most of the tiles are square but the tiles on the edge follow the outline of the figures. The center of the top edge curves around the top of the wine cask and is ivy covered. The edges of the tiles on this border are curved and follow the outline of the ivy vine’s leaves. Pretty impressive design actually.
After we crossed the patio and exited through a gate in the 8-foot high wall we found ourselves in a very formal garden area. The area was divided into geometric spaces by hedges one foot tall by one food wide. In the spaces were trees and flowers, mostly inpatients, planted in clumps of color, red, white, lavender and pink. After crossing this area we entered the storage building. There were rows of barrels, some of the large oval type in the tiles on the patio but many were round traditional shape as well. The large ones indicated the capacity on the end above the tap. Most held around 5,600 gallons, give or take a few hundred, as the capacity was determined for each after it was constructed. No two vats held the same amount. The round barrels were much smaller and appeared to be between 100 and 200 gallons in capacity. The aging process here seems to be about the same as it was in Spain. The have a new factory site about 2 miles away that produces their less expensive wines. The custom crafted aged product is done here in the original bodega.
Our next stop was the on the Algarve Coast in the town of Vila Real de Santo António. The Algarve Coast is a resort and vacation destination for Spain and Portugal. The town is on the banks of the Guadiana River that serves at the western border between the two countries in the south. It’s a resort town with a large marina and a long pedestrian street that serves as a shopping district. In the middle of this street you arrive at the city’s main square. It is cobbled in the standard black and white Portuguese cobles set in a radiating pattern from the center like the rays of the sun. In the center of the square is an obelisk with a wrought iron crown at the top, dedicated to King Jose I and his Prime Minister the Marquis de Pombal (Where have we heard his name before).
If that sounds familiar to you it should. Pombal is the man who spearheaded the reconstruction of Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake. With the lessons he learned in prefabricated construction and organization, Pombal built most of this city in only 5 months in 1774. The Pombaline style is definitely in evidence here. It surrounds the square on three sides; the northern side is taken up by the city’s main church. The simple 3 story buildings have dormer windows in the roofs on the third floor and the only real difference in the structures is the color of the tile roofs.
Diana spent some time in the shops while I wondered looking for things to see. The church on the square was not identified by any sign or plaque. Its most important feature is a statue of Nossa Senhora da Encarnação (Our Lady of the Incarnation) carved by Machado de Castro in the 1700s so I’m going to call it the First Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation. In fact, that might be the name as there are at least four other statues in the church with the same subject. Another unique feature are the Rocaille style chapels along the sides. It’s a little odd to see such overtly French style here in a small town on the Portuguese/Spanish frontier but no weirder than seeing it in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Another in a long line of Architectural Style Notes: It’s often said that Rocaille and Rococo are the same style but in my opinion Rocaille is the most ornate version of Louis XV style. While these styles overlap in many areas I think that Rocaille is more purely French while Rococo is a combination of French Rocaille and the Italian Baroque. (I did warn you that you might want to skip over anything I write in italics!) I guess it’s not hard to tell I love architecture.
The Stations of the Cross were also interesting. They are painted, carved wood with frames that look like Manueline arches.
From Vila Real de Santo António we headed across the Spanish border to Seville. Seville is a large city and the capital of Andalusia. It’s been around for over 2,000 years and in Roman times was known as Hispalis and was in the Roman province of Hispanica Baetica the source of our term Hispanic. I really like it when a place gives rise to a word that becomes a word in common usage. This is another area that was conquered by various tribes before coming under the control of the Moors. They left a permanent mark on the culture and the architecture before being expelled.
After a short drive through the city we arrived at our hotel, the Sevilla Center. It’s a very new hotel with great rooms and a good breakfast. A big plus is the grocery store directly across the street. Food in 4-star European hotels is very expensive. With the store so conveniently located you could get some great bread (the bread on the continent has been universally wonderful), meat, cheese and drinks that would fill us both up for less than half the price of one lunch. Plus it’s faster leaving more time for touring, or in Diana’s case, shopping. It’s not far from the old part of town, maybe a 10-15 minute walk. Dinner at the hotel was included today and after a long day touring and on the bus we were ready for an early night.
May 27 – Seville, Spain. Sevilla, as they call it, is a great spot for architecture. There are the usual Moorish influences on Spanish styles but because of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 there’s an excellent collection of buildings in many styles in a very concentrated area.
Of course, there are all the well-known buildings. The cathedral from the 1500s was built on the site of the city’s former mosque and, as recent DNA tests have confirmed, the site of the tomb of at least part of Christopher Columbus. The cathedral is huge, the longest nave in Spain, and lavishly decorated with gold. Next to it is the famous ‘Giralda’, the cathedral’s bell tower that is a converted minaret. The unique feature of the tower is the internal ramp system that allowed the men who chanted the call to prayer to ride horses to the top. The Alcazar, across from the cathedral, is the site of the old Moorish Palace later built upon and occupied by the Spanish Royals. Its famous gardens are a mixture of Andalusian, Christian and Moorish styles. There are several ‘Alcazars’ in Spain because the word comes from the Arabic word for palace or fortress but the one in Seville is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Outside the historic center of the city is a very interesting area near the Plaza de Espana. It’s the site of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Countries from all over the world built ornate pavilions for this world's fair and many are still in use today. The largest, Plaza de España, is a Moorish Revival building that has all the regions of Spain represented in tiled section in front of the building facing the plaza. Today the building is mainly used as government offices. Some of the other buildings have been converted to house consulates of the countries that built them. The main participants in the fair were Latin American countries, countries that were long-term trading partners with Spain and the Spanish regions and provinces. The USA had a pavilion, as did Morocco. Guatemala was a late participant and constructed a simple building in place of the normal palatial structure. It’s a small building that looks like Guatemalan temple and is covered in blue and white tiles. Some of the buildings are now museums and the pavilion of Argentina is a flamenco school. These structures are often used a movie sets, including Lawrence of Arabia, The Wind and the Lion, and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. This is an interesting city. The university is in an old tobacco factory, a very ornate gray stone building.
The Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza (The Bullring at the Arsenal), Seville’s bullring and amphitheater, is another great building. It’s the best bullring in Spain and maybe in the world. The most unusual feature is that it is oval and not round. It seats 14,000 people and, even though it’s an outdoor arena, the acoustics are fantastic. The Baroque exterior was completed in 1881 after 120 years of construction and is featured in Bizet’s ‘Carmen’. Don Jose, Carmen's rejected lover, murders her here as she tries to go in to see her new lover, Escamillo fight a bull. The building is painted white with ochre trim.
Color Note: I grew up across a small field from my Grandmother’s flower shop. I spent a lot of time there talking to her about flowers and colors and how she picked them to make her fantastic arrangements. Her floral pieces were extraordinary in every way. I credit the development of my photographic sense of composition to her advice on flower arranging. The idea of balance without symmetry was a great awakening for my creative side. I had asked her why there were more flowers on one side than the other in one of her basket arrangements and why some stuck out farther (or is it further? Actually it’s either!) than others. She patiently explained the concept of asymmetrical balance to me and, although I was about 6 at the time, I remember it as though it was yesterday. All this is preamble to explain why I know about the color ochre. I’m pretty sure all the women know but I’ve noticed that men usually talk in basic Crayola colors. You know, the red, yellow, green, blue, brown, black, orange and purple we all grew up with. So, for the men only, ochre is about the color a baby will spit up after eating a mixture of puréed squash and peas. Oops!! That might not be relevant information either. Oh well, some colors are tough.
The Palaco de San Telmo is another of the reasons I said this city is very interesting from an architectural point of view. St. Pedro González Telmo is the patron saint of fishermen and this palace was originally built in 1682 to be a school for navigators and sailors. It became a royal residence in 1894, then a seminary and is now the seat of the Regional Government of Andalusia. Most of the building is concrete and brick in the Pombaline style. The 1734 façade around the main entrance is a great example of Churrigueresque architecture. There’s a statue of San Telmo holding a ship and nautical charts is at the top of the façade, flanked by two other saints, San Hermenegildo (A Visigoth prince who was martyred after his conversion to Christianity) and San Fernando (A Portuguese Prince who died in captivity in North Africa rather than be ransomed in return for the northern Moroccan city of Ceuta to Moorish control). The columns on the floor below have 12 statues representing various arts and sciences.
Architectural Note (What?? Another note about style?): Churrigueresque style is a subset of Spanish Baroque and was had its beginnings as reaction to the formal elements in the classical style of the times. As with all Baroque styles it is very ornate and energetic. It appeals to the emotions rather than to the intellect. It has a sense of twisted movement and, some would say, excessive ornamentation. One of the main distinctives is the use of heavily ornamented columns, called Solomonic Columns, with ‘composite order’, a mixing of different classic column styles in the same column.
We walked through the Barrio Santa Cruz, the former Jewish Quarter of the city. It’s a maze of narrow cobbled streets lined with homes, cafes and shops. It’s very colorful and the shops have some very nice tiles and ceramics mixed in with the usual tourist items. Most of the streets are just wide enough for one subcompact car to fit through and to do that the pedestrians have to duck into doorways and alleys to let it get by. Fortunately, there is almost no motorized traffic whatsoever.
Then it was back to the hotel to prepare for dinner and a flamenco show. It will be interesting to compare and contrast this show with the gypsy style show we saw previously on this trip. I think this show will be much more formalized and costume oriented.
At 5:30pm we boarded the bus to head to el Palacio Andaluz, reputed to be the best flamenco venue and one of the best shows in Spain. I’ve been doing some reading on flamenco since our last show. It originated with gypsies but was quickly adopted by the Spanish in general and the Andalusians in specific. As it moved about the area, each group adopted it with added local styles. The major styles are bulerias, soleás, alegrías, fandango and sevillanas, but there are many less well known flamenco styles as well. The only one of these I’d ever heard of is the fandango and I thought it was a separate style of dance, not a subset of the flamenco. I’m going to include a link to some flamenco music. If you go there, play the clip from Jose Serrano & Antonio El Agujetas. It’s the second one down on the middle row of clips. These two guys are gypsies that were in prison when the flamenco society of Andalusia decided to have a contest for singers in the prison system. They won it and issued this album. Their flamenco is fantastic. We tend to think of the dance as the center feature of the style, but in Spain it’s the song that drives the music.
http://music.calabashmusic.com/world/Flamenco
The dinner was good but the show was fantastic. The mixture of styles, colorful costumes, wonderful guitar and emotional singers was one of the best I’ve ever seen. The show was much more formal is it’s presentation and organization than the gypsy show but it didn’t achieve the same raw feelings and power of that show. They had six women and 4 men dancing, with up to three guitarists and 3-5 people providing the clapping rhythms that I love. Between the stomping and the clapping there can be as many as 7 different rhythms in point and counterpoint beats. It’s a percussionist’s delight. Everyone had a great time.
Tomorrow we leave Seville to head to the Strait of Gibraltar and our ferry to Morocco. Should be an interesting day.
May 28 – Seville, Spain to Rabat, Morocco. Today we will be traveling through Jerez the same area we visited when the Prinsendam was in Cadiz. This is sherry and horse country for sure. It’s very rural between the cities in southern Spain, much like some of the east coast states. We are headed to the port city of Tarifa.
Tarifa is a very historic place. It was the area where the Moors first invaded Spain in 711AD. The Moors built a fort here that has so much in common with Roman design that it is believed that it’s built over the ruins of a Roman fort. It’s named for Guzman el Bueno, the leader of the forces who drove the Moors from the city in 1295 during the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula. Tarifa is the first port in the world to every charge merchants for the use of its wharves and is credited by many to be the origin of the word tariff.
It’s the southernmost city in Spain and is at the narrowest point of the Strait of Gibraltar. Northern Africa is easily visible from the shore. There’s regular ferry service from Tarifa to Tangiers, Morocco and that’s why we are headed there. Our guide, Monica, has warned us that they might want to do a luggage inspection before we board the ferry. That would mean that we would have to unload the bus, carry our bags through the terminal and then reload the bus before it boarded the boat. There was a line of autos waiting to board so we got off the bus and gathered in front of the terminal to wait to see what would happen. As the bus approached the inspection point we all watched closely, hoping that it would not be selected for a search. As soon as the bus pulled through the inspection without stopping Monica gave her familiar command, “¡Vámanos!” and we walked through the terminal to the passport inspection area. Here we encountered a bit of a problem. One of our fellow travelers lives in the US but was traveling on a passport for which Morocco requires a visa. She didn’t have one. Monica had suggested that they approach the official in advance to talk it over with him. They had a little meeting during which there was a lot of give and take and when the final decision was made both Monica and the traveler broke into big smiles and we knew we were in. After a short stop at the immigration booth to get out passports stamped we started walking across the pier to the ferry.
Two types of ferries run from Tarifa to Tangiers, the fast ferry type, they have three, and the older, larger traditional ferry. We are taking one of the fast ferries. Tarifa Jet, and our bus will be the largest vehicle on board. The semi trucks have to take the old ferry. Our bus has to be loaded last as it is a challenge just to get it aboard and no one wants to maneuver it very far on the vehicle deck. It was backed onto the ship because getting it off backward would be difficult in Tangiers. It was a close fit but accomplished neatly by our driver, Manuel. The trip over should take about 45 minutes. The strait looks pretty calm today so they should be able to go at full speed, about 25 mph.
Some of our group are reluctant sailors and worried about getting seasick. They know we are cruisers so they asked about prevention. I told them to get out on the open decks as soon as possible in as much breeze as they can stand and stay there. The feeling of the wind on your face and body distracts you from the signals being sent by your inner ear. They did, and were happy to report that it worked. Essentially we are sailing between the ancient ‘Pillars of Hercules’, which mark the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. It was past this point that ancient sailors thought the end of the earth existed and giant sea monsters roamed. It was said that if you sailed through the pillars you would never return. According to Plato, the lost city of Atlantis was ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules.’ According to the Romans, the Strait of Gibraltar was created when Hercules smashed through Atlas Mountain thereby creating the strait. The split Atlas was divided into the Rock of Gibraltar on the north and the Jebel Musa in Morocco on the south, the Pillars of Hercules.
The trip was uneventful and the weather was sunny. The ferry had two passenger decks that had airline type seats. On the lower deck they are in rows, just like an aircraft, but on the upper deck they are arranged around tables for eating or games. The ride was very smooth, the only motion was side to side as the ship turned, and not from wave action.
When we docked in Tangiers we all headed to the exchange to get some dirham, Morocco’s currency. It’s totally worthless outside Morocco and it’s very difficult to convert back so Monica advised us to get a little to get us through the first couple of days. The line at the exchange was pretty long so I went next door and found an ATM. My credit union card worked flawlessly and the exchange rate I got was better than the currency exchange. HiTech pays off again! There’s a little over 7 dirham to the dollar so you get some large bills when you get $50 worth. Monica had warned us that it’s risky in Morocco to take pictures of the military, police or any official installations. Depending on the mood of the officials who see you, you could loose your camera or media card.
Since the bus was last to be loaded onto the ferry, it was the first vehicle off. We met up with it in the parking lot of the port after we all finished our financial transactions. The drive to Rabat took us southwest along the coast. The country is very agricultural in this area. We passed fields, orchards and flocks most of the 120 miles from Tangiers. One surprise was the presence of large stands of cork trees. I knew that Portugal was known for cork but its presence in Africa was a surprise. One field we passed had large piles of harvested cork bark. They were laid out like cords of firewood and for exactly the same reason, to dry. The herds were mostly various types of goats and some were very large.
It was a fairly long day with the travel and the ferry crossing. We arrived a the Rabat Hotel late in the day and it was a good thing that dinner at the hotel was included as no one was in the mood to go looking for places to eat at that time. The hotel was nice, very modern. The shape is unusual, pointed at both ends like an eye if viewed from above. Inside, the center is an open atrium with the rooms arranged along the outer walls with a balcony running the entire circumference of each floor. The sides between the points are not smooth arcs but irregularly shaped forming a very unique architectural shape much like an Embassy Suites drawn by Salvador Dali. Dinner was good and included some traditional Moroccan dishes.
For a bus tour travel day this was not a bad one. The ferry ride and the unexpected scenery of northern Morocco made for a very pleasant day.
May 29 – Rabat to Casablanca to Marrakech, Morocco. Today is another travel day. We are heading to Marrakech (sometimes this is spelled with an s in place of the c but most maps, especially here like the c. Also Word’s spell checker prefers the ‘c’.) with a noon stop in Casablanca. Before we leave Rabat we are going to see some sights here.
Rabat is a city of about 2 million people and serves as the capital of the Kingdom of Morocco. It began with a settlement called Chellah on the banks of the Bou Regreg River. In about 40AD the Romans took over the area until 250AD when they abandoned it to the local Berbers. Berbers are the indigenous people of northwest Africa starting at the western border of Egypt and extending west to the Atlantic Ocean and south to the Niger River. Berbers were quick to accept the religious and military aspects of Islam that were brought to the area by Arabs in the 8th Century, but they were very slow to adopt the religion wholesale. It wasn’t until the 12th Century, over 400 years later that the Jewish and Christian communities were marginalized. Islam as practiced here is not the same as the radical version so popular in some areas. They allow Christians to practice their own religion but are very hostile to any attempts by them to share the Gospel with Muslims.
In the 17th Century the area around Rabat became the Republic of Bou Regreg and was governed by the Barbary Pirates. They used the area as a base of operations for raiding commercial shipping in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Various attempts by a variety of parties were unsuccessful in controlling the pirates so in 1912 the French invaded Morocco and established a protectorate there to control them. In the process they moved the capital city from Fez to Rabat. Berber, native Moroccan, rebel activity inland in the area of Fez made it very hazardous for French officials to be there. Since Rabat is on the ocean you only have to defend in one direction and you are close to an avenue for reinforcements and evacuation. It has remained there ever since. After WWII the USA had a major Air Force Base here to provide a bomber presence in the area. When the French government became unstable and with the advent of the long range B-52 bomber, the base was not critical to the US strategic interests and by 1963 the US military was completely out of the country. The facility became the main installation of the Royal Moroccan Air Force and still serves that purpose today.
Our first Rabat visit was the Hassan Tower. When this project was begun in 1195AD it was intended to be the world’s tallest minaret attached to the world’s largest mosque. Four years into the construction the sultan died and the project was abandoned. The tower only reached 140 feet, half of its intended height and only a few outside walls and parts of 200 columns of the mosque were built. The tower was to be similar in design to the Giralda in Seville, including the interior ramps to allow for horseback access to the top. It’s constructed of red sandstone and does not appear to be 800 years old. The half built tower across the courtyard of half finished columns makes a very odd sight. It has the appearance of one of those small hand-held games from the 1950s that had a few BBs inside a little box with post sticking up from the bottom. You had to maneuver the BBs between the posts and into some little holes.
At the opposite side of the courtyard that was to be a mosque is a modern structure from 1971 the Mausoleum of Mohammed V; the king that decided the USA should leave Morocco. He’s interred there with two of his sons, King Hassan II and Prince Abdallah. The mausoleum is a very formal structure in the Alaouite style. The Alaouite dynasty has been royal family of Morocco since 1666 and their construction projects (palaces, government buildings, etc.) have developed into a very formal, structured, sometimes heavily carved and decorated style that is usually has white to gray walls and a green tiled roof. The mausoleum is considered to be the best example of the style to date.
To enter the structure you have to ascend a broad staircase leading to a patio in which the mausoleum is centered. There’s a long gated fence that can close off the stairs and two large, ornate bronze incense burners flank them. The porches on the east and west sides of the mausoleum have three Moorish style arches, a large one flanked by two smaller ones. The building itself has only two doors, one each in the eastern and western walls. There’s a soldier posted at each of these doors. They’re dressed in white uniforms with long red robes and blue pillbox hats with four white diamond shaped panels, one on each side. They are armed with very old, bolt-action rifles with heavily carved stocks, inlaid with mother of pearl and gold. About as useful in combat as their uniforms, but they sure are pretty. They look like Model 98 (1898) German Mausers.
Once inside you find that you are on a balcony around a central area that overlooks the tomb of Mohammed V. The sarcophagus is a simple marble rectangle with a peaked top, very much like a roof. It is set on a floor of dark marble squares with inlaid marble designs extending 5 feet in from the edges. All of this is under a very ornate and heavily carved dome centered ceiling. His sons’ tombs are in rooms off to the side of the central space.
It was a strange experience to walk around the plaza between all the unfinished pillars of the mosque. If I hadn’t known what it what the space was I’m not sure I would have figured it out. As we exited the walls of the uncompleted mosque we passed between mounted guards. They were both on mottled gray horses and wore the same uniform as the mausoleum guards except that the cape was white and the hat green. In place of the rifles these guards were armed with lances.
When we left the Hassan Tower area we drove east along the Bou Regreg River to the Kasbah of Oudaias. In North Africa a medina is a walled section of a city and a kasbah is a walled fortress or castle. They are usually atop a hill or at the mouth of a river and that’s the case here. It was established to protect the entrance to the Bou Regreg from sea raiders. If you saw the movie ‘Blackhawk Down’ the Kasbah of Oudaias was used as a stand in for Somalia. It’s an area of vary narrow streets and houses in blue and white. The main gate is a large Moorish gate with lots of carving. It was constructed in the same time period as the Hassan Tower.
From the kasbah we headed into the center of town to see the Royal Palace. There are at least 5 royal palaces in Morocco. We saw one in Casablanca while we were on the Prinsendam. There’s one here in Rabat and also in Fez, Meknes, Marrakech and Tetouin that I know of, there may be more. This is a big one. Our guide told us that the palaces are more like administrative buildings and offices for the king and his staff. The royal residences are separate from these buildings. Our bus is not allowed anywhere near the palace so we were dropped off in the parking lot of the royal palace’s mosque about 300 yards away. The walk over was very pleasant as the area between the two is a nicely landscaped park with trees and fountains.
The palace is done in the Alaouite style with the typical white walls and green tile roof. The white walls are mainly undecorated but the windows, gates and doors are set in stone facades that are heavily carved and set with multicolored tiles in geometric designs. The Moroccan flag was flying from the main entrance and our guide said that meant the King was in his office today. The main gate had a concrete barrier set in front of it for security but the other gates were closed. A constant stream of people came and went in singles and small groups, some civilians, other military officers. Most had to check with security but some were just waived through. Must be VIPs.
After some discussion of Moroccan politics and the royal family we walked back to the bus and drove to the Chellah. This ancient area is right next to the most modern part of Rabat, the Ville Nouvelle, about 2 miles inland from the ocean on the south bank of the Bou Regreg River. The Chellah is the most ancient human settlement in the area. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians had several colonies in this area of western Africa. The Roman Era town of Sala Colonia occupied this site and was referred to as Sala by Ptolemy during the 2nd Century. It was abandoned as a city in 1154AD in favor or the new town of Salé on the north bank of the river at the ocean. In the 12th Century the Almohad Dynasty used part of it as a necropolis. In the 14th Century several monuments and the main gate were constructed as well as a mosque, an Islamic religious school and royal tombs.
The ruins of the Roman city are easily visible and the mosque’s minaret is in very good shape. A lot of the area inside the walls is now a garden and there were scores of stork nests in the trees and one large one atop the minaret. The main part of the city was in the river valley so getting to it was easy; the walk out was more difficult. Diana and I didn’t have any trouble, but some of the older members of the tour huffed and puffed getting up the hill to the main gate. It’s pretty warm today and there wasn’t much shade in the area. After that it was time to leave for the 55-mile drive to Casablanca.
The very pretty drive from Rabat to Casablanca is along the Atlantic Ocean through agricultural land. Morocco is apparently fairly progressive in their application of Islam as we passed all sorts of dress both in and out of the cities. Women in kaftans and hijabs to women in jeans, t-shirts and small headscarf could be seen in the same groups. It will be interesting to visit Casablanca again and see if we get the same impression that we did when we were here on March 24th off the Prinsendam. I have to admit that I have a different view of Morocco after spending more time here on this tour.
Our first stop was at the Hassan II mosque that we visited on 3/24. This time we didn’t go inside but had some time to look around the patio and outside the building. It’s an impressive structure but the inside can’t hold a candle to any respectable cathedral. Still, it’s the world’s second largest mosque in size, has the world’s tallest minaret, half of it extends out over the Atlantic Ocean and it is a remarkable building. This morning we saw a traditional, if unfinished, minaret with ramps for horses to allow access to the top. This afternoon we’re seeing a very modern minaret, including an elevator with pure titanium doors to accomplish the same purpose.
From the mosque we drove along the ocean south to a small point of land that extended out into the ocean. This area has several large hotel resorts, shops and restaurants and was our lunch stop. We had about an hour of free time to look around and eat. Diana and I decided to complete a lifelong dream we’ve had and set out to find a specific restaurant we had seen near here on our earlier visit off the Prinsendam. It didn’t take long. Just down the street from where the bus could park to unload us we encountered that marvel of marvels, the epitome of fine cuisine, the exquisite, exclusive example of fine Scots dining, home of the golden arches, MacDonald’s. OK, so I was kidding about most of that but not about the fact that eating there fulfilled a dream for me. Diana and I have eaten in a McDonald’s on every continent except Africa and here was our chance to complete the set. It even had a drive thru; they call them ‘McDrive’ here and in Europe. It had the traditional arrangement of inside or outside eating and the menu is pretty standard all over the world as is the preparation.
Touring v. Eating Note: If I have bored you with this before please feel free to skip along. When I have taken the time and trouble to get to some foreign place I don’t like to take up a lot of time eating or shopping. I’d rather spend my time seeing local sights and taking pictures. To facilitate this, when the goal is seeing rather than experiencing, I prefer to eat at places that don’t stretch your lunch into a two-hour affair. As you all know, I have absolutely nothing against a very nice, relaxed, well-prepared meal and that certainly has its time and place. However, when I’m in a new place, especially if it was difficult and time consuming to get there, I want to spend as much time as possible seeing the place, not eating lunch, dinner maybe, but not lunch. That makes McDonald’s perfect; quick, edible and you know up front what you’re getting. This is not an exhaustive list but we have been in Micky D’s in Rome, Paris, Vienna and London. That covers Europe. I’ve had a quarter-pounder in Hong Kong and Singapore to cover Asia. Sydney accounts for Australia. Buenos Aires and Lima take care of South America, and there’s not enough toner in my printer to for the North American list. That leaves Africa, and here comes Casablanca to the rescue. The perfecta is complete!!
McDonald’s everywhere are always busy and this one is no exception. My experience has been that almost every one I’ve been in outside the USA is busier than most stores in the US. Apparently I’m not the only one who doesn’t like to spend a long time over lunch. The language barrier is eliminated as they use the English titles on their menus worldwide, so a Big Mack is a Big Mack everywhere although the term ‘Quarter-Pounder’ apparently doesn’t translate well into some languages (or weight systems like metric) so they give it a different name. The McDonald’s in Casablanca certainly has a great location. It right on the Atlantic Ocean and near the center of a string of resort hotels. We saw several of our fellow tour members come in while we were there. Apparently we aren’t the only ones who don’t want to use a lot of valuable touring time eating.
After we had our lunch we had time to walk along the ocean and look out over the hotel grounds to the ocean. Most of them have a large pool area that overlooks the ocean with cafes and bars, each with a great view. This area is still being developed and many of the hotels have construction sites on the grounds. Diana looked in several of the shops for bargains and decided that this area is somewhat overpriced, probably aimed at tourists. After strolling along the ocean for about an hour we reboarded the bus and headed off to Marrakech.
The drive took us southeast and inland toward the High Atlas Mountains. Of the five divisions of this mountain range, these peaks are the highest. The entire range extends from southwestern Morocco to the southern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, where they form the African side of the Pillars of Hercules, and then across North Africa to Tunisia. Once again we are traveling through agricultural land with herds and crops dotting the roadside. Near one village we passed through an impressive display of upthrust rock that appeared to be granite. In this relatively flat area the rocks rose suddenly from the surrounding soil looking a lot like the chunks of macadam you see in the road rash you get when you crash your bicycle. Just thinking about that is giving me a chill.
The Marrakech is in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. At over 1 million residents it’s a large city. The name comes from the Berber words ‘mur’ and ‘akush’, meaning ‘Land of God’. It has the largest souk (traditional market) in Morocco, which borders one of the busiest plazas in the world, the Djemaa el Fna. There’s an old fortified city, dating from 1070, called the Medina Quarter and a modern city called the Gueliz. We arrived late in the day and just had time to freshen up and go to dinner in the hotel. Tomorrow is an up at 6:30 day for a city tour.
May 30 – Marrakech, Morocco. Even though we are spending the entire day in Marrakech, today’s wake up call was at 6:30am. We are going to tour the city this morning and have the afternoon off after which we will be going to a dinner show outside the city.
Our first stop was at the Koutoubia mosque and gardens. The gardens around the mosque are very pretty with lots of palms and citrus trees. At one point we came upon some men dressed in the costume of traditional water vendors. They wear a red, short-sleeved robe over normal clothes but the most unusual feature is their multi-colored, conical, embroidered and fringed hats. Every one is different but they are easily recognizable as ‘water sellers’ hats. They wear a leather apron over their right hip that hangs on a leather strap over their left shoulder. They have a leather strap over their right shoulder from which they hand a series of metal cups. They clang these cups together to announce their availability. Also attached to this strap and hanging under their left arm is a leather water bag that holds their water supply. They are shaped like the bota bags that were popular wine carriers in the US in the 1970s.
After a short walk through the gardens we arrived at the mosque. The mosque’s minaret is the tallest structure in Marrakech and dates from 1100s. It’s the prototype for the incomplete Hassan tower and the Giralda tower in Seville. It’s 221 feet tall and has some unusual features. Many minarets have three balls of increasing diameter on a spire at the top; this one has four. The current balls are copper but they were originally gold. The story is told that the wife of Caliph Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur broke her fast on a day during the month of Ramadan. (Observing Muslims do not eat while the sun is up during this month.) In atonement for this transgression she had all her gold jewelry melted down and made into a ball to place atop the minaret. Our guide was not sure that this actually happened but my experience is that when enough specifics are given many of these legends wind up being at least partly true.
Also atop this minaret is a gallows like structure that is rumored to be for public executions. Actually it was a very early device for the hearing impaired. Since they can’t hear the call to prayer, a flag was placed on this device so they could know when it was prayer time.
You probably remember that the mosque and minaret in Rabat were not completed because the Caliph died during construction. This mosque has an even better story. Just like the plaza by the Hassan tower, there’s an area next to this mosque that also has uncompleted columns covering the area. These are even shorter and are much more uniform in height than the ones in Rabat. I asked the guide what they were and he told us that they mark the sight of the original mosque. As I’m sure you know the front of a mosque must face Mecca to that the adherents will be kneeling in the proper direction during prayer. The first mosque was not oriented properly and had to be torn down. The sight was considered to be unfit for worship so the properly oriented mosque was built next door and attached to the original minaret. Since all this happened in the 1100s I’m pretty sure the architect did not live a full and prosperous life.
Our next stop was at the Bahia Palace. The palace was home to the Grand Vizier of Sultan Moulay al – Hassan I, Si' Ahmed ben Musa. (I know that’s overkill, but I just love the names. For short Si’ Ahmed ben Musa is known as ‘Bu-Ahmed’ in case you want to look him up.) It housed his 4 wives, 24 concubines, servants and guards in its nearly 150 rooms.
Historical Note with some timely irony: Bu-Ahmed was the last great ruler of Morocco. As the Moorish Empire was crumbling, this ex-slave, almost purely black man kept the Christian conquerors out of most of Morocco for almost 20 years. The story of how he came to power from his lowly beginnings is the stuff of fiction. When he died in 1900 the resulting civil war eventually brought the French to Morocco and led to the eventual declaration of the area as a French protectorate and the end of the Sultanate as an independent country.
The palace is unique in that, while it was built in the latter part of the 1800s, it is an attempt to recapture the glory of Andalusian Moorish architecture when Arab art was at its pinnacle. To do this Bu-Ahmed brought in the last surviving masters of the arts of chiseled plaster, ceramic mosaics and the honeycombing of gilded cedar. Today the palace is essentially empty, but it’s the palace itself that’s is now and always was the work of art. In a way the emptiness accentuates its beauty. Unfortunately, during the civil war and subsequent rule of the Barbary Pirates, the palace was badly damaged and is still undergoing restoration. Enough remains of the original structure to allow for full appreciation of its artistry and beauty.
Islamic architecture brought much to Spain and Portugal during the Moorish occupation. One feature is the central courtyard with rooms on its perimeter. This palace has many courtyards connected by halls, which are also lined with rooms. The largest of the courtyards is the one in the Harem. One room is larger than the others and more ornate with screens on the windows to provide privacy. This was the Favorite’s Room and the lady who occupied it was the first to give the Vizier a male child.
Since the palace is essentially empty you have a lot of time to admire the structure itself. At first I was a little confused by what I was seeing.
Personal History Note: After graduating from high school I worked for my Dad’s contracting company for a while. We installed flooring of all types, ceramic tile everywhere and counter tops. My job was installer’s assistant and in that capacity I had a chance to learn quite a bit about various construction techniques. We were usually onsite with other craftsmen, carpenters, painters, plumbers, etc., and I observed quite a bit about their skills as well. When I’m looking at structures the first thing I do is admire the beauty of the design but, the second thing I consider is, ‘How did they do that?’ The answer is usually fairly evident, however sometimes it is not clear at all.
This building is undeniably beautiful, but some of the elements were hard to figure. What they were and how they were built was not easily understood. That’s how I came to ask about certain areas and learned about chiseled (or carved) plaster and honeycombed cedar. The archways, room ceilings, windows and walls were often covered with these arts. At first I thought that the plaster items had somehow been cast or molded but it quickly became apparent that the large pieces with intricate shapes and designs would be difficult if not impossible to cast. Close examination revealed that the works were a single piece and had not been assembled from separate pieces making the idea that they were castings extremely remote. They were much easier to comprehend when you learned that they were originally one large block of plaster that has been carved into the intricate shapes of the final product. I’ve worked with plaster and the idea of carving it into these delicate and intricate designs is mind-boggling.
The cedar wood was also ornately carved and then parts of the design were colored. Its main use was as complete ceilings and in many cases the top 5 or 6 feet of the walls. Most of the original color is gone from these carvings but enough remains to give you an idea of the original look. The entire area is covered with geometric designs but the area where the ceiling joins the walls is very heavily carved in extremely ornate designs, probably the original example of crown molding.
I can see where some people would think the Bahia Palace was not very interesting (I overheard some grumbling in our tour group). The total lack of furnishings and the fact that much of the post-Moorish damage has not been repaired certainly make the beauty less accessible. To them I’ll say that the entrance fee is only 10 dirham, just a little over $1, so relax and enjoy the exotic surroundings.
After the palace we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the Fantasia show at Chez Ali. Chez Ali is an Arabic/Berber compound just outside the city of Marrakech. It’s like a Moroccan Epcot in that they gather musicians and performers from all over Morocco to perform here. They perform an after dinner show called Fantasia and their purpose is to give you a broad Moroccan cultural experience in one place. They meet this goal very adequately and sometimes spectacularly.
At 6pm we boarded our bus for the ride to the location. It is definitely outside the city, about 5 miles of so and it was well past sundown when we arrived. Monica has us arriving very early so we can enjoy the pre-dinner activities. From the outside the compound looks like a kasbah, a walled citadel, as the entire grounds are surrounded by a crenellated wall system. As you walk across the parking lot to the gate you proceed between two ranks of mounted Berber horseman with their long barreled rifles.
You enter the first courtyard through a large, deep gate. Inside you appear to be in a city square surrounded by houses, shops and, on the far side, a royal palace. A robed man playing a chanter is on the second story balcony of the palace. The music is very exotic and somewhat haunting. As you come through the inside of the gate two ladies in very ornate traditional dress take your arms for a photo opportunity. We remained in the courtyard for a while enjoying the surroundings and the music while watching our fellow travelers get there pictures taken.
When you exit this area you are in the grounds proper. The buildings are oriented abound a large open field in which the Fantasia show will take place. It’s surrounded on three sides by concrete stadium like seating about four rows deep. As we walk along the side of the field toward the far end we passed by eight different tribal bands, some with dancers and some without. They are all in their typical costumes and playing their traditional instruments. At the far end of the performance area is a structure of several multi-layered stories that looks like a medina and souk. This end of the performance area is opposite the stage, about 150 yards or more away. As you cross this area there are some small dance groups and a large band to entertain you.
The ‘tents’ are on the side of the open area that is stage right. There are about 20 permanent Moroccan Caidal style tents. They are large, elliptical structures with a longitudinally ridged, peaked roof. Just as with the originals, these have thick carpets on the floors and straight curtained walls from the roof down. Ours was set up with round tables for 8-10 people, but I did see some on the way down the walkway that had tables for 2 or 4 as well. I was told that they have seating for 2,000 people in the tents but we are in the early season for tourism and about half the tents are open tonight.
The dinner was excellent. It had four main courses each delivered family style in traditional crockery. The first course was Harira, a hearty soup that is the traditional food served to break the daytime fast required by Ramadan. It’s a lemony lamb concoction that’s almost a stew. It was delicious. I was lucky to be seated with 7 ladies so for me it was an all-you-can-eat affair. It was accompanied by baskets of bread, 10 inch, round loaves cut in quarters, bottles of water, red and white wine and the ever-present mint tea.
The second course was chicken tajine. At first I thought this was a style of cooking and I was not entirely incorrect but I came to learn that a tajine is a special pot used in Moroccan cooking. Sort of like when a cake baked in a bundt pan is called bundt cake.
Gustatory Note: A traditional tajine is a heavy clay cooking pot that has two parts. The base is a shallow, round, flat-bottomed bowl and the top is cone shaped and fits inside the short sides of the base during cooking. The cone shape insures that the moisture from cooking will be efficiently returned to the food, sort of a self-basting lid. The dish is cooked at low temperatures, much like a Crock-pot, so the meats are very tender and infused with the flavors of the vegetables with which they were cooked.
Our tajine included chicken cooked with beldi olives (reddish-purple with a slightly nut like flavor), mushrooms, onions, and cilantro in a wonderful mixture of spices. The base of the tajine was moist with just a tiny amount of liquid remaining on the bottom. It was so good that I’m considering buying one when we get home.
The next course was seven-vegetable couscous. Couscous is the staple starch of Morocco and most of Northern Africa. It’s moistened semolina flour rolled in very small spheres and then rolled in finely ground wheat flour. It is usually steamed and takes a long time to prepare. (Our guide told us that it is also a code word for lovemaking, as in, “I can’t wait to get home, my wife has promised to make couscous!”) It’s good but I prefer oriental style rice. Here they served it with chickpeas, squash, peppers, carrots and beans. The couscous was followed by a tray of small pastries, which were followed by fruit. The oranges were among the sweetest and juiciest I’ve ever eaten.
All during dinner the various groups we had passed on the walk in came into the tent to perform for us. It was boisterous and exuberant and thoroughly enjoyable. The bands and dancers moved between the tables giving everyone a very up-close experience. Based on the smiles and responses of my fellow travelers I’m pretty sure the enjoyment was universal.
Dinner took about two hours but with the various courses and entertainment it didn’t seem very long at all. All during the meal they were giving camel rides in the performance area. There were several camels; some were ridden horseback style while others had a small tent like structure on their backs that held two friendly people for the ride.
Monica has warned us to take our seats around the performance area right after dinner so we all moved out and sat together at the end of the arena. The show started with a parade of the Berber horsemen we had seen in the parking lot accompanied by Moroccan folk music. After the horsemen finished in the arena, the singers, dancers and musicians that had entertained us on entering and during dinner walked around the perimeter of the arena on the paved area behind the stands. They were organized loosely by group but it was not a formal parade by any means. The musicians played as they walked. After walking the three sides of the arena where there are seats they entered the arena itself and led a parade around the area that included other cast members and the Berber horsemen. It was organized to resemble a royal entourage. A hand carried chair enclosed in a tent was amid the marchers with a man playing an 8-foot trumpet taking up the rear.
The first formal act was acrobatics on horseback. The riders came racing down one side of the arena and performed their stunts as they turned and crossed the end and then, remounted, they zoomed up the other side. The performed saddle acrobatics as well as dismount and remount stunts. One of the most impressive moves was a rider who picked up a softball-sized beanbag from the arena floor while at a very brisk gallop. It was very reminiscent of the stunt riders you would see at a typical USA wild west show, very exciting. For comic relief the last rider entered on a very small donkey and performed some tricks as he crossed the area.
Next the Berber horsemen formed into four groups that took turns charging directly toward us from the other end of the arena, discharging their rifles in unison as they neared the stands. This was the most spectacular part of the show. The rifles were loaded for maximum visual effect. Flame, sparks and smoke shot more than 20 feet into the air from the end of each weapon. Their charge pulled up about 15 feet from the stands and they milled about there to accept our applause. Between the charges the bands from the various people groups of the country would perform music and dancing as the next group of horsemen got organized for their turn.
After this the arena lights were turned off in order to prepare for the next performer. The first thing to be lit was a single torch in the hands of a man standing about 25 yards from us in the arena center. As music began to play the lights came up on a portable stage that had been moved into place about 10 yards beyond the torchbearer. On the stage was a veiled belly dancer. During the first dance she loosened her cover-up veil and used is like a fan dancer uses her fans. In her later dances this veil had been discarded, leaving her in the traditional outfit.
Cultural Note: As I’ve said before, one of the most fascinating things about travel is observing cultural differences around the world. One of the most interesting elements of those differences are cultural preferences, things that are valued differently between cultures. After seeing several belly dancers it has become obvious to me that the zaftig body is definitely the valued type here. These ladies are not quite Rubenesque, but very close to it. They are definitely full-bodied, but well-proportioned. I’ll try to get a picture somewhere to show you what I mean. It’s much too dark here for pictures and the stage is way too far off for a flash to help.
She several more dances she reboarded the carried chair and the entourage accompanied her out of the arena while more exotic music played and an several announcements were made in Arabic that were not translated. It seemed to me that he was giving a roster of performers.
When everyone had cleared the field a chanter solo started and from the right side tower of the kasbah near the main entrance a flying carpet appeared. It carried its passenger across the field to disappear in the tower on the other side. It wasn’t exactly up to Disney standards but the spotlight they used to highlight it was dim enough to maintain the illusion of flight.
When the carpet disappeared, the entire cast, mounted Berbers and all, began a procession from the far end of the arena toward us. The entire procession was lighted by two large flares that were ignited on the sides of the arena about half way up. When they reached us they stopped and the horsemen fired one more volley on their rifles. This salute was the signal for the fireworks to start.
At the far end of the arena they had a very nice display of aerial and ground fireworks. It was nothing like the displays at major cities for the 4th of July or Disney’s nightly displays at the theme parks. It was, however, very evocative of the 4th of July celebrations held in the small cities around the area where I grew up in Pennsylvania. This evening should not be missed if you are ever in Marrakech. The food was delicious, the show was brilliant, the horsemanship was exciting and the local bands and dancers were superb as well! An evening to remember for sure.
It’s very late and we have a travel day tomorrow. Fortunately Monica has assigned us a 7:30am wake up call, giving us an extra hour of sleep.
May 31 – Marrakech to Fez, Morocco. Today will is a travel day. We are driving the N8 highway, headed northeast along the foothills of the High Atlas and across the Middle Atlas from Marrakech to Fez. It’s a pretty rural route with only fairly small cities along the way. After a late night last night and an early morning today we’ll probably spend the free afternoon lounging around the hotel.
It was a very pleasant drive. We passed through small villages and medium sized towns. There were great views of Moroccan rural and agricultural life. Village markets, robed women, children who would smile and wave at us, produce on its way to market and fields of crops. I began to notice small and large groups of people at the side of the road looking toward us as we rode up the street. Many of these groups had the Moroccan flag prominently displayed. I asked Monica if she knew what they were waiting for and she asked the driver. No one knew for sure, the consensus seemed to be that the King was coming this way and the people were waiting for him to pass by.
When we passed through towns the fact that people were waiting for some event became more and more obvious as people were sitting along the road in groups. Then, just before our lunch stop we were driving through a small village where two inflatable archways, one yellow and one red were set across the main street in front of us. A sign on the first one cleared everything up. It said, “Tour du Maroc Cycliste – 21 eme edition” (The Bicycle Tour of Morocco - 21st Edition). Everyone was waiting for bicycle racers to come by! The main street was closed at the arches and I was afraid that we were going to be stuck in a long line of traffic until the cyclists went though. The local police took pity on us and allowed us to drive through a parking area to pass the arches and resume our trip to Fez. The little town was the designated staging point for the mid-day stop.
Our mid-day stop was a restaurant, right on the highway but not in a city, a few miles down the road. It was a nice place overlooking a small stream. The restaurant’s specialty is tajines. They had lamb and chicken to pick from. I am so enamored with that style of cooking that I didn’t even look at the rest of the menu before ordering the chicken tajine. As the food came out I noticed that French fries were a popular choice with the picky eaters. Others had a fish dish and some ordered salads but most had one tajine or the other. Here they serve in smaller, individual tajines rather than family size as at Chez Ali. The crockery was the same, just smaller. This version had cabbage, green and beldi olives, green beans, squash and tomatoes in addition to the chicken. Once again, it was delicious.
After lunch I looked around the area a little. I’m a fast eater and usually have some time to look for a good picture or two. The road outside the restaurant provided a good view of the small stream below. A small group of women was sitting by the stream. It appeared that all but one were local women by their coloration and dress. One woman sat facing the group. She appeared to be more European or American. It’s possible it was some sort of program meeting or organized group. It was the time for Asr prayers (Afternoon, the third of five daily Islamic prayer times) so that would be a good time to meet and not be observed if it was a women’s group.
As our trip continued we traveled across the lower Middle Atlas Mountains. On our right side large rock outcroppings rose very close to the road. In the distance we could see the higher peaks in the range. The flat ground and many of the hillsides were being farmed. The green trees standing amid the golden dry grasses reminded me of the area inland from San Francisco on the eastern side of the mountains in summer. We arrived at our hotel late in the day and after dinner got some well-needed rest.
June 1 – Fez, Morocco. In the morning we were awakened by activity outside the hotel. Sometime during the night the bicycle racers arrived in Fez and are staying in our hotel. They were outside with their support vehicles gearing up for the day’s racing. It was only a half hour before our scheduled wake up call so I got up and took a shower. We are spending the entire day in the area so there’s no need to pack up and get the suitcases out.
Fez is only about 80 miles from the Mediterranean and 100 miles from the Strait of Gibraltar. When the Moors were pushed out of Spain the city received a big spurt in growth from resettled Muslims. Later, when the Jews were driven from Spain under the Edict of Expulsion, many settled here forming the first Mellah (Jewish Quarter) in Morocco. Others would follow, starting in Marrakech.
Historical (Nothing is as simple as it seems) Note: When the Moors invaded Iberia they received assistance and support from the Jewish communities in the area, probably because of the harsh treatment Jews suffered under Visigoth rule. Because Jews were viewed as monotheists (People of the Book or dhimmis) by Muslims, they were well treated and flourished during the Moorish era. Muslims did not, and still do not, view Christians as monotheists because they believe in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Muslims reject the trinity concept completely and view Christians as polytheists worshiping three gods and therefore infidels, not dhimmis. While Islam looks down on dhimmis they occupy a status much higher than that of infidels. The irony is that this situation is now completely reversed. By a large margin, the staunchest supporters of Israel are Christians and Islam is their mortal enemy. Because of the association of the Jews with Muslims bad feelings festered between the Christian rulers of Spain and the Jewish community after the reconquest in the 1300s. By the 1400s this enmity had festered to the point of open hostility resulting in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492. The transplanted Jews formed the Mellah in Fez. A Mellah is the Jewish section of a city, always walled and fortified and usually near the Royal Palace for protection during times of unrest. In rural areas the Mellah will be a separate city occupied only by Jews.
Fez is a city of about a million people and is the fourth largest in the country. It was the capital of Morocco after the Berber King Idris threw out the foreign rulers in the 8th century. It remained the spiritual and artistic center of the country after the French moved the political capital to Rabat because Rabat was more easily defended against the Berber rebels. Fez is one of the 4 royal cities; the others are Rabat, Meknes and Marrakech. Many historians believe it was the largest city in the world in the late 1100s.
Today Fez has three main sections, Fez el Bali (The old walled section), Fez-Jdid (New Fez, home of the Mellah) and Ville Nouvelle (The section built during French occupation, the newest part of the city). Here, we encounter of the oddities of the old world. The fact that the ‘new’ section of the city was built in the 1500s and the newest part in the 1800s. The medina in Fez el Bali, the larger of the two in Fez, is the largest, contiguous car-free urban area in the world.
Our hotel is located several miles out of town so we had a short ride into the city. Our first stop was at a hilltop fort south of town. From there we had a great view overlooking the city. Our guide gave us a lot of information about the city; it’s quarters, souks and buildings. We are going to take a walking tour across the entire Old City. Fortunately it’s built on a gentle, downhill slope from west to east and we’re going to start our walk on the western side so it will be mostly downhill. There are several souks (markets) in the Old City including the Souk Ain Allou (leather), the Souk Attarine (spices) and the Souk au Henne (henna/dyes) and we’re going to go through them all.
Our local guide has warned us that the souks will be crowded and the alleys narrow and twisting. It will be important to keep sight of each other because if we get separated it will be very difficult for him to find us. The area is about a mile and a half from east to west but the route through Fez el Bali is anything but straight. I wouldn’t be surprised if the walk is well over 2 miles.
On the way to the old city we stopped for a visit at the Royal Palace of Fez. Again it’s not open to the public and we were told that this one is the least used by the king. We could get closer to this one that the one in Rabat. It is propertied to be the most beautifully decorated of all the palaces and if the main gate and area we got close to are any indication, I believe it.
The tile work, the carved plaster, the wood and the bronze doors are beautiful. The difference here is that all these elements still retain the colors they were painted. The intricate tile mosaics were particularly attractive and the carved plaster looks so different in colors. It made it even harder to figure out what it was made of and how it was made. I’m glad I saw the raw carved plaster at Bahia Palace before seeing this because it allowed me to appreciate it more. The craftsmanship was truly remarkable. It’s a shame we couldn’t see the inside.
Our bus dropped us off at the western end of Fez el Bali, near the Medersa Bou Inania. Abu Inan Faris, a sultan of Morocco, founded this Islamic religious school. Because he did not have a good reputation in the area of piety, he had 300 sons and tended to murder his opponents in horrible ways, the religious leaders of the mosque advised him to build his school on the city garbage dump. He had the last laugh, although posthumously, in that the school became one of the most important religious places in Morocco. It’s one of the few religious places that is open to non-Moslem visitors.
As we followed our guide through the medina it became readily apparent that getting lost here would be very easy. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania where we spent a lot of time on farmland and in the woods. I either developed or was given by God an excellent sense of direction and distance but here in the closed in, narrow alleys that change direction often and are not organized at right angles and where you have no view of the sky to see the sun or any shadows cast by the sun it does not take very much time before you are not sure which direction you are heading. This is very unusual for me and I have to admit that it was a little disconcerting. I knew I could find my way back to the entry point, my mind was still able to keep track of that, but I’m used to knowing whether I’m facing north, east, south or west and I had completely lost track of that after about 20 minutes of walking in the old city.
Initially we were passing through an area predominated by metalwork shops. Our guide took us into one where a man was demonstrating the way they are decorated. He was working on a large copper tray with his small etching tool and hammer. The owner of the store explained the decoration process and displayed the three different quality levels of the metalwork. All are pretty but the differences are obvious. The least expensive style is power stamped into shape and then decorated in simple patterns with large individual tool marks. They are usually a harder alloy of copper, like bronze or brass. These are very useable trays that can stand a lot of wear and tear.
Metallurgical Note: Copper is a pure chemical element with the symbol Cu. It is relatively soft and ductile with a pinkish hue unusual in metals, with the exception of gold. Brass is copper mixed with zinc. It’s usually yellowish in color. If you’ve seen rifle or pistol ammunition you’ve likely seen brass, as most cartridge cases are made from it. In fact, empty cases are called ‘brass’ in the shooting sports. Bronze is also primarily copper usually mixed with tin. Bronze is more reddish-brown in color. Since copper is the main ingredient in the two alloys they share many of its properties but they are, to one extent or the other, stronger and harder.
The middle quality is usually copper and hand formed but in thinner metal with simple shape and moderate decoration in medium tool marks. This type is best used as a wall hanging because it is too easily damaged to put to any hard use.
The highest quality is copper but much thicker and therefore harder to shape. The decoration is very intricate and finely done with very small tool marks and therefore many more tool strikes to form an inch of line. These can be used but have to be treated with care as the fine decoration can be damaged quite easily. The price of each item is determined by the size, quality of decoration and materials used. A large tray of the least expensive style is still less expensive than a medium sized tray of the most expensive.
In addition to the copper products they also had silverware of all types, trays, bowls and teapots seemed to be the most common. Some of these were exquisitely decorated in the finest lines and most intricate patterns. Truly beautiful and also comparatively expensive compared to copperware. They also make picture and mirror frames, vases, small and medium boxes, lamps, knives and even entire doors from various metals. Sometimes the items are set with decorative cut and polished stone, colored glass, wood and enamel.
Diana loves to buy local handicrafts and she selected a medium sized tray made with all three types of copper materials done in the most intricate decorative style. It’s very pretty and the three colors of the copper types make it very attractive indeed. The tray is the thick copper type and the other metals are applied for color variation during the decorating process, almost like gold leaf is applied.
Shopping Note: We make a pretty good pair in this type of acquisition. I have the most input on the technical aspects of the purchase, construction style, materials, etc. and Diana has the most input on the decoration and color, etc. When these skills are combined we always wind up getting something superior to anything either of us would have selected on our own. Unfortunately, I hate to shop so Diana usually has to track me down and tell me what she wants so I can have my input, although when there’s something I want the process can be reversed. Usually, if I can find my ‘Fridgie’ I’m happy. They’re small, light and easily packed, the perfect souvenir.
Next we walked through an area with mostly food items, olives, dates, spices, fruit, vegetables, baked goods, butcher shops and stands selling food to eat. The narrow alleys were crowded with people making it difficult for our group to maintain any sort of cohesiveness. We had our local guide at the front of the line and Monica followed at the rear, urging those who wanted to linger and shop to keep up with the group. I really don’t like moving about as a group because it makes it next to impossible to take pictures. A few minutes in, I started going ahead of the group to get pictures while being watchful for changes in direction by the group. I could tell that it made our guide nervous to have me out in front but he saw that I was watching him for turns and returning to the group when he turned, joining the line in the middle and then moving ahead again when the chance arose. In a short time he relaxed and let me go.
Soon we had passed into an area that was mostly textiles, rugs, clothing, blankets and bolts of cloth. These were interspersed with non-leather handbags and other jewelry and accessories. The wares were displayed hanging from every possible place. Every vendor had a long stick with a hook on the end to retrieve those items hanging from the overhead trellis and high on the buildings’ façades. This was a very colorful area.
In the middle of the medina, right next to Souk Attarine (specializes in spices and perfumes) is the Medersa el-Attarine, which takes its name from the souk, not the other way around. A medersa is an Islamic religious school. This one was founded in 1325 by a sultan of the Marinid dynasty (1244-1465). It is a great example of Islamic architecture from that period. The Marinid sultans loved attending religious schools and built many of them around the country. These medersas were responsible for the increase in the Sunni sect of Islam during this period.
The construction uses many of the techniques that I’ve already mentioned, carved plaster and cedar, ceramic tiles, etc. It utilizes one technique that was common before the introduction of the tiled mural, first used in this building. Prior to this murals were created by tiling a wall with black glazed ceramic tile. The artist than used a sharp knife to scrape away the black glaze to expose the tile’s terra cotta base, a technique called taqshir. The remaining black glaze created the mural. This worked quite well as the two colors worked together quite well and in fact improved as the exposed terra cotta ages and changed to a richer color.
Here in the Medersa el-Attarine’s central courtyard you have all three techniques together on the surrounding walls. Starting from the top down you have a narrow green tile roof sloping inward around the entire courtyard. Directly under this roof is a 5-foot area of carved cedar also running the entire circumference of the space. Below the cedar is an 8-9 foot tall area made of carved plaster with windows in it that comprises the second floor of the building. The first floor wall is actually a series of arches, the pillars of which are covered with carved stucco on the top 2/5 and colored tile mosaic on the bottom 3/5.
In between these two areas is a band of taqshir mural in which the black glace has been scraped off the tiles to form the word Allah in Islamic script as well as some decorative geometric figures. The 1 foot tall band of taqshir extends around the entire courtyard. This arrangement places the taqshir elements of the wall directly atop the colored ceramic mosaics, the style that was eventually to replace the use of taqshir in Islamic architecture. Since this was the first use of colored ceramic tiles to create a mosaic, the designer had no way to know this would come to pass.
6-foot tall cedar wood screens carved in honeycomb style cover the lower part of the arches’ open area. The upper curved part of the arch remains open. All this decoration creates a very attractive, yet highly ornate space. By contrast, the teaching and student area of the school are very Spartan.
When we left the medersa we continued our way across the medina through the perfume and spice souk toward the east. There are also quite a few garment shops in the area selling the robes and head scarves that most women wear here while in public.
Unlike the medieval villages in Europe where some auto and truck traffic is allowed for deliveries and maintenance, the medina has none. This is for several reasons. First, these are still working everyday shops for the locals, not tourist attractions. Second, the alleys are even narrower than the streets in a medieval city. Third, these alleys were never streets in any sense of the word. They often twist and turn on a very short radius and there are stairs every now and then that can’t be avoided. Fourth, they are much more crowded with people than the medieval cities I have visited. The one exception is Eze in France. It’s on a very steep hilltop and the streets are curvy and narrow with occasional stairs. I’m pretty sure there’s no four-wheeled traffic there either.
You ask, “How do Moroccans move heavy loads in the souks?” I’m glad you asked! They use donkeys. These animals are the UPS vans and pickup trucks of Morocco. I saw them carrying everything from merchandise and water to lumber and bricks. They clop through the medina almost oblivious to the people around them. Their owners shout a fairly unintelligible warning in Arabic as they walk behind them. Most are wearing the cut off bottom of a gallon plastic jug as a makeshift muzzle. They walk slowly and the mass of humanity parts miraculously, like the Red Sea, to allow them through. On the narrow streets is was very difficult to get far enough away from them for a good picture because the mass of people would block your view until they parted right next to you to let the donkey through and then close behind them as though they were never there. Our guide had warned us that if we heard the warning to look out because, although the donkeys walk slowly, they do not stop easily. For the most part they seem well behaved but there are so many that I’m sure there must be incidents.
We entered a part of the medina that was not a souk, but a residential area. The ancient buildings with their unique and exotic doors, gives you a real feeling of living history. We passed a day care center in an ancient building. Someone had painted a very crude likeness of Mickey Mouse over the door. I wonder if Walt is getting his royalties from them. (Now that’s funny!!)
When we turned onto carpenter’s street the smell of freshly cut cedar filled the air. The shops are totally open to the street and most are about the size of a handball court. Very few power tools were in evidence and I didn’t hear one in operation while we were there. The sounds of sawing and hammering echoed continuously down the street. The shops I looked in had a variety of projects; tables, carved screens, moldings and chairs were popular. At one end of the street were a few craftsmen that operated in a specialty market, wedding chairs, couches (which serve as thrones for the happy couple) and palankeens (a cupola in which the bride sits as she is carried through the neighborhood. In English a palanquin).
These wedding carpenters build their furniture out of wood but then cover it in very shiny material that looks like satin. It is stitched in a quilt like pattern of vine like plant forms and edged with woven cloth between the quilted areas. The most common are in silver plant forms with white background. The silver areas are heavily dotted with crystals or rhinestones. The stones are not obvious until a light illuminates them. They show up pretty well in flash pictures but in available light shots they are not obvious. They cover everything they make in this fashion and almost always in the same color scheme. The sole exception I saw was a pair of chairs in a gold and white motif. The cloth was entirely gold and white beads that were attached to divide the gold material into geometric patterns, not plant forms, provided the white. I don’t know if this was the tradition of a different sect or just a bold fashion decision.
On leaving the carpenter’s street we passed by the Kairaouine Mosque, the second largest mosque in Morocco. The minaret was built in 956 and is the oldest Islamic structure in Fez. This mosque is the equivalent of the Vatican for Moroccan Muslims. It sets the prayer schedules and the timing of Islamic festivals for the entire country and serves as the supreme authority in religious matters.
It seems somewhat odd that the holiest place in the country should be situated right next to the Souk Ain Allou, the district of leather shops and tanneries. The tanning process is considered to be, and rightly so, a very unclean thing in Islam. The only way I can explain this proximity is that both the mosque and the tanneries developed when Fez was little more than a small village and have coexisted in close proximity every since. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter this mosque or even approach for a peak inside so we kept our distance while the local guide gave us the story.
Not surprisingly our next stop was in a leather shop. The main leather products in this shop were shoes, mostly very brightly colored, purses and brief cases (mostly in brown and tan shades but some in the same colors as the shoes). The owner told us that there was a great view of the tannery from the roof of his building. As we headed for the stairs he handed each of us a large bunch of mint leaves. Turns out that this is a Moroccan gas mask of sorts and it was to come in handy when we got to the roof of the third floor. Inside the building you could smell a faint odor but when you walked out the door onto the roof it hit you pretty hard. It got much worse as you headed for the edge of the roof to look down on the tannery. About half the group never made it to the overlook but were turned back by the odor as soon as they hit the roof. Others made a dash to the edge to look down and then beat a hasty retreat to the stairwell. About a quarter of us stayed to observe the process and take pictures. I did breathe through the mint for a minute or two but quickly adjusted to the odor.
Personal Note: I have to admit that I was at a great advantage in this situation. I grew up around Pennsylvania Dutch farms and many of the processes were quite odoriferous. From butchering livestock to making Grammy’s lye soap (The smelliest part was rendering the fat that formed the base of the soap. In fact, this smelled somewhat like the tannery.) the type and strength of olfactory experiences varied widely.
We could observe the entire process of tanning from our vantage point. The area was a courtyard surrounded by buildings probably all leather shops. Most of the courtyard was filled with a honeycomb like structure of connected clay vats. Just like a beehive, most vats share their walls with other vats. Against the far wall are about 35 vats used to remove the fur from the skins and tan them. I believe most of the odor comes from this area as the locals use a time-honored solution of pigeon guano and sheep’s urine to tan the hides. The use of urine produces a very white leather. The clay on the sides of these vats is distinctly white
The process begins with a man standing next to a big pile of what appeared to be goat pelts. He trims the pelts with a large and apparently very sharp knife, judging by how easily he sliced through the skins. The trimmed pelts are piled next to him where another worker takes them and slathers a thick, white liquid (I suspect this is a lime solution) on the skin side. As he stacks them on the outer rim of the white-sided vats he alternates the pelts so the skin sides are together. Here other workmen pick them up and submerge them into one of the vats. A few vats down two men, one with a long pole with a hook at the end, are pulling pelts out of a vat to be rinsed and hung to dry. I’m not sure how long they spend in this liquid but from what I know about skins it would have to be weeks, probably with a rinsing and resoaking process every few days after a couple of weeks. The hair is then scraped from the hide with a dull knife and collected into large sacks.
After the fur is removed the hides are placed in vats with drains at the bottom. Here they are soaked with fresh water, pounded with wooden posts, more water, more pounding, etc. This serves two purposes; it removes the liquid that they were soaked in and accounts for the especially soft feel of Moroccan leather. After the beating process the hides are once again hung to dry. The result is a very white leather with an extremely light pinkish hue. Somewhere in this process they are soaked in a solution of dissolved doggie doo. Apparently there’s an enzyme in the doo that helps break down some fibers in the leather to make it extra pliable. I’m a little confused about when this occurs but it’s probably before the rinsing and pounding process.
After the hides are dry they can be dyed. There are about 60 dying vats between the tanning vats and us. They are still their natural clay color and the liquids in them are shades of red, yellow, pink, orange, black and various tan/brown shades. How long the hides are soaked in the dye and what the process entails is a mystery to me, as they were not doing anything in that area today. All the activity was in the tanning area. Our time in the shop was just about over so the few of us who remained on the roof headed downstairs.
The sales area was a sight to behold. One wall was covered in brightly colored shoes. They were actually more like slippers, the fronts were entirely enclosed but the back half was only the sole, but I’ve seen a lot of people wearing them on the street. They had three walls of handbags and cases.
On leaving the leather souk we passed through an area of confectioners. The main constituents of the sweets seemed to be nuts, nougat and honey. I didn’t see any chocolate. Many of the offerings were large bricks of colorful nougat with nuts. In the middle of this area we stopped outside the mausoleum of Zaouia Moulay Idris II. Many devout Muslims make a pilgrimage to this site and the convection shops we just passed are located here for them to buy for use in worship at the tomb. Non-Muslims can’t enter the mausoleum but you can peek in through the door. The exterior is also very nicely decorated. The carved plaster panels are among the most delicate and intricate that I’ve seen. There’s also a small mosque on the site.
Walking out on a different street than we entered we passed more candy vendors interspersed with date and dried fruit, straw and textile shops. We passed along the side of the Kairaouine Mosque and I was able to catch a glimpse of the inside and take some pictures through an open door. Mostly just white walls and the carpeted floor of the prayer room. I did manage to get a picture of a very large and ornate carved plaster wall that had an antique wooden clock in a niche in the middle of the space. I asked the guide about it because it looked like a European mantle clock, perhaps British. He told me that in the 1800s there was a brisk cotton trade between Morocco and England centered in the city of Manchester. It became customary for the Moroccan businessmen who lived there to send back English clocks. One room of the Moulan Idris mausoleum is filled with them.
At that time these clocks were extremely valuable as they were more accurate that most time keeping instruments in Morocco. Time is a supercritical matter in Islamic prayers. They are scheduled down to the minute, the times change every day and are different by location. Also the adherent must know the exact direction to Mecca, as you must bow in that direction.
We walked out of the medina through another residential section passing donkeys carrying loads of Coca-Cola and boxes of merchandise. Once back on our bus we drove back to the suburbs to our hotel. We passed through some agricultural areas with groves and farmland. There were lots of people to watch along the street. We were driving on a broad boulevard with vendors pushing carts and a bus stop every now and then. One bus stop was fairly crowded with a mixture of men, women and school children. At the back, under the shade of the stop’s cover, was a gorgeous teenage girl. Her head was covered with a tightly wrapped white scarf that only served to heighten her good looks. She could have been a model anywhere in the world with the possible exception of North Africa.
We got back to the Zalaga Parc Palace Hotel in the early afternoon. All the bike racers are long gone and I think we may be the only tenants in this large hotel this afternoon. I could see the hotel’s gardens and pool from my balcony and it looked so enticing I decided to head down for a swim. The pool is large and is bounded on two sides by very nice grounds. The water was warm and if you sat in the sun for just a few minutes you were completely dry. Not much humidity in the air. Only 6 of my fellow travelers were at the pool and we were the only ones there. We’re having a late night tonight, dinner and show in the medina, and an early start tomorrow (a travel day) so I think most people were resting up. After a couple of hours at the pool I joined them.
At 7:30pm we left the hotel for the old city. It’s a Sunday evening and as we were driving along a main boulevard, people were out in force, watching and being watched. It was very much like the ‘promenade’ that the Greeks observe on Sunday evenings. All the adults and small children put on their best clothes and the teens wear whatever is fashionable as they walk a circuit around the city’s main square. The teens here walk in small groups by gender. I didn’t see one mixed gender group of teens.
Our bus can’t get into the medina so it dropped us off at one of the gates and we walked the narrow streets of Fez el-Bali to the Restaurant Al Fassi. I’m immediately interested as the logo on the restaurant’s small sign is a tajine, my current favorite cooking utensil. Inside we found round table s for eight had been reserved for us on the perimeter of the central courtyard that serves as a performance area. We were seated with a couple from Tasmania, a couple from New Zealand and two ladies from Mississippi. Everyone on this tour has been fun and easy to get along with, a key feature on a long tour when the bus is full. But the folks from down under and the ladies from the south have been a joy to travel with (‘ladies from the south’ definitely includes the two girls from Florida, they’re a absolute riot).
A trio of a violin, a doumbec (small drum with a hollow ceramic body shaped like two paper cups glued together at the bottoms and goat skin head) and a bendir (a tambourine like drum without the jingles but with a snare stretched across the drum just under the goatskin head that give a buzzing sound as the drum is struck. The men were dressed in white caftans with the traditional, Shriner-style, Fez cap. The music was typical Moroccan and very entertaining. The first things to hit the table were large bottles of water, accompanied by red and white wines.
The first course of our meal was unusual. In structure it was a lot like the shepherd’s pie that most pubs serve in England, much like a double crust pie in the USA. The filling was the unique part. It was mostly composed of vegetables. I identified several types of peppers, corn, broccoli, chickpeas, several types of squash, eggplant and maybe a small amount of chicken, all very finely cut. The key was the spicing. I don’t know exactly what the spices were (possibly saffron, ginger, cinnamon, cumin, cayenne, turmeric, lemon juice, cilantro and sugar) but the result was a sweet, savory taste that was very good. I’m pretty sure that the vegetables were all cooked and spiced prior to filling the pie and may have had a thickening agent added (corn starch or flour) because when the pie was sliced the pieces held up very well.
The next course was lamb tajine. This time the unique cooker held lamb, pale green olives, zucchini and potatoes but it’s the spices that make the dish. The more I have food cooked in this style, the more I’m going to be tempted to buy a tajine when we get home. This one was as delicious as those we’ve had before.
As we enjoyed the lamb we had our first belly dancer. She was in a red long sleeved top and long skirt that almost touched the floor. She had a black, beaded sash with 4-inch dangling strings of beads around her hips to accentuate her hip movement while dancing. After her solo performance she got several groups of diners up to teach them a dance step or two. Everyone was clapping and howling, it was great fun, especially since I was not selected to participate.
The next performer was a slight of hand magician. He was wearing a brightly colored Ali Baba outfit including a turban with a large red jewel in the front. The outfit and his Groucho Marx mustache gave him that Alfred E. Neuman “What me worry?” look.
Pop Culture Note: It just dawned on me that many of you might not have read MAD magazine in your youth. Just Google his name for a complete explanation and a picture. I was addicted to the publication when I was in Jr. and Sr. High. The humor was great!
He performed the folded newspaper water trick and several other well traveled gags. For his finale he requested the assistance of the youngest member of our tour, Shawna. She’s a thirteen year old, very pretty blonde girl, traveling with her grandparents. She may be 13 but she looks much older. Arab men have been ogling her everywhere we go, so it was no great surprise when the magician selected her as his assistant. Also, her clothing was more suited to the trick than any of the other women in the audience, a deep V cut neckline. He handed her a folded handkerchief that he asked her to stick down the top of her dress in the middle of the V-neck with a little sticking out. He then grasped the corner of the cloth and started pulling it out of her dress. After the handkerchief was all the way out, a very lacy bra attached to it came out as well. This was an old gag as well but with Shawna as his model it worked pretty well.
After the magician we had our second belly dancer. Her costume also covered her from neck to ankles, a light blue caftan with a multicolored wide belt with a floor length, vertical striped apron front and back. She wore an embroidered straw hat with tassels around the brim. Since each of these dancers represents a different style and region, I wish I had asked the guide which was which but I didn’t. Her style seemed to combine the hip movements of belly dance with the arm motions of flamenco. (I’ve heard it alleged that North African belly dancing was a precursor to flamenco but I have not been able to confirm or debunk that notion.) The last dancer did not make much use of her upper body; most the motion was south of the border. This dancer involved her shoulders in the action to a large extent. Her arms were extended at shoulder height much of the time.
I was relieved that she didn’t seem intent on selecting any ‘volunteers’ for dance lessons. That relief proved to be overly optimistic and very short lived when she danced across the room and sat in my lap where she continued in what could only be described as an early Moorish ‘lap dance’. One of the group caught this activity on camera and I have to tell you that everyone at my table was enjoying my discomfort immensely. I was handling it pretty well until she started shaking her shoulders, which had the side effect of smacking me in the chest with her Winnebagos. That did it; I was officially and maximally nonplussed, not an easy thing to do by the way.
Next she selected Cirse, our young Cuban compatriot, to teach some dance movements. As she started the lesson it was obvious that Cirse has either done this before or is a very quick study. The lesson quickly became a dance off and Cirse was outstanding. She got each movement quickly and then challenged the dancer to keep up. It was great fun and accompanied by a lot of hootin’ and hollerin’, as we say in the South. At the end they hugged each other in appreciation of their effort. You can see a short clip of the event at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pgW5Gh3_Fc.
Our third belly dancer was more in the mode of what we recognize as the art form. She wore a bright blue, beaded bra with long beaded strings hanging down to her waist and a wide blue spangled belt with a bikini bottom and translucent blue, floor length flaps front and back. She had matching wrist and ankle bracelets as well. She also has that zaftig figure I was trying to describe while we were in Marrakech. In this style her arms were almost always extended out from the shoulder with the elbows bent to put her hands at head height. All parts of her body were moving one way or another. At the end she lit some small torches and played with fire for a few minutes, passing the flame along her arms and legs. I almost had an inappropriate moment of laughter when I had the involuntary thought, “I guess it beats shaving.” I can’t help it; my mind just goes where it wants to. One of my heroes of the faith, Martin Luther (the great reformer from the 1500s) while talking on the idea of thoughts as sin said, “You can’t stop a bird from flying over your head, but you can keep it from building a nest in your hair!” He recognized that no matter how close you may draw to God, you’ve still got to live with your human nature, at least in this world. This recognition of his own shortcomings is one of his most endearing personal qualities, trumped only by his devotion to God and his sense of duty to Scripture.
The next group was a Tamazight Berber quartet from central Morocco. They all wore white caftans, gold and white turbans, brown leather belts, woven, narrow red sashes with multicolor patches and beads and those slipper-like shoes in yellow leather. Two were playing bendirs, one had a doumbec and the last man was playing scissors. That’s right, large, steel, tailors shears (more likely goat shearing shears. These are Berbers after all) that he held point down by the finger holes and struck with a small steel rod like a triangle player would use. He had only two real notes to contribute, the one produced when he struck the scissors with the rod, the other when he clicked the two halves together like he was trying to cut something.
Folkloric Note: When we were in Peru we saw the Danza de Tijeras where two dancers, each carrying and clicking large scissors, perform a series of dance challenges that become ever more difficult and intricate. This is the first time I have seen them as an instrument in a musical group.
They moved slowly across the performance area in tempo with the music. At the end one of the bendir players performed some twirling, spinning (the drum, not the drummer) and creative playing techniques with his tambourine like drum.
Our last performer was another belly dancer. She was dressed in a two-piece costume as well. It was black cloth with gold and silver bangles and fringe. The skirt was ankle length and had four hip high slits in it. Her style was not significantly different from her immediate predecessor to my untrained eye, except that occasionally one of her arms would be lowered to her side on certain movements.
The show was a lot of fun and it introduced me to two styles of dance I’d never seen before and a new musical instrument, the goat shears. This was certainly a culturally broadening experience. After our walk back to the bus it was on to the hotel. Tomorrow we head to Tangiers.
June 2 – Fez & Meknes to Tangier, Morocco. Today we are driving from Fez to Tangier through Meknes, another of the Royal Cities. The Rif Mountains partly block the way north from Fez to Tangier so we will take the highway route to the coast near Rabat and then go north to Tangier. This route takes us past Meknes once the capital of Morocco. At one time there was a significant Roman presence in this area and many of the ruins remain. We are just doing a drive-by.
We viewed several gates into the old city of Meknes and drove around a significant portion of the city wall. The sun was very bright and reflections off the windows made almost all my pictures unrecoverable. That’s too bad as the al-Mansour Gate to the city was one of the largest and most ornate city gates I’ve ever seen. It’s tiled and carved and has huge wooden doors to seal it.
From there we headed to the coast and then turned north on the same road we took south on May 28 retracing our steps back to Tangier. This time we’ll be in town overnight in order to be up early to catch the fast ferry back to Tarifa, Spain. We made our lunch stop at Cap (Cape) Spartel. It’s a very picturesque location. There’s a lighthouse that was built in 1864 on a high bluff over two very nice beaches. Camel rides were available for those who had not yet taken one or those who just can’t get enough. We had lunch on the patio of a restaurant just across the street from the lighthouse. The day was very nice and the view was great. I don’t remember what we ate and I didn’t take a picture. Seems to me it was some sort of sandwich.
After that it was into Tangier and to the hotel. Wake up tomorrow is 5:15.
June 3 – Tangier, Morocco & Gibraltar to Torremolinos, Spain. This morning is an early start, 5:15am wakeup, bags out at 5:45, breakfast at 6am and on the bus at 6:45, yikes!! Monica says that she sometimes encounters problems at this port and then when we arrive in Spain. Spain has a large illegal alien problem, just like the US but theirs involves mostly Islamic Africans. They seem to take it much more seriously than we do and I give them points for that.
We got to the port of Tangier a little early and had to wait a bit but we didn’t have any trouble getting on the boat. We’re on the fast ferry but this one is a little smaller and older than the one we came over on. We came over on the 87-meter long Tarifa Jet and we’re going back on the 60-meter long Tangier Jet. It only has one passenger deck and carries just over 500 people whereas the Tarifa has two carries 800. It’s one year older and 10 knots slower at top speed. We seem to be moving pretty quickly so I don’t know how different their cruising speeds are. The trip took about an hour and forty-five minutes, not significantly different from the time coming over.
When we arrived in Tarifa, Monica proved to be correct. We had to get off the bus, unload all of our luggage and carry it through the terminal for inspection. It’s a pain but unavoidable, I understand the Spanish position. They’re not going to give terrorists an easy entry into their country.
Comparative Security Note: The odd thing is that we have such heavy security at airports but allow millions of illegal entries by foot across the Mexican border every year. It would be a joke, really, if it weren’t so dangerous for our security. Do we really think that the drug cartel owned police forces of Mexico have any security function at all on their side of the border? All the honest cops and judges get killed, the rest either accept the drug dealer’s bribe money or turn their heads for their own safety. I’m guessing that we will keep our heads firmly in the sand until this weakness is exploited to launch an attack on a major southwestern city. When that happens maybe we will finally take the illegal alien situation seriously. I have a hard time understanding the coddling of non-US citizen scofflaws by our government at all levels. If you can’t control your borders, you can’t control your economy, security or public services and therefore taxes and the legitimate access to governmental services by our citizens and legal residents. A main contributor to the inaction on this issue is that our two main political parties have their own reasons to ignore it; one wants the workers, the other wants the voters. What, you say, aliens can’t vote. Well, are you sure? Why is it that it’s illegal for poll workers in California to even ask to see identification of any kind? In what universe does it make any sense not to require voters to identify themselves? Apparently there are segments of our society that don’t want us to have control over our elections either. Even if the illegals weren’t voting, the mass amnesties we provide every 10-15 years to these same lawbreakers means that they will eventually become voters. Just what our country needs, hoards of people who don’t really give a damn about obeying the law becoming voters. It’s bad enough that we seem to be growing them in ever-increasing numbers all on our own. Really total nonsense to anyone who is actually sane and has no hidden political agenda. Ouch!! Well I thought long and hard about deleting this rant but I decided not to because, as I’ve often said, I write this for myself and when I read these things years later often they are very entertaining. Sometimes I think, “Boy was sure right about that.” and other times I wonder, “What I was thinking!” Either way it’s a hoot. One of the byproducts of foreign travel it the new insights it provides to my own country and culture. Mostly it makes me grateful for where I was born and the life it provides me. But sometimes it’s a source of irritation because I see all the ways we are becoming more and more like the places I’m glad I don’t live.
So we spent some time dragging our luggage through the terminal and had to stand in line for a while, a small price to pay for Spain’s security. Some of the people on the tour are not good sailors and, even though the crossing was very smooth, I can tell that they are so happy to be back on Terra Firma that standing in line is no problem for them either. Pretty much everyone is in a good humor.
Our next stop was Gibraltar, home of the famous Rock. As Monica, a Spanish citizen, laments, “We’ll never get this back I don’t know why we keep making an issue of it.” I had to agree. Having been to the Falkland Islands, if Britain is willing to go all the way to the other end of the globe to fight for those bleak, wind-swept rocks, they would certainly hop over here to defend Gibraltar.
Gibraltar is only a short drive west from Tarifa along the Spanish coast. Our bus cannot get into Gibraltar because traffic is very bad there, the roads are narrow and it costs a lot to get the proper permits. We were dropped on the border with Spain and, after posing for pictures with the rock through the border fence; we walked across the border into Gibraltar. It’s only about 100 yards to the border station and then another 30 yards to the airport terminal. That’s where the smaller local busses picked us up for our tour of The Rock.
When you leave the airport’s terminal you have to drive across the runway to get anywhere, as the airport is parallel to the border and so is the runway. In fact, about half of the runway extends out into the Mediterranean Sea. The runway, at 6,000 feet is about 2,000 feet longer than the three quarter of a mile border between Spain and Gibraltar. The runway also has the distinction of being the closest in distance to the major city that it serves. It’s only 550 yards to the city center. The part of the runway built over the sea rests on rock that was blasted out while they were excavating the extensive fortifications and tunnel system that runs all through The Rock of Gibraltar. More on the caves and tunnels later.
We drove along the coast on the west side of the country/city. There’s a unique and interesting piece of naval history in this area. As we passed the Napier of Magdala Battery we could see the breech end of the “100-ton Gun”. It’s a muzzleloader. That’s correct, the gun was loaded from the front by a steam operated lifting and ramming system. First, up to 450 pounds of black powder were tamped into place. Then the 2,000-pound, almost 18 inch in diameter, shell was rammed home. It’s an RML (Rifled Muzzle Loader) so forcing the projectile down the twisting ridges of the barrel was no small feat. It took three hours to fire the first shot because it took that much time to get up enough steam to operate the loading mechanism. This was not a particular problem because the ships at that time took more than three hours from the time they were sighted until they arrived in the area of the harbor. After the first shot the 35-man crew could fire another shot every four minutes.
This was the first of a new class of artillery called ‘superguns’, built in 1874. The Victorian age engineers toiled at the peak of British Naval supremacy and could indulge themselves in the excesses necessary to produce this unprecedented weapon. Four were built (two were here in Gibraltar and two were in Malta) and only two remain. The other example, on the island of Malta, has not been maintained as well and is not in pristine condition like the Gibraltar gun. It weights 100.2 tons (hence the name) and can fire it’s one-ton projectile 8 miles and at that distance it could penetrate 25 inches of iron. We will never know how far the type might have been pushed because advances in technology allowed designers to begin building breech loading guns and the relative simplicity and speed of loading a gun from the back dealt a death blow to muzzle loading systems.
Oddly enough they were originally going to be sold to Italy for use on a new class of battleship but the British government stopped the sale because they feared that the Italians had designs on taking the island of Malta. Ironically, two of the guns wound up defending the island instead. I wish we’d had the time to take a closer look at it.
We drove down the western side of the peninsula with great views out over the Med. On the way we passed the Gibraltar Waterfall. This waterfall is the result of water flowing through the rock itself. It cascades about The Rock of Gibraltar is a monolithic limestone outcropping. Limestone is naturally porous and often supports the growth of caves because some parts are softer than others and as the water trickles through the rock it dissolves the softer parts. As the salt rich water drips through the resulting voids stalactites and stalagmites form. I’m sure most of you have been in a cave somewhere in the world. The Rock is also a great natural filter and for over 100 years the water collected on and coming out of the rock supplied the country’s fresh water. A desalination plant has been built that now supplies all the water so The Rock’s watershed is being allowed to return to its natural state. The waterfall is the result of removing the large water pipe that connected The Rock to the water supply. It cascades down the Rocks western face for about 80 feet or so.
After passing through a tunnel hewn from The Rock we arrived at Europa Point, the southernmost point on the Iberian Peninsula. We are actually on a large flat space just south of the Ibrahim-al-Ibrahim mosque. It’s a modern mosque built by the King of Saudi Arabia as a gift to the people of Gibraltar. I’m not sure how many of them appreciated it, as only 7% of them are Moslem. It cost him 16 million dollars and is in a beautiful location.
The area we’re standing on has a large water cistern that has been here since Moorish times. It is referred to as Nun’s Well and our guide told us that he used to say that the name had no historical significance but was the result of folk tales and legends. However, recently an old map was discovered described the underground water tank as a “bathing place for ye Nuns of Nostra Senora D: Europa”, in other words the ‘Nun’s Well’. Turns out that the appellation was correct after all.
Historical ‘Gotcha’ Note: Unfortunately, the above phenomenon exists in the scientific and literary communities as well as well as the world of tourism. Scientists like to pretend that they are impartial arbiters of what is fact when, in reality, a great many of them are actually promoters of a specific idea or theory often with total abandonment of the scientific method. For example, for hundreds of years scientists, mostly archaeologists and historians, criticized the Bible because no mention of Pontius Pilate could be found in Roman histories and records. Surely, they reasoned, a Prefect of Judea who ruled just prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans would be mentioned somewhere. This, they said, was a reason to question the accuracy of the Scriptures. This position has several problems, not the least of which is that, as any student of logic will tell you, it is not possible to disprove a hypothesis with a lack of evidence. The most you can do is say that no evidence exists to prove it. This does not mean it isn’t true, just that it can’t be proven.
This particular Biblical criticism was laid to rest forever when, in 1961, an excavation near the amphitheater at Caesarea Maritima on the coast of Israel uncovered a carved stone tablet inscribed in Latin. It says, “TIBERIEUM, (PON)TIUS PILATUS, (PRAEF)ECTUS IUDA(EAE)” which translates to "Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea". When I was in Israel with the USAF in 1968 this tablet was still in place at Caesarea. The tablet is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and it’s inventory number 1963-104. Certainly this prestigious Jewish institution cannot be accused of a bias to prove any part of the New Testament in which they do not believe. Since that time more has been uncovered about Pilate. Another interesting fact is that he ruled from 26-36AD, exactly the time period when Jesus was crucified. My personal favorite year for the crucifixion is 31AD, but almost all reputable Biblical scholars place it between 31-34AD. I did warn you that you might want to skip these notes!
After admiring the mosque, the lighthouse and the view we headed back north, this time on a road higher up the rock. It provided great vistas looking across the bay to the west at Spain. We got off the bus at the point where a dead end street intersected with Engineer Rd. and walked down that street to an area where you can enter the St. Michael’s Cave. This network of limestone caves in the Upper Rock Nature Reserve and is almost 1,000 feet above sea level. It’s named for a similar cave in Apulia, Italy where St. Michael is said to have appeared. It’s a fairly hot tourist attraction, receiving about 1,000,000 visitors per year.
The cave has been in use since at least Neolithic times (10,000BC), a bowl from that period was discovered in 1974. Since then charcoal cave art has been discovered that dates from about 15-18,000BC and two Neanderthal skulls have been found that date from 40,000BC most likely the caves earliest visitors. There is evidence that the Greeks, Romans and Phoenicians also ventured into the cave. The caves have been thoroughly explored over the years but many of the passages have yet to be studied scientifically.
During WWII the cave was prepared for use as a military hospital but was never used. During this period it was decided that an alternate entrance was needed to improve the air and serve as an emergency exit in case of air attack. While blasting this entrance they discovered another cave complex deeper in the rock. It’s called Lower St. Michael’s Cave (Don’t let anyone tell you that the British don’t use inventive names) and the chain of ever lower chambers exhibit almost all known cave formations, including a lake of perfectly clear water. During this time a network of tunnels was dug throughout The Rock that served as storage and air raid shelters as well as routes for unseen movement because, although they were officially neutral, Spain provided much support for the Axis powers including spying for the Germans.
Today the largest cavern, the Cathedral Cave, is used as an auditorium. The cavern proved to have perfect natural acoustics that blend and enhance music. It has a concrete stage and seats for over 100 guests. They hold plays, concerts and most importantly the Miss Gibraltar beauty pageant here. I love limestone caves because they are always cool, other types of caves can be cool but not those near geothermal or volcanic activity. This cave was reputed to be bottomless (they know better now) and was the subject of one of The Rock’s best legends. They thought that the cave was the entrance to a 15-mile long passage that went under the Med to Africa. It was thought that the Barbary Macaques got to Gibraltar through the cave.
The Barbary Macaque is often referred to as a ‘Barbary Ape’ but actually it’s a true monkey, it’s just that it only has a short stub like tail. (That’s about as good a segue as you’re going to get from me. I usually just hop from one topic to another.) They are endemic to the Atlas mountain area of Africa but a sizeable colony has lived on Gibraltar since anyone can remember. It’s possible that the Phoenicians or Moors brought them here as pets but it is not definitively known how they got here.
There are currently 5 troops living on the upper rock. Every now and then one of them will make a raid into the city with some resulting property damage. As with all wild animals you have to be careful around them. As the “Dog Whisperer” will tell you attitude and approach are the secret to animals. If you move slowly, without moving your arms much or looming over them, you can get right next to them and they don’t seem to mind at all. Our guide, Monica, tried to discourage us from this activity I trust my own judgment around animals. We encountered some monkeys in Indonesia that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near. Most mammals give you plenty of warning if they are not happy with you or your behavior, usually posture or ears but sometimes sounds.
I had my picture taken with a couple of them and talked Diana into getting into one of the pictures. I love the shot. She’s got a big smile on her face but she’s pretty much hiding behind me. A troop was waiting to greet us as we exited the gift shop of St. Michael’s Cave. I think they wait for tourists to see if they can get a snack from you. They are well behaved and sit politely on the wall or fence waiting to see if some food will be offered and don’t seem at all offended if none is.
From there we drove to downtown to Grand Casemates Square. This is the center of social activity on The Rock. It’s a large square that was a beach before the Moors decided to start a new town on the spot in 1160. Now it’s the main entrance to Gibraltar and to get to Main Street you have to pass through the square. There are pubs, restaurants, tourist shops, jewelry shops, a pharmacy, clothing shops, fast food and one ‘Turf Accountant’ (British for Bookie) available here. The fast food ranges from a Subway to Roy’s Cod, a very traditional fish and chips place. I love English style fish and chips so Roy’s was my choice for lunch. Yikes. Huge pieces of crisply fried cod resting on a pile of chips (French fries to us) all wrapped in a large piece of butcher paper. We sat on a bench facing the square and munched away. I may love this but Diana is not that fond of it because the chips can get pretty soggy from the fish laying on them. By the time I get done putting on the malt vinegar it’s hard to tell what’s happened to the chips but they are delicious. I stayed on the bench while Diana browsed the shops. The mixture of tourists and locals seemed to be about 50/50, there’s a huge ship in port today.
It’s the 4,300-passanger Independence of the Seas from Royal Caribbean. Its maiden voyage was May 2nd of this year so she’s only one month old. This class of RC ship eclipses the QM2’s claim to be the worlds largest. What they don’t tell you is that it’s only 3,000 tons heavier (154k to 151k, less than 2% larger) but carries 1,300 more passengers (4,300 to 3,000, that’s a 47% increase). So it’s only a tiny bit larger in displacement but hugely different in passenger capacity. I’ve been on the QM2 when it was pretty full and there was always plenty of room to move around, if you threw in another thousand people I’m not sure you could still feel that way.
After lunch it we walked back out through the Grand Casemates Gates, boarded the small bus for the trip back across the runway to the airport terminal where, after everyone had rejoined the group we walked back across the border to meet our Globus bus. I forgot to mention that our Cubano friend had to spend the afternoon in a café on the Spanish side of the border as a visa was required for her to enter Gibraltar and she didn’t have one. It was a joyous reunion when she met us at the bus. We had our best overall view of The Rock. Unfortunately it was through the window of a moving bus so the picture is less than great.
We drove along the Spanish coast past small white villages on the hillsides and through small mountain ranges to the coastal town of Torremolinos. Prior to booking this trip I’d never heard of this city and that triggered my compulsive need to research.
Personal Note: I’ve always been that way, I really can’t help it. As a child I would read anything. My mom bought me an encyclopedia from the grocery store, one volume every week. As we got them, I read them. I fell a little behind somewhere around M but did manage to finish them within a month after we got the last volume. When we go on a trip I research the places we’re going to find out what I really have to see while I’m there and so I know something about what I’m seeing while I’m seeing it. I started this after I visited the Po Lin Monastery in Hong Kong and didn’t know that there was a shrine with one of the Buddha’s teeth in it on the site. Consequently I didn’t see it and when I learned that it was there it bothered me. In order not to repeat that mistake, I now read about and research the places we’re going. The unexpected benefit of this process it that I find I enjoy being places more than I did because I know more about what I’m seeing.
Torremolinos, Spain is a definite tourist town. It’s on the coast of Andalusia, in the province of Malaga. It was a poor little fishing village until the late 1950s. It was the first city on the Costa del Sol to hit it big in the tourist trade. It was very popular with the British and has a large expatriate British population. It peaked out in the 80s-90s and has dropped off somewhat lately but is still quite popular with the older ‘snowbird’ crowd. The 18-30 age group that made it the place to be at its peak has dropped of precipitously. It had developed a large ‘gay’ community and at the moment there are no ‘straight’ nightclubs open in the city so the fun loving young crowd has moved down the coast. It’s still popular with families and seniors who are not that interested in nightlife. (It’s amazing what you can learn about an area when you mix it up with the locals.)
Our hotel is just across the street from the beach. It’s a very nice location. Diana isn’t feeling well so we had a simple dinner and then went to bed.
June 4 - Torremolions, Spain. This morning Diana is still a little under the weather so I went next door to the grocery and got her some supplies, food, liquids, etc. We do not have any formal touring today so it’s a good day to recover. We do have several things we wanted to accomplish today so I think I’ll be busy. The tube on Diana’s other hearing aid has broken (You may remember that we had one fixed in Lisbon) so that’s a priority and she’s still suffering from that pop up rash so I’m going to try to wash most of our clothes today with the allergenic soap we brought with us.
Breakfast was included at the hotel so I ate and took some up to Diana. I asked at the front desk to see if there was an audiologist or self-service laundry nearby to I could get my to do list under control. According to them there is not self-service laundry in the city and no one knew of an audiologist either. Well, I figured that maybe, like Lisbon, an optometrist might be able to help with the broken tube and I did get the name of two laundries that do washing. I didn’t want to deal with the language barrier over the phone so I gathered up the clothes and got a taxi to the laundry.
The first place I stopped said that they would not be able to finish the washing today and we leave early tomorrow morning so that wasn’t going to work. He said that there was a second place half a block down that might be able to help. I lugged the clothing down there and after an explanation of why I wanted it done the owner agreed to do it. The ladies there were all smiling at my attempts to explain. To describe my words as Spanglish would have been to give them too much credit, but it worked. They even understood that I had some soap that I wanted them to use.
The hearing aid repair was another matter. After checking at several optometrists and pharmacies I hadn’t found one that had the needed supplies. All this looking was giving me a great tour of the city and lots of exercise. I finally found a place that had the tube but since Diana wasn’t there to fit it he gave me a piece of the tubing and said I could fit it to her. The tubing is so stiff that I doubt I will be able to bend it to make the turns needed without crimping it.
This pretty much killed off the morning so I headed back to the hotel to see what Diana was up to. She was still resting and I brought her some lunch munchies and then decided to take a walk down the beach. Our hotel is in Torremolinos proper very close to an outcropping of rock that divides the eastern beach from the western. To drive around it would be a pretty long trip but they have developed a seaside walk, the Paseo Maritimo, that hugs the rock and gets you to the west side. This area is known as La Carihuela and was the site of an old fishing village.
In La Carihuela the beachside walkway is lined with boutiques and seafood restaurants on the landside. The seaside is mostly an unobstructed view of the ocean with the exception of the occasional chiringuito (beach bar). These beach bars are very cool. They range from small thatch covered huts to small buildings like you used to find on the boardwalk along the beach in Southern California and the Caribbean. They serve drinks and seafood snacks. Most have a little fire ring next to them on which they grill and char small fish and other seafood right out in the open. I think these probably started out as small places for the fishermen in the area to sell their catch but they are all commercial enterprises at this time.
As I walked along the beach I saw some very nice sand sculptures. Parts of the walk have been developed into a small park. They had a small nicely painted fishing boat in the park as a monument to the city’s past. Our guide, Monica, recommended a fish restaurant in La Carihuela as one of the best in the city so I decided to walk there to have a late lunch. This should work out well because she warned that it was often very crowded as it is a favorite with locals and tourists. There are fish restaurants near our hotel and quite a few west of the rock before you get to Juan’s but I was determined to eat there. The walk was about a mile and a quarter but since it was along the beach it was very pleasant.
When I arrived at Juan’s there were only about 4 tables occupied and the waiter took me to a table right next to the large, open windows facing the beach. He brought me a menu and some very tasty cracked, green olives. I ordered a bottle of water and began to study the menu, which was entirely in Spanish. There were lots of fish entrees and I was looking for a special dish that Monica had recommended, Sea Bass in salt. Apparently one of the specialties of this area is to bake a sea bass in a coating of salt. When she mentioned this most of us had the same reaction, “I’m not that fond of salt.” Apparently the salt does not transfer to the fish but just seals in the flavor and juices. I guess I have to trust her on that.
When the waiter came back for my order I decided to exercise my total lack of skill in Spanish and engaged him in a conversation about the fish dishes on the menu. When we got to the sea bass in salt he shook his head a little and I asked why. He said, ‘Para los turistas’. I asked, ¿Porqué? To which he responded, “No es nuestra mejor entrada.” (I’m heavily into paraphrasing here because my ear for the rapid pace of Castilian Spanish is not good at all) What I got from what he said that it was not their best way to serve fish. I asked what he thought was better. His answer included the words ajo, mantequilla, oregano (garlic, butter, oregano- Obviously some items I understood completely) and asado a la parilla (as near as I could figure it, grilled). I really wanted to see the salt method but I took his advice and had the grilled sea bass. That waiter is a genius. I don’t think the salt method could have been any better than the one I ordered.
The whole fish was on the platter, expertly split and deboned. It had been grilled with slices of garlic, sweet onions, butter and oregano. The sides were a small chopped salad, potatoes, a crusty roll and half a lemon. It was fantastic!! Bass in general has very delicate flavor and when I first saw my meal I thought it might be a lot like eating snails, all you taste is the garlic and the butter. I could not have been more wrong. I’m not sure how they did it but the thin slices of garlic were great on their own. Maybe they baked the garlic or marinated it to smooth out the flavor but the flavor of the garlic pieces was light and with the sweet onion a perfect compliment to the bass. I was somewhat upset that Diana wasn’t well and couldn’t enjoy this treat with me.
After finishing my meal the restaurant was still not busy so no one seemed upset when I ordered more of the olives they gave me when I sat down along with a coffee and sat at the table watching people go by. The coffee proved to be espresso and that was ok with me. The tiny cups make me feel so dainty as I sip the strong brew.
On the walk back to the east beach and my hotel I spotted a Chinese junk cruising down the beach. It had all three of its traditional sails up and was causing a little stir among the few beachgoers out on the sand. The few sun worshipers on the beach were obviously calling each others attention to the spectacle as heads were popping up from their blankets in a very small version of the stadium crowd’s wave as the ship proceeded eastward.
Torremolinos is a hotbed of bull fighting and there are colorful signs all over town announcing an event on the 8th of June. We’ll be on the train to Paris so we won’t be attending. Evidence of the British influence is all over town. Restaurants advertising English breakfast are everywhere. I actually like the traditional breakfast in the UK, everything except the beans. They are just like Campbell’s Pork and Beans but served at breakfast and often on toast. Now I do like beans, I’m just not ready for them at 7AM.
When I got back to the hotel I checked in on Diana and she was feeling better. I caught a taxi to go to the laundry to get our clothes. It’s hard to catch a cab in that area so I had him wait while I walked across the plaza to pick them up. Fortunately everything was ready so I lugged it to the cab and went directly back to the hotel.
Just east of the hotel is a little shopping alley that winds its way up the hill. Our hotel is almost at sea level at the base of an escarpment. The main city is atop this sea cliff and this little pedestrian alley goes about 25% of the way up from there you have to take stairs or an elevator that the city has installed. It’s about a six-story ride up from the shopping street. The street is lined with all sorts of shops including the pub where I was to eat dinner. Most of the stores are tourist related but there are others as well, travel agency, currency exchange and, at the base of the street on the main beach street, a grocery store. Mixed in with all the shops are residences so you see a lot of locals walking up and down the street.
The pub where I ate dinner served typical English pub fare, I had bangers and mash with peas. Bangers and mash are of course sausages and mashed potatoes; the peas are just green peas like we eat in the US. The landlord, the customers and the staff of the pub all spoke with decidedly British accents. The only give away that you were not in England was the fact that the street side of the pub was almost entirely open.
Well, I’d had a busy day of running around and was ready for bed pretty early. Diana seems to have made a good recovery and that’s good because tomorrow will be a busy day traveling to and touring Granada.
June 5 – Torremolinos to Granada, Spain. Today we are driving from the sea to the mountains. We will be skirting the edges of the Sierra Nevada range from the coast all the way to Granada, which lies in the foothills. It was a pretty 2-hour drive past small villages and towns.
The area around Granada has been inhabited since prehistorical times. Phoenicians, who we usually consider to be mainly a maritime civilization, were here as well as the Carthaginians and Greeks. By 500BC the Greeks had a settlement here, followed by the Romans, Visigoths, Byzantines and eventually the Moors who arrived in 711AD. During the Reconquesta, Ferdinand and Isabella took Granada from the Moors and it became part of the Spain Empire. Much of its Jewish history was destroyed after the eviction decree of 1492, largely because they assisted the Moors in their conquest of Granada.
The city is in at the base of the Sierra Nevada at about 2,500 feet and has a population of about 250,000. It’s the home of the world famous Alhambra (al-Qalat al-Hambra – The Red Fortress) and the Generalife, the summer palace of the Nasrid sultans of Grenada. It also has some fine Gothic architecture, particularly the cathedral.
We arrived in the city in the late morning and went directly to the Alhambra area that includes, from west to east, the alcazaba (fortress), the Royal Palace and residences for servants and administrators, and the Generalife. They are doing some renovation and construction on the grounds so the bus had to drop us off on the wrong side of the area and we had to walk down into the valley and across to the Palaico Generalife (This is a transliteration from the Arabic for ‘Architect’s Garden’ it has nothing to do with the military.) Normally we would have been dropped of at this area and only had to walk one way but we’re walking it twice today. This is fine as I need the exercise but some of our older travelers are having trouble with the hills. The alcazaba and Royal Palace are on one side of a river valley and the Generalife is on the other side, so it’s down and up twice. It’s a pleasant walk as the weather is not too hot and there’s a nice breeze up the valley. Because we are starting our tour at the same place we will finish, we are getting a preview of the outside of the Alhambra before we cross the ravine.
Ironically, one of the first buildings you see when you enter this Moorish complex is the Iglesia del Santa Maria de la Alhambra (The St. Mary’s Church of Alhambra). It’s right next to the Palace of Charles V and is built on the ruins of the Royal Mosque of Mohammed III. We walked past all the buildings here and went directly through the grounds to the Generalife.
The Generalife was built in the early 1300s as the sultan’s summer palace. It has extensive gardens that include a lot of running water. At 2,500 feet and with all the water features it would have been a nice place to escape the hot Spanish summers. They are reputed to be the oldest surviving example of Moorish gardens.
We entered the Generalife complex from the southern end. They hold an international festival of the arts here and have concerts, ballets and plays. Most of the area is surrounded by cypresses, a very pretty setting. The large gardens, called the New Garden, are directly next to the theater. It’s a series of independent spaces, surrounded and divided by very tall hedges of cypress trees with arches cut into them. The tops of the trees are cut in a crenellated pattern to match the castle walls. This feature of being walled in developed because the first Islamic gardens were in the desert and the surrounding walls or hedges help to maintain the illusion of being in paradise. These later Moorish gardens still used that feature although occasional arches and breaks allow some views of the surroundings. The use of running water was greatly increased because they were no longer in the desert. There are many reflecting pools and water features. Some spaces are divided by intersecting canals. This reflects the Islamic view that the world is divided into four parts by two large rivers. Vine covered arbors shade some of the walkways. It’s a fairly formal place with clearly defined spaces and very regular water features, but not as formal as European formal gardens. Within some of the clearly defined spaces, plants are placed much more like an informal English garden. Many plants were in bloom. From the varieties that I could identify, some part of the gardens is in bloom year round. There’s another smaller garden called the Upper Garden on the other side of the structures. The problem with gardens is that words do not adequately describe the experience. These are quite beautiful.
Next we entered was the Patio de la Acequia (Court of the Water Channel), which has a long pool framed by flowerbeds, fountains, colonnades and pavilions. Originally this palace was connected to the Alhambra by a covered walkway across the ravine we just walked through. Being a summer palace most of the space is open air and almost all the buildings are only one room deep to provide cross ventilation. At the end of the largest courtyard there’s a three-story structure. The first two stories are rooms but the middle of the third floor is a covered patio with a small room at each end. This would be a very airy place if there were a breeze of any kind. The structure is typical Moorish architecture with columns and arches. It’s not heavily decorated but some surfaces are carved or tiled.
From the Generalife we retraced our steps back to the Alhambra, across the ravine and along the Paseo de los Cipreses, a wide pathway lined with a tall hedge of cypress trees. Just inside the western end of the Alhambra complex there’s an old building, the Convent of San Francisco. It’s been turned into a Parador. The hotel is in the center of a large garden that occupies most of this half of the Alhambra.
Spanish Travel Note: There’s a chain of hotels in Iberia that are designated as Paradores in Spain and Pousadas in Portugal. These hotels are in very historic locations with beautiful surroundings. Most are in ancient buildings, castles, palaces and, as with the one in the Alhambra, convents. Every one I have ever seen is in a great location. This one is right in the Alhambra. We saw one in medieval Obidos, Portugal that was in the hilltop castle, right in the city itself. The downside is that most of them are very small so reservations must be made well in advance and they are expensive, $550 to $900 per night here.
Alongside the paseo is the Palace of Charles V built by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1527. It’s a large, square, 207-foot long Renaissance structure although admittedly avant-garde for its time. The center of the building is a large 2-story, colonnaded, 100-foot in diameter, circular patio, also unusual for Renaissance structures. Apparently the designer was affected by the emerging Mannerist style. The Mannerist style bridged the gap between the Renaissance and Baroque styles in Italy. Mannerist architects featured round patios as one of their prominent characteristics. The building is a little shocking on the outside as the first and second floors are totally different Renaissance styles. The first floor is the rather rare Padded Tuscan Order (an Italian subset of Doric Order and another indication of Italian influence on the structure.) with heavily rounded edges and deep-set pointing on the large stones. The overall effect is of heavy upholstery, hence the term padded. The upper floor is Ionic Order with typical columns set on large bases with paired scrolling volutes as capitals. I guess if Chuck had added a third floor it would have been Corinthian Order so he could have covered all three major classical styles. The façade of the interior patio follows the styles of the exterior, the lower being Doric and the upper Ionic. A very unique building.
Directly north of Chuck’s place is the Royal Palace complex of the Nasrids, the ruling dynasty in Moorish southern Spain from 1200-1500AD. This area was constructed over several generations and contains examples of many styles of Islamic architecture. It has three main sections, the Mexuar (administration and business area), the Serallo (ceremonial area for greeting ambassadors and distinguished guests) and the Harem (the king’s residence).
Only the northern pavilion of the oldest structure is still standing, the Palacio del Partal. The complex next to it was built later and is in very good condition after extensive restoration. After the Moors were evicted from Spain the property was neglected and vandalized, including an attempt by Napoleon Bonaparte to blow it up. There are several wonderful spaces in the palace. The Salon de Embajadores (Ambassador’s Hall) served as the throne room and has a fantastically carved ceiling that represents the seven heavens of the Muslim cosmos and is shaped like an 8 pointed star. It was so high up and dimly lit that getting a picture proved to be a problem. The Sala de los Dos Hermanas (Room of the Two Sisters) has another very ornate carved plaster ceiling. These ceilings look like the roof of a limestone cave as the carvings are very deep and some of the structures extend downward like stalactites.
The Sala de los Abencerrajes is a banquet room, with another wonderful geometric ceiling. It is named for the rival of the last Nasrid ruling family. It is purported that they were massacred while they attended a banquet here. The Patio de los Leones (Lions Courtyard) is surrounded by ornately carved arcades supported by very slender marble columns. In the center there’s a large fountain supported by 12 marble lions. The Patio de Arrayanes (Myrtle Courtyard) is set amid the other structures of the palace. Its long pond is designed to reflect light into the surrounding halls. Unlike the Generalife Palace, the Royal Palace in the Alhambra is ornately decorated with carvings, both wood and plaster, and ceramic tiles. It’s a beautiful place but due to restricted light, very hard to photograph without a lot of lighting equipment.
It was a long day of walking and standing with a lot of magnificent sights. When we got back to the hotel there was just enough time to clean up for dinner. This is one of our rare one-night stays so tomorrow is another travel day heading to Madrid by way of Toledo.
June 6 – Granada & Toledo to Madrid, Spain. Today is another travel day. This tour is organized with a lot of two-day stays, one of the reasons we selected it. We are heading directly north across the Central Plateau, which covers 45% of Spain and is rarely flat. We’ll go over the Sierra Morena (Brown Mountains) to the foot of the Cordillera Central (Central Mountains) at Madrid. This drive is about four times as far as yesterday’s and we’re touring in Toledo so I we won’t see much of Madrid today.
After traveling through hills and valleys in the early morning we stopped for lunch at a small deli style restaurant just off the road in a fairly narrow valley. They had some very interesting meats, sausages and cheeses to pick from and lots of very good bread. I had a sandwich but I ate in a hurry because there were some nesting House Martins under the eaves on the side of the building. The building was a pinkish dusty rose color and the gray nests made for a nice contrast. The birds were coming and going with food for the youngsters in the nests. The nests reminded me of the cliff dwellings of the Southwest. They are built one overlapping the other sometimes three high. The activity was frenetic; apparently it takes a lot of insects to feed all the chirping infants.
After lunch our drive continued through ever-higher mountains with increasingly rough craggy ridges. Very pretty scenery. After a while the landscape became flatter with rolling hills. We have arrived on the La Mancha Plateau. Cervantes had it right; the countryside is dotted with windmills, usually in a row on the ridge of a hill. These are slightly tapering cylinders of stone or concrete construction with four blades and universally whitewashed. They have squat, conical roofs of slate tiles. Very picturesque, with a wistful, somewhat romantic aura about them. Maybe that’s because I got such a kick out of ‘Don Quixote’ when I read it in high school, the Spanish version of Mr. Magoo. As we neared Consuegra, on the crest of a hill along the highway someone had erected an all black silhouette of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Very fitting as this is the place where much of the action took place in the book. There was a ridge above the city of Consuegra that had a long line of windmills with a 12th Century fortress in the center. It was easy to picture the quixotic Quixote in the valley preparing to do battle. (I’ve always wanted to use those two words together in a sentence.)
Art and Artistic Note: Ever since I saw El Greco’s ‘View of Toledo’ in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during a 1962 High School field trip, I have wanted to visit this city. I’ve discovered two things about the painting. First, the major buildings of the city are faithfully depicted individually but, second, they have been rearranged to fit the artist’s composition. I would have been disappointed if nothing from reality had made its way into the painting. Many times when I’m taking a picture I wish I had the painter’s prerogative to rearrange the subject to improve the composition of the shot. El Greco started out as a fairly typical Italian Renaissance artist with the religious subjects for which he is known dominating his early work. He was also an excellent portraitist not only capturing his subject’s image but their character as well. As he matured his work changed. This was due in large part to his strongly held views on art (ex. he felt strongly that color was preeminent not form). One incident in particular demonstrates his distain for what came before. He offered to paint over Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel for Pope Pius V. His comment was, “Michelangelo was a good man, but he did not know how to paint.” Needless to say this idea made him a lot of enemies in Rome and was one of the main reasons he moved to Spain. In Spain his new technique developed. Figures became more emotional and impressionistic. His influence on the later impressionist movement is clearly evident.
Our first stop in Toledo was on a hill overlooking a sharp bend in the Tagus River. The city is on a granite hill bordered on three sides by a large loop in the Tagus. The large square Alcazar with its four towers dominates the skyline, the tall spire of the Cathedral of Toledo appears to be in the center of the city and the short towers of the Church of Santo Tomé is just west of there. It’s small wonder that the entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is somewhat unique in that it was the capital of Spain under the Visigoths and remained so until the Moors took it. It has ancient buildings of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic cultures.
On our way into the city we stopped at a metalworking studio that makes jewelry in using the "damascene technique".
Metallurgical Note: The term ‘damascene technique’ should not be confused with ‘Damascus steel’ as they are two very different things. Damascus steel is an ancient method (900 to 1700AD) of making a stronger metal that was malleable enough to shape by forging, yet strong enough to retain a sharp edge. Since no single metal had these properties, two metals would be laminated by hammering on an anvil until they were sufficiently mixed in the manner of making croissants. The two metals might have been iron carbide (iron+carbon - very hard but brittle) and common iron (softer and more flexible). You pound the metals together, then fold them over and pound them together again, over and over. This constant heating, folding and pounding blends the two metals much like the pastry and butter layers in croissant dough. The resulting metal is called Damascus steel after the place where historians believe it was first made. The use of the term ‘steel’ is appropriate since steel is an alloy consisting mostly of iron. The main uses for this steel were edged tools and weapons. Damascus steel swords were reputed to be so strong and sharp that they could cut through lesser quality swords of European manufacture. The last commercial use of Damascus steel in the USA was in making shotgun barrels until 1890. Some blacksmiths began to use very thin wires of other metals to form designs in their steel. This gave rise to the Damascene technique.
The Damascene technique as currently practiced by the smiths of Toledo is the process of applying very thin wires, usually gold, silver or copper, to a steel base to form a design on jewelry. Most are fairly small pieces like pins, buttons or cuff links some are larger like plates. They do this with small punches with which they hammer the very thin wires into channels they have scribed into the base. It’s a tedious process we were able to observe in the shop attached to the store.
First we went through the workshop where two men working on small pins. One of the men allowed me to examine his project up close. It was a round metal disk with a geometric design etched into the surface. He was hammering hair thin gold wire into these etched lines. It looked to me like it would take several strands to fill the lines. Each is hammered into place with a small punch and mallet. As gold is very soft the final product probably looks like a single line of gold rope. The workers hunched over their work stations reminded me of diamond cutters examining their work.
Most of the goods sold in the store were locally produced items (jewelry, plates and bowls) or imported items (large swords, knives or suits of armor) which were probably made in China or India. I didn’t want any large swords. I would have bought a set of formal shirt studs but they didn’t make any. A careful search of the knife cases produced one locally made small pocketknife so that became my souvenir. We did have some photo ops, Diana with a variety of swords and me wearing a conquistador’s helmet posing with a suit of armor. The jewelry was a little ornate for Diana’s taste so she didn’t buy anything.
From the metal workshop we crossed the Tagus into Toledo proper. We passed the Monasterio de San Juan de los Reye, a beautiful Spanish Gothic structure. It’s obviously under renovation. All the spires at the front were fresh granite gray, while the ones at the rear still wore the black patina of 204 years of exposure. We entered the city through a stone arch gate that had the Royal Spanish Crest in bas-relief carved prominently atop the arch. We drove on a road that skirted the northern wall of the city and then turned south to pass the Alcazar. The Alcazar is a massive square stone building with a large central courtyard and towers at each corner. It’s probably the largest unadorned building of stone construction I’ve ever seen. It has the look of a ‘field stone’ colonial Pennsylvania building. The early German settlers collected the rock they found while they were clearing the forest for farming. This rock was then used to build their houses and outbuildings. With its random sized, natural colored stone and simple cement pointing holding them in place produced a very unique look that is very much like the Alcazar. It’s on the highest part of Toledo’s hill and was originally a Roman fortress in 200AD. It underwent extensive renovation several times under the Spanish. The result is that each side of the square building has a different architectural style on its façade. Another very unique feature.
After dismounting the bus we walked through a section of the city that is made up of very small alleys called ‘callejon’. This area of Toledo is apparently the Sedona, Arizona of Spain. New Age adherents, Spiritualists and other fringe elements claim that the area has special spiritual energies In Sedona they call them vortexes (I always thought it should be vortices, but Webster prefers the former. Another example of the ‘dumbing down’ of American English I guess). They think these areas have the power to make meditation or prayer more powerful. Toledo has the same reputation in Spain. Some link this phenomenon to the fact that the Spanish Inquisition had its headquarters here, others connect it to the fact that the Carmelite and Franciscan orders here had small groups of adherents that subscribed to mystical beliefs. Many site the work of El Greco while he lived in Toledo. Admittedly, his works here do have an ethereal quality but I like to attribute that to his ability to skip an entire generation of artists, the Impressionists, and go directly to the style of their 20th Century decedents, the Expressionists. Clearly his paintings are expressionistic and way ahead of his time. It is true that some of the alleyway names are very interesting. For example Callejon del Diablo and Callejon del Inferno (Alleys of the Devil and Hell) intersect here. As with my many trips to Sedona, Toledo did not produce any special spiritual feelings or phenomenon although it is very close to the city’s cathedral.
The Cathedral of St. Mary of Toledo is a beautiful High Gothic structure. It was begun in 1226 with the last additions made in 1493.
The 100th Architectural Note: Well maybe not 100 but I’ll bet it seems like it to you. I love the term Gothic as used in architecture. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Goths. During the time that Gothic structures were being built they were known as “the French Style”. The term Gothic was not applied to the French style until the Renaissance as a demeaning slur because they preferred the Greek architectural traditions that were coming back into fashion. At the time the Goths were closely associated with the Vandals and the English language has forever preserved their memory with the word vandalism. Thus, calling the style Gothic didn’t just say it was ugly; it connoted the idea that it was a crime against architecture. I guess they really didn’t like it. The irony is that Gothic buildings are now revered as wonderful structures and elevated to almost iconic status, while Renaissance construction, while notable, doesn’t come close in status.
The cathedral was built on the site of Toledo’s main mosque. This produced an anomaly in the style. While it has a typical basilica floor plan, it has five naves rather than the usual three because they wanted to cover the entire sacred space of the mosque with the cathedral. This five nave layout also produced a double ambulatory, another rarity. I only know of two others, Notre Dame in Paris and Bourges, France. In Notre Dame the transept is still visible from the exterior and in Bourges there is no transept so each structure is totally unique in its floor plan. The mosque’s sahn (the courtyard where the pools for pre-prayer abolitions take place) was also completely covered by the attached cloisters.
The front (western) façade is a little unusual and faces a more or less triangular square that is surrounded by the town hall and the Archbishop’s Palace. To the left is the 300-foot tall tower, a Gothic spire framed in wood and covered by slate tiles. It is decorated with three very spiky crowns. The second matching tower that was planned was never built. Instead there is a Gothic-Renaissance domed structure that is part of the Mozarabic (Iberian Christians who lived under Moorish Muslim rule) chapel that took its place. Its main claim to fame is that Jorge Manuel Theotocopoulos, the son of El Greco, built it. This structure is much larger than the tower at its base but is less than half as tall.
There are three doors in the western facade, to the right is the Door of the Last Judgment, to the left is the Door of Hell and in the center the Door of Pardon. Each is decorated in a different manner. The Door of Hell is has no figures on its jambs or tympanum, only floral designs. The Door of the Last Judgment, the oldest of the three, has scenes from the Last Judgment on the sides and top (How odd!). The much larger Door of Pardon (16.5 feet tall) has very traditional Gothic figures. The central figure is Jesus on the mullion. He is flanked on the jambs by the 12 apostles. The tympanum shows the Virgin Mary giving the local saint, Saint Ildephonsus of Toledo, his liturgical robes. The arch over the door has 6 archivolts between the outer arch and the tympanum, each successively smaller and carved with unidentifiable people (at least to me). Over the arch there is a carving of the last supper in much the same mode as Da Vinci’s famous painting. The door gets it name from the medieval practice of granting indulgences to those who entered through it. Oddly it is now used only on special occasions and when a new Archbishop is selected for Toledo. Equally odd is the fact that the Hell Doors used to be reserved for the procession of the palms on Palm Sunday.
We walked around to the north side of the cathedral to enter by the Clock Door in the north transept. The door takes its name from the clock that’s centered on the façade just above the door’s arch. This is the oldest door in the building, dating from the 1300s. The tympanum is divided into four horizontal sections, three of which show scenes of Jesus’ life from the Annunciation to the beginning of his public ministry, the transformation of water into wine at the Marriage at Cana. The fourth, at the peak of the arch shows the death of the Virgin Mary. On the upper wall of the north façade is the cathedrals only rose window. Most of the original medieval glass has survived in this cathedral and the rose window is the best of it. The colors are vibrant and clear. The windows in the ambulatory are just a beautiful but the colors are much softer.
The crowning jewel of the chancel is the retable. It’s carved of larch wood, covered with gold leaf and then colored. It took 6 years to complete. There are 15 large groups of sculptures that increase in size as they ascend toward the ceiling. This gives the illusion that all the figures are of a similar size when in fact the lower figures are only half as tall as the figures at the top. Some of the groupings have up to 10 figures counting only the people. It’s organized in five columns each with five rows. The central column is wider than the other four and has the most significant figures. From bottom to top, the Virgin Mary on her throne as Queen of Heaven, a carving in the style of an ornate Gothic tower, the Nativity, the Assumption and is topped by the Crucifixion. The remainder of the scenes in the four side columns are from the life of Jesus. Pictures were not allowed inside the cathedral, but this was a sight I’d like to have captured. A truly magnificent sight.
There are over 20 chapels in the cathedral. The most interesting are the Corpus Christi chapel, now known as the Mozarabic chapel, where they still celebrate mass according to ancient Mozarab rites and the Chapel of the Treasure which used to be known as the Chapel of Saint John, our next stop.
The Treasure Chapel has paintings by El Greco, Goya, Raphael, Rubens, Titian and Velazquez. El Greco’s ‘EI Expolio’ (The Disrobing of Christ) is displayed here. The most unusual item here is the large monstrance used in Toledo. The monstrance is made of silver (403 pounds) and ‘bathed’ in gold (40 pounds). It has 260 figures, mainly saints and angels, on 5,600 separate pieces held together with 12,500 bolts. The shape and the decoration give it the look of a Gothic tower. It’s over 8 feet tall and, although it weighs over 450 pounds, they carry it in the annual Corpus Christi procession. It rides on a specially constructed float that automatically keeps itself level on the uneven cobbled streets of the old part of the city.
Liturgical Note: I am not Roman Catholic although I have made a lifelong effort to have a good understanding of the roots of my Protestantism. Since my theology had its beginnings in both Judaism and Catholicism it has always seemed reasonable to me that a detailed knowledge of both would be a great help to me in understanding the deeper points of my own beliefs. I am pleased to report this supposition of my 20s has proven to be correct, one of the few. This may also explain why I love cathedrals and religious art so much. I understand the symbolism and the point of most of the things I see. All this is preface to a short explanation regarding the monstrance. A monstrance is used in Roman Catholic and Anglican churches to display the consecrated host during Eucharistic Adoration or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. It’s usually it’s a small sunburst device on a pedestal and not much more than 1 to 2 feet tall. If you’ve ever been to a Catholic church you’ve probably seen one on the altar or in the retable.
From the cathedral we went to the church of Santo Tome to view one of El Greco’s most famous works the Burial of Count Orgaz. The original church was built in the 1100s but was completely redone in the 1300s with funds donated by Don Gonzalo Ruiz from the town of Orgaz. The title of Count was actually given to his family after his death but he is still referred to by this title because it was his generosity that earned it. This painting was commissioned for display in the chapel where he is buried 284 years after his death. The reason for the delay is interesting. When he died he promised that his city, Orgaz, would continue to support the cathedral with annual tribute. Some years after his death this practice was discontinued. Over two centuries later in 1586 the city began the payments again and the painting was commissioned to celebrate this act. The subject of the painting is from a legend regarding Count Orgaz. He was a very devout man who helped the poor and supported many church functions. The legend says that, upon his death, Saints Augustine and Stephen miraculously appeared to assist in his burial because he had contributed significantly to churches dedicated to them.
It’s a painting in two parts, the lower part depicts the burial and the upper part is heaven. The dividing line is an unbroken row of notable men from Toledo that extends across the canvas. El Greco was criticized for several things about the painting. The people in the portrait are dressed in attire from the 1500s and the burial took place in the 1300s and the onlookers include very accurate portraits of people still living. While his critics did not appreciate these features, the public did. The immediately reacted by crowding the church to view the work. We don’t know who many of the men are but El Greco did include both himself and his son. He is standing directly behind Saint Stephen, the younger of the two saints. The other men are looking either up to the heavens or down at the burial. El Greco is looking straight ahead as though he’s interested in the observer’s reaction to his work. His son, Jorge, is the young lad holding the torch in the left foreground pointing at the count’s body.
The scene in heaven is filled with symbolism. Directly above the heads of the men is an angel in a golden robe carrying the chrysalis of Count Orgaz’s heavenly body. Jesus is at the apex of the arched top of the painting waiting to receive the most recent citizen of His Kingdom. Mary and John the Baptist wait with him surrounded by a heavenly host of other people and angles. Some of them are identifiable like Saint Peter holding the keys to the Kingdom. It’s a wonderful painting.
From Santo Tome we walked to the house where El Greco lived and then preceded to the ‘Sinagoga de Santa Maria La Blanca’, the Synagogue of Saint Mary the White. “What!” you say, “a synagogue with the name of a Christian saint.” Yes this strange situation begs for an explanation. It’s fairly simple actually. The building is the product of a three-religion cooperation. It was constructed in the Kingdom of Castile (Christian) by Islamic architects for Jewish use, a unique circumstance for sure. It stands as a symbol of the cooperation of the three religions in the Ibearian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. The synagogue was designed and constructed in the 1180s by Mudejar (Moors working in Christian countries on non-Islamic projects) architects and it’s very easy to spot the Islamic influences. It’s a hypostyle room and does not have a women’s gallery so it’s follows the mosque layout very closely.
The mostly white interior has four rows of eight sided pillars supporting very graceful semicircular arches. The arches are curved and narrower at the bottom that, when taken with the area between the arches forms a very typical Islamic style doorway. The walls above the arches are decorated with Islamic geometric designs. The capitals on the pillars are totally unique and not of any style I recognize. They are very ornate and appear to hand carved and decorated, as no two are alike. The design is the same but there are small individual differences. They are clearly made of plaster but have a very sewn textile look. In the early 1400s the synagogue was taken over by the local populace, turned into a church and renamed Saint Mary the White. Later it was a carpenter shop, a store, barracks, a halfway house for reformed prostitutes and finally a synagogue again.
The large wooden doors are inlaid in a five-pointed star pattern. We associate that star with the US and our flag however the five-pointed star is present on the flags of many Islamic countries representing the five pillars of Islam. There is no sign whatsoever of the six-pointed Star of David. The doors are very old and dark but the corner of one door has been cleaned and the wood is actually the color of teak. Inside it’s large room divided into five aisles (in a cathedral they would be naves but that didn’t seem appropriate here) by four rows of the pillars described above. Despite the cross and the altar set into the alcove where the Torah would be kept in the ark, the space has a definite mosque feel once inside. The ceiling over the area where the ark would have been is beautiful and designs on it are pretty neutral but the center panel at the back with the Cardinal’s symbol was obviously added when this was a church.
The wall to the right is still as it was when the synagogue was built, very plain. It’s white and the only feature on it is a round window that is just about centered on the row of horseshoe arches that are lined up across the room. The wall to the left is another matter entirely. It’s lined with a series of Biblical scenes from the New Testament. Some are probably scenes of Roman Catholic tradition but I did recognize several, Joseph, Mary and Jesus fleeing Herod’s infanticide order by going to Egypt, the Annunciation of Jesus birth to Mary and Mary, Joseph presenting the infant Jesus to Simeon in the Temple and the Magi visiting Jesus. I have to credit the artist on the last one. He was smart enough to know that the Magi were not present with the shepherds in the stable but visited him later after a long journey to Bethlehem from the east.
Biblical Note: If the idea that the Wise Men were not at the stable to see Jesus in the manger is new to you, look at Matthew 2:1-12 (esp. v. 11). Jesus is described as a young child, not a baby as he is in the manger verses. Also the Magi visited Jesus in a ‘house’, not a stable. I’ve always appreciated the irony that the Magi (most likely Persians) came to worship and honor the baby they believed was born ‘King of the Jews’, while the current regime in power in Israel wanted to kill him and apparently slaughtered a lot of young children in an effort to do just that.
The altar at the front of the central aisle and the figures along the left wall have dark red curtains that can be closed to obscure their presence. I asked about that and the guide said that when the synagogue holds services these curtains are closed. The authorities would not let the carvings and artwork be removed when the building was returned to its original use so they had to be hidden so they would not be offensive to the Jews during their services. This is one of the oldest remaining structures still in use in Toledo and it’s at least 200 years older than the more ornate El Transito Synagogue, also in Toledo.
From the synagogue we went to San Martin’s bridge, which dates from the Moorish era for a walk across. The bridge is very picturesque, with defensive towers at both ends. The interior openings in the gates have exactly the same shape as the arched spaces between the pillars in the synagogue. The bridge has five arches in its span; two small arches extend the bridge from the two ends to the respective riverbanks, two longer arches to span the shallow edges of the river and then the longest single arch spans the fastest moving deepest part of the Tagus. The longest arch is about twice the length of the two medium arches. I’m sure this was an engineering marvel in its time.
After walking across the bridge we boarded our bus and headed north to Madrid. The drive was through pretty country, mountains, valleys and farmland. We arrived in Madrid in the late afternoon and went directly to the hotel, as there’s a night city and dinner tour that leaves the hotel at 7:30.
After a drive around the city to look at the sights we arrived at our restaurant, the Gijon Café. Apparently this very old restaurant, it opened in 1888, is famous as a gathering place intellectuals and artists. Monica says that journalists and writers still haunt the place. On the way there to prepare us for the evening she told us about what she called ‘student musicians’. Apparently in the 1700s students formed small ensembles and performed in the streets and cafes for tips as a way of making money. I guess that’s pretty much still a common practice today, especially in large cities. Here the tradition has continued but now it’s a full time profession and the musicians are no longer necessarily students. The term has come to mean any group that performs traditional music in costume. Monica has arranged for one of these ‘student bands’ to play for us during dinner.
When we arrived at the restaurant we were taken to a basement room that was completely lined in wood with a curved shaped ceiling, producing a barrel like effect. The fact that the room was narrow and long reinforced the feeling of being in a wine cask. The walls and the curved ends of the room are covered in original art; many of them rough sketches and doodles, often with significant narrative. I’m assuming, like Toot’s Shores
As usual with the Golbus dinners we’ve been to the wine (in this case bottles of red and white with pitchers of sangria. Wow, did that flash me back to my college days in the early ‘70s) hits the table before anything else, usually accompanied quickly by excellent bread and something to snack on, often olives and cheese. We’re a pretty international group and it seems that everyone likes wine so the conversation usually clips along at a brisk pace while the preliminaries are taken care of. It gave me some time to inspect the art on the walls and try to read some of the writings. I can limp along in written Spanish but have a very hard time with it when it’s handwritten in script. I could get almost nothing from any of the things displayed.
One name I did recognize was Jose Martin Recuerda, a playwright about my age. He was also a university professor and lectured at the Sorbonne in Paris, and the University of Washington and Humboldt State in the USA. He returned to Spain in the ‘70s and as far as I know he is still here. I couldn’t read most of what he had written but he has three groups of small drawings scattered over the page on which he’d written, a trio of Northwestern Indians, several cartoon like drawings of Napoleon (actually three, showing him reaching into his shirt to assume his iconic pose and pulling his hand out snapped into a mousetrap), a larger, very realistic sketch of Edith Piaf’s face and a small, impressionistic drawing of Jacqueline Kennedy. I might not have recognized Jackie but he labeled the drawing. What the point of it all was I don’t know but it was signed by him and appeared to be addressed to the Café’s owner in 1969,
This must have put me on a hot streak as I also found a poem by Carlos Oroza, the Poet Laureate of the Café Gijon in the 1930s. I wouldn’t have known anything about him but I had read a little history of the place on the way in to the banquet room. The drawing on his poem was of two nude women. Don’t get excited, they were just a series of lines, very minimalist, just barely (pun definitely intended) recognizable as female. I couldn’t make anything of the poem.
Very soon the food started arriving; first course, a salad with green, tomatoes, egg, olives, carrots and white asparagus, Andalusian gazpacho or soup of squash, onion and mussels. The mussel soup sounded so interesting that I ordered it. It was great.
The entrée choices were salmon, duck and a stuffed chop. I opted for the duck and it was good, very crisp skin and not greasy at all. For desert we had a meringue desert much like baked Alaska. They brought it in and, after turning down the lights, they set it aflame with about a cup of what appeared to be kirshwasser. It gave a nice blue flame.
After dinner a Student Musician trio performed traditional Spanish music, some instrumentals, some songs. Many I didn’t recognize but they sang ‘Granada’ which I knew. There were two guitars and a mandolin. One of the guitarists played a small tambourine like drum on some songs. They were a lot of fun. To see some samples of this style of music take a look at these two clips.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kpk1QwTV9E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWxB1GEZCSI
After that it was back to the hotel and to bed. It’s been a fairly long day.
June 7 – Madrid, Spain. This is the last full day on our Globus tour of Portugal, Spain and Morocco. We are taking a city tour in the morning and will have the afternoon free.
This is the farthest we’ve ever been inland in Spain. Previously, all our visits have been tours from a port. Madrid is the capital of Spain; it’s largest city (over 3 million residents) and the third largest city in the EU behind London and Berlin. It’s mainly a large, modern city but they have been able to retain a very historic look and feel to some areas. It’s another of the many cities in Europe that has its roots in pre-history with the earliest real signs of a metropolis being from the Roman era. When Queen Isabella of Castile (her full title is quite impressive ‘Queen of Castile and León, Queen consort of Aragon, Majorca, Naples and Valencia, Countess of Barcelona) and King Ferdinand II of Aragon married in 1469 merging their two realms into what is now modern Spain, the question of where the capital of the new country would be remained unanswered until their grandson, Philip II moved it to Madrid in 1561.
War Historical Note: For those of you who are war historians, the first time aerial bombardment was used against civilians was during the Spanish Civil War in Madrid. So we have General Franco to thank for setting that rather dubious precedent. I guess we can’t be too hard on him because someone would have gotten to it sooner or later. Since German air forces, under Spanish command, did the bombing, the effectiveness of this strategy was probably not lost on them.
Etymological Note: This is a double whammy for me as I have a great interest in both the history of words and war. It was here that General Emilio Mola remarked to a reporter that he would take the city with the four military columns at his disposal remaining outside the city because his ’fifth column’ (Right Wing sympathizers inside the city) would capture the city on their own. Since that time Fifth Column as been a shorthand way of referring to people inside a country working for its defeat by a foreign power in a time of war. Just think, if Emilio had only had 2 military columns we would be calling these people the ‘Third Column. It’s ironic that here in the USA the ‘Fifth Column’ is often composed primarily of the ‘Forth Estate’. (Now there’s a term with an interesting etymology.)
We boarded our bus at 9AM and less than 5 minutes later I knew Madrid was a city I could love. This dawned on me as we passed a building called the ‘Museo del Jamon (Museum of Ham). I knew that the Spanish made a cured ham in the same genre as Italian Parma or French Cru, called Serrano. What I didn’t know is that in Spain this ham is practically a religion. They actually have area designations for the ham, much like the French and others have for wine, Bordeaux and Champaign for example. Like wine designations the ham ‘Denominations’ (That’s the official title so you can see where I got the idea that this is close to a religion?) as they call them, indicate not only where the ham originated and the precise method used to cure it but the breed of the pig it came from as well. These Denominations are very closely monitored and any violation creates a large problem. Just to give you an idea of how detailed the rules are, for a ham to be designated “Seranno Teruel’ the ham not only has to come from the Teruel Province and be from ‘white hogs’ but the air curing process must take place at an altitude over 800 meters above sea level. Some of the Denominations include rules about what feeds can be used. To emphasize that this is a serious matter the Spanish government has a separate bureau just to administrate these rules. But I digress, back to the Museo del Jamon. It’s actually a restaurant, really a chain of restaurants, here in Madrid that specializes in dishes made from Serrano hams of all regions. It’s not a sandwich shop but a full menu restaurant and the menu is a ham lovers delight. They do have fried calamari rings if you need seafood and tortilla de patata, much like a German potato pancake or hash brown patty, if you want to go vegetarian. They’ll even put this potato tortilla in a sub roll if you want a veggie sandwich. Even my people, the Germans, who love potatoes, won’t go that far. Why anyone in their right mind would eat at the Museum of Ham if they were vegetarian is beyond me. There are at least 8 (not vegetarians, but Museo restaurants) of them scattered around the city. I had to smile every time I saw one.
We skirted the city and entered past the Puerta de San Vicente, past the Royal Palace complex to the Plaza de Espana. The plaza is surrounded by some of Madrid’s most important tall buildings but the main attraction is the Cervantes Memorial. It’s a beautiful combination of stone and bronze at one end of a rectangular reflecting pool. Unfortunately the lighting was awful for reflections but good for pictures of the structure itself.
The memorial is a grouping of sculptures organized in a diamond shape. At the bottom of the diamond on the western most point closest to the viewer on a short pedestal are two bronze statues of Cervantes best know characters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Quixote is in knight’s armor, armed with his windmill-tilting lance and a sword, mounted on his horse Rocinante. I have to admit that Rocinante is depicted as a much sturdier horse than I would have thought. Maybe he is shown as Quixote saw him, not as the nag he was. The Don’s right arm is raised as if waving at us. Sancho is riding Dapple his mule, wearing Quixote’s helmet on his head and carrying the Don’s shield strapped to his back. The statues are over two times life size and with his lance included about 20 feet tall.
Behind this grouping, on the easternmost point of the diamond (furthest from the viewer) is a 60-foot tall stone monument that has several groups of sculptures on its four sides. On the side overlooking Quixote and Sancho, about one third of the way up, is a stone statue of Cervantes sitting in a chair, holding a book and looking down on his famous characters. On south facing side, a little higher up is a tableau depicting Quixote’s encounter with the three peasant girls during which Panza attempts to convince him that one of the girls is his beloved Dulcinea. I didn’t get behind or to the west or ease side of the monument so I’m not sure what the sculptures were on those aspects.
At the top of the monument is a stone ball supported by figures that encircle the structure. I couldn’t identify any of them but some appeared to be peoples of the New World or explorers. One figure in particular appeared to be a South American Indian from her garb and jewelry.
On the right and left points of the diamond are figures of the same woman, the fair lady for whom Don Quixote embarked on his knightly adventure. On the left she is shown as Princess Dulcinea, a young, beautiful lady in expensive clothing holding a small chest from which she selecting jewelry to wear. This is to represent her as the Don saw her in his mind. On the right she is Aldonza Lorenzo, an older, plainer woman dressed in peasant clothing and holding a large shallow container of the type used in winnowing grain. This is the peasant woman that Quixote mistook for a lady and from which his demented mind created the princess.
As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed this monument. It was simple in overall design and yet included many details and figures for interpretation. When we arrived a group of American college students was lined up taking turns climbing up onto the Quixote/Panza grouping to have their pictures taken with a couple of the most famous characters in fiction. In 2002 the Norwegian Book Club organized a panel of 100 prominent authors from 54 countries to select the best works of all time and that group voted ‘Don Quixote’ as the “Most meaningful book of all time” getting 50% more votes than any other book. Pretty impressive for a 400-year-old book, it was first published in 1604.
From there we drove by the Royal Convent of the Incarnation, the Church and Convent of St. Francis and the Plaza de Isabel II to the Puerta del Sol. Here you’ll find the 0 kilometer post, the center of Spain’s road network, a mounted statue of King Charles III and a bronze of a bear standing on its hind legs eatng fruit from a strawberry tree that has become the symbol of Madrid. The area is undergoing a major construction project and is currently not very conducive to photos. One guidebook said that the construction should be over by 2007 but in early June 2008 it’s still going strong.
We drove down the Calle de Alcala past the Metropolis Building, a 1911 Romanesque flatiron structure that was built for an insurance company. It’s become an icon for the city and is a very impressive structure, not for size but for style. The heavily decorated black dome with gold accents topped by a black statue of Winged Victory setting on the ornately carved gray stone building provides a beautiful contrast in materials. Continuing down Acala we made a 270 circle at the Plaza de Cibeles, a traffic circle at the intersection of Alcala and Paseo de Recoletos, and headed north on Recoletos. The Plaza is named for the statue of Cibeles and fountain that is at its center. She was a goddess of fertility to the Phrygians; a small kingdom in the north central area of what is now Turkey. She is depicted driving a chariot pulled by two lions. South of Cibeles, Recoletos is known as Paseo del Prado and leads to the Prado Museum. It’s a very wide street with a grassy landscaped area in the center. On one side the sidewalk is very broad and includes an occasional café.
We continued north to the Plaza de Colon (Columbus Plaza) home to the Columbus Monument, a tall column on which he can be seen pointing to the west. He’s surrounded by a large fountain and the Garden of Discovery is here as well. Across the street from Columbus are the Torres de Colon viewed by many as the ugliest building in Madrid. It has now been officially certified by the Virtualtourist organization as one of the 10 ugliest buildings in the world. I have to admit that it’s not my taste but I don’t think it’s that bad. The locals call it ‘The Plug’ because the odd looking half art deco, half machine age modern cap that spans the two towers look somewhat like a European, two-round prong electrical plug. The towers themselves seem to floating above a unifying base and are bronze-glass modern towers. Not beautiful by a long stretch but I can easily think of 10 major buildings I like less than this one. It might suffer by comparison to the very elegant, small stone building right next door. We continued north to the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu where Real Madrid plays its soccer games.
From there we retraced our path south past Cibeles and onto the Paseo del Prado and our destination the Prado Museum. I have been waiting for almost 50 years to see this art museum.
Personal History Note: My first visit to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art on a 7th grade field trip got me started. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Nothing in rural Pennsylvania had prepared me for this. The occasional trip to New York I had taken with my paternal grandmother, Anna (Nana) to me had emphasized other aspects of life, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and the Bronx Zoo. Maybe that’s what got me started on architecture. I know growing up in eastern Pennsylvania got me started on history. It was all around me. My dad took me to a game at old Yankee Stadium, not the latest old one but the one before that. The one Babe Ruth played in. Little did I know what a game I was watching. Mickey Mantle was in center, Roger Maris in right, Whitey Ford pitched and Yogi Berra was the catcher, 1st Base-Bill Skowron, 2nd Base Bobby Richardson, 3rd Base-Clete Boyer, Shortstop-Tony Kubek and Casey Stengel managing, amazing! It was the year that Mantle hit 40 home runs and Maris hit 39. They had been trading the lead down the stretch. I remember the picture in the newspaper where they were standing side by side holding up their game shirts to form the number 79 (Mantle was #7, Maris was #9) the combined total of their homerun output. It’s really odd the things that will stick in your mind. But the first art museum I ever walked into was the Met. It was a great way to start because they have a wonderful collection. From Europe: Raphael, Caravaggio, El Greco’s ‘View of Toledo’, van Eyck, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Vermeer; then the impressionists, Manet, Degas, Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat. From America (not as well known but excellent): Emanuel Leutze (His painting of Washington Crossing the Deleware is an American icon), Charles Cromwell Ingham, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, John Frederick Kensett, Frederic Edwin Church, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (It’s ironic that the only one of these artists we might recognize by his last name only is Whistler and he used all four of his names while he was painting. An additional layer of irony is that we probably know his name from the painting popularly known as ‘Whistler’s Mother’ in the d’Orsay in Paris. If that painting was known by its real name ‘Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother’ we probably wouldn’t know his name either. Yikes!) The fact that I was looking at actual works of art that was hundreds of years old knocked me out. I found a list of the great art museums of the world when I got home and it became a desire of my heart to see them all. I’m getting close.
The Prado was not a disappointment in any way. It emphasizes European art from the 12th to the early 19th centuries and had its genesis in the collection of the Spanish Royal Family. Undoubtedly it is the world’s best collection of Spanish art and includes Diego Velázquez and Francisco Goya, as well El Greco, Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán. Velázquez was important to the collection not only because his work is included but also because, as advisor to the King, he helped select many of the works by Italian masters, Titian, Raphael, Andrea Mantegna, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi (and his daughter, Artemisia Gentileschi the first woman to be accepted by The Accademia dell'Arte del Disegno (Academy of the Art of Drawing) in Florence. It was the first art academy in Europe. It was renamed the Accademia di Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts) and is home to Michelangelo’s David), Veronese, Fra Angelico, Antonello da Messina, Guido Reni, that are included as well. Dutch and Flemish artists are here as well. In fact, the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch was a favorite of King Philip II.
Literary Note: If that name seems familiar to you, you probably have read one or all of the Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly. Harry’s name is Hieronymus also. The novels are great if you like police mystery with a little star-crossed romance included. There are about 14 and I’ve read them all.
There are over 1,300 paintings on display along with drawings, prints, coins, medals and decorative objects; a total of about 12,000 items to see. The coins were very interesting. Many of them were mini sculptures in gold as ancient coins were handmade, one at a time. The most famous work at the Prado is ‘Las Meninas’ (The Maids of Honor) by Diego Velázquez the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Painted in the middle 1600s, this painting is perhaps the most analyzed western painting in history. It’s complex relationships and perspectives are not obvious at a casual glance.
On the surface the picture shows a scene from the royal palace. Margaret Theresa of Spain, then 5 years old, is standing in the center foreground, attended on each side by a lady-in-waiting. To her left are two dwarves and behind her are her chaperone and a palace guard. The artist himself stands in the rear to her right before a very large canvas. He is looking directly forward, toward the observers, as though we are the subjects of his work. On the far wall of the room is an open door looking across the next room to another door leading to a small flight of stairs to the outside. A man is poised on the stairs looking back toward the princess. Next to the door in the far wall is a mirror that is reflecting the head and shoulders of a couple that might be the princess’s parents, King Philip IV and Mariana of Austria. It’s difficult to be sure, as the image in the mirror is indistinct. From the angles involved it’s hard to say if the mirror is reflecting the couple themselves, who would be posing exactly where the observer is standing, or the canvas on which Velázquez has captured their image. Using these two devices, the mirror and the open door leading to the outside, Velázquez has expanded the perspective of the painting to include the space in which the observer stands and extended the depth of the painting to infinity, very unusual for an indoor scene especially in the 1600s. The three main characters are washed by bright light from a window off to the right next to the dwarves. The color characteristics are the same as the light in the distance. The remaining figures are partly illuminated based on their position relative to the right side light source. What appears to be a simple family scene on first glance quickly transforms into an enigmatic and very intricate image that provides the observer with many opportunities for speculation. One thing about which there is no conjecture. Except for the palace guard, all the other figures in the painting, including the two dwarves, are identifiable members of Philip IV’s royal court. I did not expect to be impressed by this painting but I was.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. I seek out his paintings whenever I am anywhere in the vicinity of one. He painted for about 18 years from 1592 to 1610 the year he died. During this time he painted David with Goliath’s head three times. The one in the Prado was done in 1599 and is the first. (We’ll see two more of his works here in Madrid, one in the royal palace and one in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.) I started to go into sensory overload in the museum because when I see too many wonderful things in a short space of time I get a mental version of ice cream brain freeze and I just have to stop for a while. If I’m on my own I just find a quiet place to sit and watch people go by but when you’re on tour your time is controlled by external circumstances. It was very close to the time we were to meet in the museums courtyard so I decided to sit out there; it’s a very pretty day.
On the way around to the front of the building I noticed a very ornate church directly behind the museum and decided to go up the stairs to take a look. It was the church of San Jerónimo el Real. The church was part of the larger complex of Saint Jerome’s Monastery. It’s a gothic structure in the Isabelline style. (Isabelline Gothic takes its name from Queen Isabella of Castile and was the last version of Gothic architecture in Spain, very popular during her reign. It has some attributes of the Renaissance style that followed but retained the overall Gothic look.) This church was very closely associated with the royal family who built a retreat at the monastery where the king went for Lent and at time of grief and mourning. It has been the center of some controversy for the last few years as the adjoining cloisters were demolished to make room for an expansion of the Prado Museum.
After we gathered from our various routes through the museum we reboarded the bus and set off for the Plaza Mayor. On the way we passed the Parque del Retiro. Ahhhh, the Park of Retirement (actually ‘Pleasant Retreat’ is a more correct translation). It’s a 350-acre park that was established as an open space at the royal retreat at the San Jerónimo Monastery. We also passed the Atocha Railway Station. Built in 1851, this was Madrid’s first train depot. After it was destroyed by fire it was rebuilt in wrought iron style by a Spanish architect with the assistance of Gustave Eiffel, his teacher while he was in Paris. This building consists of two rectangular buildings constructed from stone, concrete and brick with an arched wrought iron and glass enclosure covering the train tracks and platforms in between. When this structure became inadequate to handle the amount of train traffic coming to the station (it not only serves international and national trains but a large volume of commuter trains) they constructed a new glass and steel structure with a round brick entry hall to serve the trains, some of which now arrive underground. They converted the older structure into a concourse with shops, cafes, a nightclub and an acre of covered tropical garden.
The Plaza Mayor is a large open space not far from the Royal Palace, Cathedral and Plaza del Sol. It was constructed during the Habsburg Period (1452 to 1740) and is surrounded by arcaded buildings with cafes, bars and shops. One section of this rim of buildings, in the center of the north side, flanked by two symmetrical towers with spires, served as the headquarters of the powerful ‘Bakers Guild’ and is called the ‘Casa de la Panaderia’. This part of the building existed 30 years before the square was constructed and is in Flemish style. Its exterior walls are decorated with allegorical paintings added in 1992. In a wonderful juxtaposition, the ‘Butchers Guild’ is located in the same space on the south side of the plaza. It is not as ornately decorated as the Baker’s building but is nice also. I’m a sandwich lover so the butcher’s and baker’s guilds would have been very important to me. Now, if we could just find the candlestick makers and a tub we’d be in business.
Today an organization of bakers would not seem such a formidable entity but in the Middle Ages they were extremely powerful because they controlled the grain supply, mills for making flour, and the baking, distribution and pricing of all grain products. At a time when most foods were very seasonal, bread was the one staple available all year long and a much more important part of the daily diet
The arch over the plaza entrance in the center of the Baker’s Guild has a historic coat of arms. It’s the first that did not include seal of Portugal. Although Portugal was independent in 1640, Spain did not recognize that fact until 1668 when King Charles II had this coat of arms carved. The shield at the center is divided into four quadrants. The first has Castile and Leon, the second has Aragon and Sicily, the third has Austria and Burgundy (modern), the forth has Burgundy (ancient) and Tyrol, and Granada is in the center between and partly overlapping the third and forth (called the ‘nombil point’). The Portuguese arms would have been in this center position between the first and second quadrants (called the honour point) but Charles II had them removed.
In the center of the plaza is a mounted bronze of King Philip III done in 1616. Over the years the plaza has been the site of bullfights, trials of the Spanish Inquisition, weddings, royal coronations and executions. Today it’s a popular place with tourists and locals alike. The cafes and bars are busy places.
The Plaza Mayor was the last stop on our guided tour and the bus took us back to the hotel. We decided to grab a quick lunch at MacDonald’s and head out for the afternoon on our own. Our hotel, the Husa Paseo del Arte is only one block from the Prado Museum at the intersection of Calle de Atocha Street and the Paseo del Prado. A bus across town to the area near the Plaza Mayor runs right in front of our hotel. We wanted to go to the Royal Palace not far from there so we took the bus up the street and then walked the mile or so to the palace.
The Royal Palace and the Almudena Cathedral are on opposite sides of the Plaza de Armas. They are both very attractive buildings. This structure was completed in 1762 and was built on the same grounds as the old palace that was destroyed in a fire. It’s Baroque style heavily influenced by the Italian sculptor Gian Bernini (Yes the same guy that carved dozens of Rome’s fountains). Bernini didn’t design many buildings but instead embellished existing structures. His main architectural concept is the colonnades and piazza of St. Peter’s in Rome. The front façade of the Royal Palace is adorned with sculptures. Some were ‘New World’ figures, Montezuma for example. Spanish royals occupy the highest pediment over the main entrance, Philip V, his first wife Maria Louisa of Savoy and his son Ferdinand IV with his wife Maria Barbara of Braganza. Philip V was the founder of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty. The first King to occupy this structure was Carlos III the first child of Philip V and his second wife. I ascended to the throne when his half-brother Ferdinand IV died. He honored their memory with the statues.
The public can visit only part of the palace. That part is quite impressive. The rooms are definitely fitting for the royal personage. There are quite a few items of historical importance in the collection. In the music room you can see the only complete Stradivarius string quartet in existence. I had previously seen violins and celli he constructed, Yo-Yo Ma played one when he performed with the Orange County Symphony Orchestra. There are almost 190 of his violins known today and 63 celli. I don’t think I had ever seen a Stradivarius viola before. There are only 13 known to exist and three of those are in the USA, two in the Library of Congress and one at the Smithsonian. As much time as I’ve spent in those two places you think I would have seen one but I don’t think I have.
The other highlight for me was the Caravaggio canvas, ‘Salome with the Head of John the Baptist’. John the Baptist was the subject of at least 13 of Caravaggio’s paintings. This one shows Salome with John’s head on a tray in the foreground with the executioner and an older woman, possibly Salome’s mother, in the background. There’s something about his paintings I really connect with. The palace also has some paintings by Velázquez, Goya and others but none were the equal of the Caravaggio. One interesting display had two paintings by Goya of the same woman in the same pose and with the same facial expression but one was nude and one clothed, side-by-side. I knew there had to be a story behind these two canvases, as I’d never encountered this before. Sure enough, the paintings were originally the property of Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy, a noted womanizer. He hung them both on the wall of his home with the clothed version in front. By means of a pulley system he could raise that one and reveal the naked one behind it at any time. As Ukrainian born Soviet comedian Yakov Smirnoff used to say, “Freedom, what a concept!”
In addition to the main building there are annexes that border the sides of the plaza between the palace and the cathedral. One of these buildings houses a collection of weapons and armor from the 1200s onward. It’s an impressive display that takes up two floors of one building. They had everything arranged chronologically so it was easy to see the improvements and changes made over the years as the metallurgical arts progressed.
Almudena Cathedral dates from the late 19th and 20th centuries so it is very new by European standards. The site was originally occupied by Madrid's first mosque and later by a church dedicated to one of Madrid's patron saints, Santa María de la Almudena. When construction started Madrid did not have a Bishop and the original design was for a church. But in 1884 Pope Leo XIII created the Diocese of Madrid and that gave Madrid a Bishop and elevated the Almudena to the status of cathedral. The plans were revised to reflect this new position. Various problems delayed construction and building was totally suspended during the civil war in the 1930s. Construction was begun anew in 1944 and the design of the façade was changed to Neoclassical so it would more closely resemble the Royal Palace. It was finally completed in 1993 and was consecrated by Pope John Paul II on his visit to Madrid that year. It’s a very attractive building from the outside. There was a function of some kind going on inside so we didn’t get to go in.
We walked back to the bus stop and rode back to the hotel. Breakfast tomorrow is our last event on the Globus Portugal, Spain and Morocco tour. Our tour mates have flights home in the morning. We have an overnight train to Paris tomorrow evening so we can do some touring tomorrow before checking our and heading to the railway station.
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