April 21, 2008 by Rick.

We did a relaxed day trip from Madrid to this historic “community” in the weirdly shaped, rounded topped mountains. The entire place is a park, and no one lives there anymore (I think) except for a few resident priests. The peaks and scenery were pretty amazing. We arrived in a thick shroud of fog. This was probably really good since we later saw the amazing yet very precarious cliffs we’d been driving along (rarely with guardrails!) to get there. It certainly made difficult figuring out where we were and where the parking was. After lucking out and finding a stall for parking, we walked through the clouds up the hill a little ways, where others seemed to be walking. None us really knew what we were looking for, but Claudette had read us the short paragraph description from a guide book and it had sounded worthwhile. While it seemed moist in the air, the clouds that we were immersed in never really rained on us until a few hours later when they had lifted. While walking we saw a building (barely) off to the left side of the road we were walking on. Then, just before the building a parking lot with a few dozen tour buses all lined up. We went briefly inside the building to see what was what. It turned out to be a three story food services building, built into the side of the hill a bit. It was also perched at the top of a deep ravine with a (presumably) spectacular view through the huge floor to ceiling windows. We had just eaten a roadside “picnic snack” that resembled lunch (lotsa great cheese, but no meat) and so resolved to eat supper here after checking the rest of the place out. We still had no idea what we were going to see other than the fact that there was supposed to be a nice church up here somewhere to see. The many large tour coaches and this huge three level restaurant reassured us that there must certainly be something very significant to see though.

Grandma Vi later commented how absolutely cool and memorable this experience was for her being unable to see a dozen meters in front of us. Apparently she had never been “in” the clouds before, and this was a very novel experience. In retrospect, I suppose that my first time walking in the clouds on a hike was pretty special as well. Grandpa Ray or Claudette didn’t comment and so we walked on, ever upwards. The uphill side of the road (and sidewalk) had become a looming retaining wall without my noticing. Suddenly there was another large restaurant opening onto the sidewalk, but this time built into the uphill side, instead of overlooking the lush green valley below. This place was merely utilitarian since it didn’t offer three teirs of seating adjacent to large panel windows. Based on this, I was presuming the that the prices would be slightly less as well. Shortly after we walked past that cafeteria, there were stairs going up into the retaining wall, up into the hill. The mist was also starting to clear, and looking up we could catch glimpses of the mountain walls and rounded spires (is that a semi-oxymoron?) a short distance away. At the top of the 6m vertical stairs, there was a courtyard, and by the time we reached it the mists were really starting to clear up to about 30m elevation from us. Suddenly sprang out a beautiful shear cliff face all along one plane running parallel to the road below that was cut into the hillside. The church entrance was off to one side while the opposite had a road heading down to a gated wall entrance before a switchback u-turn to meet up with the road we had taken the stairs from. All the stonework was old and beautiful.

We headed off to the church courtyard entrance. This was through a large multi-arched building, which we later saw was a “C” shape facing the other way, and surrounding the church entrance courtyard. As the mist “lifted”, the rain naturally started. It was still a really nice site. Unfortunately, someone here had chosen a logo for the church with four rounded towers, one longer than the other three. This is unfortunate because it looks exactly like someone giving “the finger”! Of course Grandma Vi readily posed beside the sign with hers extended as well. I’m surprised she hasn’t heard all sorts of exclamations of shock and horror from her co-workers. Perhaps they hadn’t seen that shot yet, but they’ll be scrambling to look for it now!

The Church itself was quite nice and tall and majestic. Inside was really beautiful though with the ceiling covered in stunning paintings from masters of the brush. This church set in amongst the oddly shaped mini mountains was a pretty cool sight overall. We couldn’t see the museum there since it was mid afternoon and we were running out of time to go up the mountain. There had once been several dozen monks all throughout the hills here that lived in solitude. Apparently they only came down from their huts once a year or so. They didn’t even visit each other (supposedly?) at only one or two km apart from each other. Their was also a smaller stone chapel at the top of one of these hills a few km away. There were two trams that take tourists up and down from the main park area. There is also a gondola from the base of the valley below which brings people up from the town to the park. We took the “up” tram to the top of a hill. It was similar to the Hong Kong tram, but was still a new experience for Grandpa Ray & Grandma Vi. Sadly, half way up the cloud cover encased everything again and we didn’t get much of a view down. we knew this before buying the tickets though, and just enjoyed the displays up there and a bit of a walk around. By the time we got down the museum was closed, and the restaurants only had unappetizing scraps left. So we piled in to the Citroen mini van and headed back West to our room for the night.

Posted in 2008-03 to 05, Europe | 2 Comments »

April 21, 2008 by Rick.

We didn’t really know where we were going to be in mid April when Ray needed to fly home (to look after (Greg & Monique’s poor, sweet, abandoned children). We figured maybe Southern Spain or Portugal, so we told him to book himself back from Madrid. It turns out that we barely made it West to Madrid just on time for him to catch his plane back early this morning. The city was pretty interesting Our hotel was called “Hi-Tek Castel Nova” and included free wireless throughout as well as a huge screen laptop in every room along with huge LCD TV’s and VOIP phones. Very cool indeed!

We only drove around in a seemingly fairly new area in the NE area of Madrid, closer (15 minutes) to the airport. It was still weird though, because no matter where we drove in about a four kilometer radius, there were no single family dwelling subdivisions. There were only apartments. Block after block after block of apartments with small basic little parks or “green areas” thrown in. To make things even weirder (to us North Americano’s at least) was that none of these apartments were more than seven or eight stories tall. Even the commercial buildings were seemingly restricted to this height. The roads here were wide with multiple lanes, with elaborate traffic control. The malls we saw were HUGE and plentiful. Just no houses…

The subway system here was fantastic. The stairways and walking tunnels were wide and well looked after. There were even three or four escalators at most stations we saw. We were riding around on the weekend and didn’t experience the workday crushing throngs of people. There were still one or two rides with people bumping each other and at one point a dark cloud fell over our happy family group. Ray realized that his wallet from the buttoned back pocket went missing on one ride. Luckily we had a smok’in net connection and he was able to use skype to cancel everything. It was still a huge disappointment to lose the $150 or so cash he had in there though, never mind the damper the experience put on our moods.

We didn’t do a whole lot of sight seeing in Madrid. In the two nights we stayed there was only time for a few spots including the Royal Palace. It was incredible, and opulent, and stunk so badly of excess that I quickly became sickened with the obnoxious display everywhere we looked. It was emphasized that the king had three meals a day in each of three seperate rooms. Each was more incredible and painted and furnished more extravagantly than the previous. There were marble floor and wall etchings done with craftsmanship just barely less grand than that of the Taj Mahal. One room housed several Stratovarious instruments of various sizes, and I didn’t even realize that he made anything but violins. The armory at the Palace was very cool. All kinds of different swords and fighting implements. There were a couple dozen suites of armor, all shined up nicely, and another several with armored dummy men on armored dummy horses. Ultra cool! All this came along with a few dozen security people also watching to ensure that no one attempted to take any pictures. Anyone raising a cell phone up received an immediate stern focus, never mind actually trying to whip out a camera from one’s pocket.

We had difficulty finding a place for supper on the 20th to celebrate Alex’s 14th birthday. The hotel restaurant where we were at was closed that night but there were a whole bunch of other options within a ten minute drive of the neighborhood. Or so we initially thought… It turned out that places were either a bar (packed full of smokers) or a basic hokey little bistro, (not worthy of a birthday celebration), or that they didn’t open until 9:00 PM! In the end we drove around for a couple of hours looking and came back to an awesome Asian place that opened at nine. The food and Spanish speaking Asian staff were worth the wait though, and we all enjoyed a scrumptious meal. Plus at the end, they brought Alex her cheesecake with a candle in it and we all boisterously sang HAPPY BIRTHDAY to her.

Sadly the next morning Ray had to head off early to the airport. We all gave him big hugs goodbye, but not before loading the heck out of his huge (and half empty) and most importantly light suitcase. He still hasn’t told us if he had to pay any extra charges at the counter, but we temporarily divested ourselves of all sorts of heavy books, neat small rocks and ancient Roman pottery pieces from around Petra.

Posted in 2008-03 to 05, Europe | No Comments »