4th April.
We are on our way to Madrid through Catalonia. The countryside is green and lovely but the weather is windy and cold. We stopped at a picnic area near a small town, and we soon had visitors….
As is our habit we went though the mountainous areas. Europe has so much history we are co stantly surprised to find ancient sites in the st remote places. We found this roman aqueduct beside the road.(Galeria de los Espajos).
Another roadside find was a dirt track leading to "Las Salinas". We had no idea what this might be but the track looked interesting so in we went. We walked the last km, and found this old salt collecting process. The soil is very saline apparently and water seeping out of the rock is very saline too. It was dripped into shallow enclosures and then evaporated to leave the salt. The information boards indicted that the salt was collected by monks from a nearby monastery. The salt was important to local industries (including cheese making).
We tend to like mountainous areas and gorges so we were drawn to a gorge with a city (Cuenca) with “hanging houses”. The hanging houses were on a clifftop, and they did have balconies which hung out over the cliff….
But the hanging houses were nothing compared to the gorge the city was situated in. We drove a ciruit first along the valley in the gorge and then along the cliff top. The views were stunning.
6th April, we have arrived in Madrid. We are in a camp ground in the suburbs of Madrid. Last night we stayed in a municipal campground, but the noise was impossible with passing trafic on the freeway beside the camping area. So we moved to a more expensive but much quieter campground.
Madrid has a Gallery of Modern Art (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia) featuring modern Spanish painters, including Salvadore Dali and Picasso ( especailly his Guernica). There is a booking required for the Guernica but othrwise admission does not require bookingl This system worked well for us and we were able to see the Guernica (but not to photograph it!) We also saw more Dali than we had seen in the museum dedicated to him in his home town! I like Dali a little better again now!
We are in Don Quixote country now and this mural on a city street wall reminded us of that fact rather nicely!
We didn’t enjoy Madrid in the same way as we did Barcelona. Somehow it lacked the vibrancy of Barcelona. There were eateries in scattered squares, but not the crowds and the excitement of Las Rambla. But we did find that where there are Spaniards eating there is a lot of noise! Happy noise at that!
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