Domingo's
mother and sister were so welcoming and kind, they fed us in the
evening and we caught up on our washing as well, in the morning his
mum was very worried because we didn't want to have breakfast (we
find we usually eat at around 11am). We headed to Zaragosa again to
visit Domingo, the hospital parking around hospital full but we found
a spot a few streets away. We spent a couple of hours with Domingo
then had a mission trying to find right road out of Zaragosa. There
are very many wind farms, especially on hils in this area and the
land north-east of Zaragosa is very barren, almost desert until
Borja, with many olive tree orchards, then back to desert-like
conditions again.
The
following signs are in english language everywhere but Spain: WC,
parking, stop, McDrive (spain = McAuto). Radio stations in Spain – take 10 stations, 8 are just talking, one will be classical, and the only one with any songs in english plays Abba :@( Petrol is around €1.16/litre
which is a bit of a relief as it's our major expense, the roads and
road signs are good and Spanish drivers much better behaved than
Italian (stay on their own side of the road). We are traveling on the
secondary roads as these take us through the small towns and have
less traffic than the motorways although there are lots of trucks.
The houses have very little colour, only white, cream or off-white if
painted, often they are left the concrete colour, or else earth
coloured brick. If any part of the house is painted a colour it will
be a bright painted door / window or shutters.
At
Soria provence the land was beginning to green up but no trees and
very red earth. Segovia provence is patchwork like England, but the
fields are more vast with reds and browns instead of shades of green.
Nearing Segovia there are lots more trees. Segovia itself is a cool
town although we only drove into and out of it, it has a city wall
which isn't that obvious and also has a huge Roman viaduct crossing
the town and the streets are cobbled.
We
had thought that the journey from Zuera all the way to Avila (270 odd
miles) would take us two days but the roads were so easy and we kept
a constant speed and weren't stopping every five minutes to take
pictures so made it in one.
When
Carol and Domingo were living together in Pakistan they had the
fortune to meet two cool Spanish guys, Manuel and Alfonso, who were
traveling around by bicycle. Carol had kept in touch with them since
and we had been invited to stay with them when in Spain. Manu lives
in Avila and we arrived in the evening and he took us out with a
friend to a pub and treated us to drinks and tapas and then gave us a
night tour around the city and walls.
The
next day we saw Avila by day, it has the most complete city walls in
Europe, in the past there was a move to pull down the walls (as with
the viaduct in Sergovia) but luckily there wasn't enough money to do
the job and so they remain today and are a great attraction. Inside
the walls is a cathedral and tiny cobbled streets. Then we went to
visit Manu at work, he is a Bombero (Fireman) and gave us a full tour
of the Firestation including going up the tower, sliding down the
pole, seeing all the gear on the Firetrucks, going out in the ladder
truck and up the ladder itself (Carol got the hebbies so couldn't but
Kent went right to the full 100 feet extension of the ladder, pretty
high up) we had a great time. The evening we spent lazing and
watching the DVD Avatar...
22nd
saw us heading to Gredos with Manu who had a day off, Gredos is a
mountainous area south of Avila. First he took us to see some sights
which included a Roman road on the Avila mountain range. We had lunch
with his lovely family in the village where he grew up then headed
into the Gredos range near his house, where there is the greatest
swimming hole (he must have had a magic childhood there) and went up
a valley where we saw the local mountain goats. We were hoping to see
the city walls lit up when we returned to Avila being Friday night
but the message that we were in town hadn't reached the powers that
be...
Thanks
Manu for such a great visit to your part of Spain! :)
We
are a little (lot) behind in uploading the pics to our site, if you
visit it please realise that this is a backup site for all our pics
for us so there are lots of pictures there rather than just the
special ones. In the future when we have time we will do some work on
them (joining some to panoramas and cropping others) but all in all
they will help us to remember our trip when we are old and grey(er).
To
see our photos http://cjb.pascoe.net.nz/
(click on or copy and paste into browser)
