Spain?! What comes in your mind when you hear this word?
Flamenco dancers, Tapas, Spanish guitar, bull fights .. Well I think it is much
more than that though I have yet to see Spain, the way I want to, let alone
feel it. I really believe that a country hits you instantly, and Spain hadn’t
hit me in my first trip there in 2010. So this time I was a little biased when
I crossed the border and entered Spain. The only comforting thing was Spanish,
and that I could do more with it than to just get around with my limited
knowledge of the language. On the first 2 days of driving I had taken the odd
route and it paid at times. That day on the way to Salamanca, the capital of
Castella & Mancha, I decided to simply listen to Tim, the voice on the GPS.
I reached early and it immediately hurt that I did not have the ‘lonely planet’
to Spain. I knew the language but I did not know what to do in Salamanca. So I
did what I had gone for. To search for hotels for my group to stay, following a
map, which I had marked the hotels on. It was a small town and finding the
hotels was easy, though not always going up to them. The medieval towns in
Spain are more or less set on hills and Salamanca is no exception to that. We
will just say that till the evening I had managed to select one hotel which was
good with the feel, its distance from the main square and most importantly for
my 60 yr + people, it had an easy access.
A job done with the hotels and the places to see could be
dealt later when there would be a guide to show us around. It was almost 6.30 pm and unlike the
earlier evening in Coimbra, my appetite had only grown in Salamanca. When I
travel alone, and it does get a little lonely at times, food is the only thing
that I look forward to. So I set to search for a place that felt right. Its
very important on your travels that you don’t enter the first place you see and
eat a sandwich coz you are too hungry to wait and too scared to order anything
else. Roam around a bit, take in the town and you will know when to enter a
restaurant.
I took my chance and entered a place, which served only
Tapas. Well I suddenly remembered that the only thing that I had really liked
on my first visit to spain were the tapas. So tapas they were for lunch and for
dinner. Spain being expensive than Portugal I overspent by around 10 euros on
each meal. The day was good but it felt like a regular office day. You do your
work and you eat your meal. You enjoy both but there still feels something
missing. Or maybe it was just the standard’s were raised too much by Coimbra.
The second day however came as a surprise. Salamanca had to
stay in my itinerary, unlike Coimbra, which had to be sacrificed for the sake
of Pinhao. The question then was which Paradores to select out of the three
medieval towns of Caceres, Trujillo and Guadalupe for my next stay. ‘Paradores’
are hotels owned by the state in Spain and are beautifully structured in an old
palace or a villa. I wanted my people to stay in one of them to get the
authentic feel of old world Spain. On my drive to Caceres where I was booked in a Paradores
myself, the town of Guadalupe came in first. The road was a little off track
but then I thought what if it pays off like Pinhao? and what a view it was from
a distance of 500 metres! A Church which looked like a castle rising high above
the other structures as it rightly should, and the being surrounded by
perfectly sculpted city walls.
. As I entered the tiny square I could hear people singing
and it seemed that the walls sang with them. Straight out of a story book. No
tourists, only locals drinking, eating and praising the patron saint of the
village through music. I told myself I shall come to sit amongst them later,
first the hotel to be chosen. There was no option here. Either the Paradores
had to be too bad or it had to have a 500 step climb in order to be declined
for the group. The town had really won me over and to my relief, the hotel was
as charming as the town. Set in a convent around an orange orchard. The manager
even said that I could get a bus to the steps and he would ask the town
municipalty to arrange for a parking.
I wanted to ask the manager even before staying at the
Paradores in Caceres which had a population of 60,000, whether it would be possible that I
shift my stay from there to Guadalupe. There is a thing about small towns
everywhere, the people are generally nice and if you speak their language they
are nicer. Its true that on that afternoon as I had my first sip of Spanish
beer, it felt much better than I had felt after having beer ever.
The town of Caceres, later as I learnt was just a formality. A
night was booked and I had to simply use it. My group would stay in Guadalupe and proceed to Seville in the south of Spain without even stopping at Caceres, forget staying there. However being a Paradores, my stay in Caceres was good, but it happened to be Christmas eve
and that meant I have their 50 Euro meal or stay hungry, with all the restuarants closed. With my over spending
the day earlier, I chose the later.
Next morning I woke up with excitement, I was heading back
to Portugal!
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