Northern Spain Travelogue

We may not keep our promises, but we always keep our threats. As alluded to at the begining our previous blog, we packed our bags and returned to Spain, forcing them to host us for the second time this summer. Last time, we had done the beaten path of Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona. This time's plan was to visit the (relatively) lesser known northern communities of Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Basque, Navarre and Castile & León. First day was same as last time: fly in late evening into Madrid, hire a car, check into the Ibis near the airport and start your trip dark and early the following morning. Almost all of Spain is west of Paris, but thanks to Franco, Spain is one hour ahead of GMT, the same time zone as Germany. Hence, you can never get up "bright" and early. Even in August, it is pitch dark at 7 a.m..

Two and a half hours on road brought us to the first destination of the trip: Salamanca. Its university, founded in 1218 by Alfonso IX, is the fourth oldest continuously operational university after Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge. The university has opened its oldest parts to the tourists so that they (rather, "we") can take our selfies without bothering the students. The most famous of these touristy bits is the Plateresque façade which hides a small sculpture of a frog. If you can spot it without help, you will ace your exams. If you can't spot it, the lady selling trinkets in the square will point it out to you in return for some business. Since we now own an useless froggy keychain, you know we are going to flunk all our future exams. Thankfully, there aren't too many after 50. A short walk away is a pair of cathedrals. The older one was built between the 12^th and the 14^th centuries and the newer one was built between the 16^th and the 18^th centuries. Usually, the older cathedral gets torn down to make way for the new. But, better sense seems to have prevailed here in Salamanca and one can still enjoy the wonderful murals and the altarpiece from the bygone era.

In 1494, the two great seafaring nations - Portugal and Spain - signed a treaty diving the globe into two (hemi)spheres of influence. This treaty was signed in Tordesillas, which is located about an hour north-east of Salamanca and the building where the said signing took place is now a museum. Half hour south of Tordesillas is Medina del Campo, home to one of the iconic castles of this region. This region isn't called Castile for nothing. There are several picture-perfect castles here and it doesn't get any picture-perfecter than the Castle of Mota at Medina del Campo. It was built in the 15^th century by the Alba family on top of an old Moorish fort. After a quick stop at these two places, we headed to our night stop - Zamora. Romanesque, with its characteristic rounded arches, was the prevalent style between the 9^th and the 12^th centuries. Some of these were destroyed by the Moorish raids led by Almanzor while others were torn down to make way for the larger Gothic cathedrals that you see today. Zamora seems to have escaped both these destructions and hence houses the largest collection of Romanesque churches anywhere in Europe. We ended the day marvelling at these ancient edifices lit brightly by the setting sun.

All of these sights kept us busy till lunch and an ensuing four hour drive brought us to the first highlight of the trip: Santiago de Compostela. The Apostles of Jesus headed to various parts of the world to spread his word. Thomas came to Mylapore while James came to Iberia. James is Yakob in Hebrew and Sancti Iacobi became Santiago in Spanish. His remains are believed to have been brought here after his martyrdom. In the 9^th century, this legend was ratified by the King of Asturias and the first church was built to house the remains. Over time, it has grown into the third most important church in Christendom after Jerusalem and the Vatican. The view of the Western Façade from the Praza do Obradoiro and the stunning Pórtico de Gloria that is hidden behind it were absolutely breathtaking.

The Roman conquest of Iberia lasted 200 years from 220 B.C. to 19 B.C. and several military camps were established in its process. One such camp was established in 13 BC by Paullus Fabius Maximus who called it Lucus Augusti, present day Lugo. During the third century A.D. (between 263 and 276 A.D. to be precise), the town got its famed walls to protect it from the Germanic invaders. The 2 km long wall is in excellent condition, the best preserved Roman walls anywhere in the world, and it is wide enough to walk all the way around on it. Walking the walls at daybreak, enjoying the great views into and out of the town was the best experience of the trip. We now took a short break from history as we made our way to the Bay of Biscay, to one of the most picturesque beaches in Spain: Praia das Catedrais, where a series of arches line the coast. The arches can be visited only during low tide and it is one of the top Instagram points in the country. Hence, we had to dodge some Tirupati level crowd to get a glimpse of the famed natural wonder.

We now entered Asturias biding adios to Galicia. Muslim conquest of Iberia in the 8^th century was relatively quick. In a few years, they had taken most of the peninsula. The Christians were confined to a narrow strip of land in the north and that is where the resistance started. The Christians created themselves a kingdom - the Kingdom of Asturias and its king Alfonso II moved the capital to Oviedo. It was he who made the first pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and declared the relics as being authentic. His route to Santiago was the genesis of the Camino de Santiago which over time has grown into a network of paths connecting various Christian capitals to Santiago. Oviedo's top attraction is its cathedral. The cathedral was started in 781 A.D. by Alfonso II's father and over time it has grown into the grand Gothic edifice that we see today. But the core of the original church is still present in the form of a Cámara Santa which houses a number of precious treasures from the early Asturian monarchy (9^th to 11^th centuries A.D.). On the way to Oviedo, we had stopped by Gijón which houses the largest building in Spain - the Universidad Laboral de Gijón. Built between 1946 and 1955, it houses several cultural institutions.

The following day we woke up to the fact that My Fair Lady was wrong all along. Rain in Spain happens everywhere but in the plains. The incessant annoying drizzle wiped out our plan to drive through the Picos de Europa. That ensured we could make it to our 10 a.m. appointment at the caves. We were now in Cantabria where, several millennia ago, early humans had left some of the most astonishing cave art found anywhere in the world. The most famous of these caves is Altamira, so famous that the authorities had to shut it down as the human breath had started destroying the fragile paintings. Thankfully, some of the lesser known caves are still open to the tourists. But their numbers are heavily controlled and one needs to book months in advance to get permission to visit them. We had applied a couple of months earlier which could only get us into Las Monedas, the cave with the least ancient and the least number of the paintings. They were just couple of horses and they date back to "only" 11,000 B.C., but coming face to face with these precious paintings in a dark cave, lit only by the guide's torch was a truly moving experience. There is also a fake-Altamira, a new cave created in 2001 which faithfully replicates the drawings of the original. Even this one needs prior booking, weeks and not months. The paintings here are indeed truly breathtaking and one can easily see why the original had to be closed to public. The originals date back to 36,000 B.C. and it is a miracle that anything at all has survived to our day.

The region also houses one of modern era’s masterpiece - El Capricho by Antoni Gaudí. It was built between 1883 and 1885 for the summer use of a wealthy client, Máximo Díaz de Quijano. It is one of Gaudí's early works and one of the few that he created outside Catalonia. It is time now to enter the Basque region and we ended the day at Bilbao, home to one of the iconic buildings of the 20^th century, the Guggenheim Museum. Designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997, the building has single-handedly put Bilbao on the tourist map. Frankly, we would have drove past Bilbao if not for this masterpiece. The building and its equally famous 13 m tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier both exceeded our expectations. No matter how many pictures of them you have seen before, the real ones does indeed take your breath away.

Day 5 saw us driving all the way to San Sebastián. It wasn't in our original plan, but its primary attraction, La Playa de Las Conchas, doesn't have an opening time and its secondary attraction, Pintxos, get served by 9 a.m.. The former was, of course, easy to locate. Locating a bar selling the vegetarian version of the latter was a bit of a bother. But we did eventually find one serving vegetarian pintxos for breakfast.

Having checked out one of the travel must-dos, we headed to the planned first stop of the day: Guernica. We saw Guernica, the painting, on our last trip. This time we were in Guernica, the town whose 1937 tragedy of being the testing ground for carpet bombing inspired Picasso's anti-war masterpiece. The prime attraction here is its Assembly Hall. Built between 1826 and 1833, it is one of the few buildings to have survived the 1937 bombing. The pièce de résistance is its central hall with it gigantic stained glass ceiling. Completed in 1985, the glass depicts the Tree of Guernica, a symbol of Basque liberties and a traditional meeting point for the municipalities of Biscay. We had never seen a stained glass panel covering a ceiling before.

The day ended at Pamplona, the capital of Navarre and the home to the famous Running of the Bulls. Since we are in no shape to run away from anything faster than a drunken snail, we made sure we came here in August, a full month after the yearly event. Pamplona does have enough to entertain in the off-season: its sumptuous Cathedral with its stride-stopping cloisters, its main Plaza with its quaint little gazebo and its Citadel with its impressive ramparts. What's more, we also found a 100% vegan pintxos place, that too at an affordable price!

The main challenge of the trip was to find stuff to do till 10 a.m. when the ticketed monuments usually open. Lugo's Walls and San Sebastián's beach did their bits to fill the gaps earning them Silver and Bronze respectively. The Gold has to go the capital of Basque: Vitoria-Gasteiz. Its primary attractions are its Plaza de la Virgen Blanca and its grand street art, both of which are free and are open round the clock. In 2007, a bunch of artists got together and decided to fill the vacant walls of the city with gigantic murals and the result is one of the most fascinating open-air museums in the world. The murals alone were enough to make the entire trip to the Basque region worth the effort.

The main stop for the day was one of the most important cities on the Camino de Santiago: Burgos. Before we made our triumphal entry into the city, we had to check off couple of sites on the outskirts. The first was the Cartuja de Miraflores, a 15^th century monastery with a stunning altarpiece decorated with the first shipment of gold from the Americas. The second was the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas. While the main story of the crusades was playing out in Anatolia and the Holy Land, a lesser known side story was happening in the Iberian peninsula. One of the famous battles of the Iberian crusades was the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa of 1212 A.D.. The winner, Alfonso VIII, had founded this monastery a little earlier in 1187 and he housed the booty of this victory inside of it, including the famous Tapestry of Miramamolin.

The highlight in Burgos is its magnificent Cathedral, easily the best monument that we had seen on this trip. It is the final resting place of one of the most colourful characters of medieval Spain, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, popularly known as El Cid. His name is the corruption of the Arabic Al-Sayyid and he was a mercenary constantly shifting his allegiance between various rulers. His finest hour came when he defeated the Almohads at the Battle of Cuarte in 1094 showing the Christian world that the mighty Almohads can be beaten. The epic poem El Cantar de mio Cid recounting his life history is the earliest surviving work in Spanish.

The high of the Burgos cathedral was soon followed by a couple of lows. For the first time in over a decade, the hotel failed to locate the reservation we had made via Agoda. Thankfully, they had enough vacancy, but getting the refund from Agoda turned out to be a complete nightmare. The second came the following morning's detour to Astorga. We pocketed a hefty 90 euro fine for parking at a spot which we erroneously concluded as free parking. The Astorga Cathedral and the nearby Episcopal Palace (another of Gaudi’s works) turned out to be a bit underwhelming. Things got back on track once we reached León. Its immense Gothic Cathedral cheered us up. In our opinion, it was second only to the Burgos' in grandeur. The site once housed a Roman bath and a couple of Romanesque churches from the 10^th and the 11^th centuries. The current building, created between the 13^th and the 15^th centuries, houses one of the largest collections of medieval stained glass in the world. And they were spectacular when backlit by the evening sun. The other worthy mentions of León were the Casa Botines, the last Gaudí building that we had yet to see and the Basílica de San Isidoro housing the best preserved Romanesque murals in the country.

The final day of the trip saw us driving the Castle of Coca, another of the picture-perfect castles that the region is famous for. This mudejar masterpiece was completed in 1493 and, as you would have guessed, it was hours before the opening time when we reached there. The castle is best enjoyed from the outside and without the crowd and with the morning sunlight, it was the perfect background to record our final words of the trip. The ultimate final stop of our grand road trip across North Spain was La Granja de San Ildefonso, a summer palace modelled after the Versailles, built in 1721 by the first Bourbon king of Spain, Philip V. The opulent interiors and the wonderful gardens surrounding the palace was a great place to end such a memorable trip.

This was the first self-driven road trip that we had made in years, probably decades. So much time has passed that we can't remember what might have been our previous such adventure. It is never too late to restart our road-adventure trips. We aren't getting any younger and we have light-years to cover before we sleep. Thanks for reading and the trip video below has the visuals matching the journal. If your curiosity if piqued enough, you can take a look. ¡Hasta luego!