Western Spain October 2023

We pulled into Mérida in style (seats 10A & 10B) on a Flix bus from Lisbon. 800m of our 2 km walk from the bus station to our accommodation was on a Roman bridge across the Guadiana River. We've gravitated to soft landings after long haul journeys and big time changes; the Apartamento Turistico Casa Museo fit the bill. Our host was waiting for us and he showed us around the spacious town house, just steps away from the Mérida arena. We went for a short walk and filled a few bags with groceries at the LIDL and the Dia supermarkets. It isn't every day that we walk past a Roman arena on the way back from shopping.

Mérida was a provincial Roman capital and we wandered the historic sites on our first full day including two aqueducts, the arena, the very impressive theatre, temples and we had a peek at the Roman racetrack but we couldn't see any chariots.

We arrived in Extremadura only a few days after the summer heat had been replaced by cool, showery weather. We had a huge cloudburst during the afternoon of our first full day in Spain, followed by clear skies. We'd describe the weather during our Extremadura sojourn as active.

I had booked a rental car from Cáceres, partly because of rates, but mostly because the Mérida agency wasn't open on week-ends when we planned to drop the car off. We caught an early train to Cáceres. We had the morning to wander the historic city before collecting the car at noon. However, it rained most of the morning so our Cáceres impressions were dampened on the 7km walk. I joked with the car rental agent that we would remember Cáceres as a rainy place. He said that it was the first rain in many months. 

The Renault Captur had about 5,000km on the odometer and Spanish roads were a breeze to drive. The idea was to make a couple of stops on the return drive to Mérida. I had picked a route through Alcuéscar to reach the historic rural Santa Lucia chapel. However, we ended up in a steep, narrow section of Alcuéscar and it was quite tricky to navigate the narrow streets, squeeze through, work with an unfamiliar clutch etc. So, once we had extricated ourselves from a tight spot, we abandoned the Santa Lucia notion and opted for  a visit to the easier to access Lácara Dolmen. It was a warm-up for the many dolmens (megalithic tombs)  that we would visit the next day.

What a difference a day made with blue skies a contrast from the previous day's rain and drizzle. We checked out of our comfortable Mérida digs (we even had a garage for the Captur), and headed for Alburquerque. We wandered the old streets and then continued west towards the Portugal border area, parked the car in La Aceña de la Borrega for an 8km walk to string together half a dozen dolmens on dirt tracks and footpaths. It was quiet and enjoyable out there.

The town of Valencia de Alcántara was the next stop; it was quiet there too. That was followed by another 2km rural walk to the Tapias dolmens. We were running out of energy and we still had some driving to do, so we headed for our rural accommodation and arrived at Tia Maria in Mata de Alcántara just before dark. The owner, Laura. was helpful and colourful.

We were still knackered by jet lag, so early mornings came easy. We left our accommodation in the dark and watched the sunrise over the famous Alcántara Roman bridge that serves the Ex-117 highway to this day, built to last.

We drove into the centre of Garrovillas de Alconétar to have a look at its quirky central plaza. Then it was off to the more quirky Museo Vostell Malpartida in an old wool wash house, centred around an old car. It felt Dali-esque. The museum is next to the Natural Monument Los Barruecos and we walked around the small lake on a pleasant 3.5km hike. 

We drove the country roads back towards Cáceres and from there it was expressway all the way to Trujillo. We stopped in at a slightly disappointing but adequate E-Leclerc supermarket in Trujillo and then made our way to our accommodation of "El Postigo". We somehow managed to find Saturday parking by our unit on Plaza Guadalupe. El Postigo wasn't our best accommodation but we sure liked the central location. We never met the owner, Carlos, but we enjoyed his helpful messages.

After we settled into our home for a couple of nights, we wandered the old town of Trujillo. Our jaws dropped when we reached the Plaza Mayor. We later joined a small number of Spanish visitors to the castle and then climbed up the towers of the Santa Maria church. The following day, after a morning visit to Montfragüe National Park, we returned for more wandering of the ancient Trujillo streets, unaffected by the drizzle that ensued. 

Trujillo was our favourite city on the trip. It's Amazing.

Montfragüe made for a good day trip from from Avila (we left town in the dark). We parked the car and started walking uphill and completed a 7km circuit. It was pleasant, though not overwhelming.

It was another departure in the darkness from Trujillo, heading north on the A5 expressway. We turned off the highway after half an hour to reach the shores of the Valdecañas reservoir to look at the Mármoles temples, the only remnants of the Augustobriga, a Roman settlement now submerged.  Small roads delivered us to the southern foothills of the Gredos mountains and a stop at La Guaña Park. Thereafter, we stopped at the  towns of Arenas de San Pedro and Mombeltrán. Clouds were low and we drove through fog at higher elevations until we dropped down on the north side of the mountains. I had spotted Manqueospese castle on Google Maps, and we made an interesting walk/visit to the private castle before carrying onto Avila.

I had conversed with our accommodation (" Morgan") managers on WhatsApp; I texted in Spanish and the answers all came back in English. The instructions were to meet at the garage at the south end of Plaza del Ejercito. It turned out that neither Belind or Javier spoke English but that was OK, until the tempo of their Castellano picked up. It was all very exciting because the parking garage featured a couple of car elevators and some tight corners that required multi-point turns. Once the Renault was parked, our hosts helped us carry our luggage and groceries across the square and to the second floor apartment. We loved both the unit and the location, but mostly the drama of parking the car.

We had a full day in Avila and made it a car-free day. The walls seemed to be more impressive by night than by day.

I juggled the itinerary with another wave of rain expected and dropped one mountain area in favour of another.. The north side of the Gredos  mountains is drier than to the south, so we opted for a trip to the Circo de Gredos. It was a cold day: 3C in Avila and fresh snow on the peaks of the Gredos. We didn't really have the clothing for winter, so it was a cold 9km walk. Judging by comments on "Alltrails", the hike and parking lot can be packed in summer, but we only met a few people on our way out. We saw many more ibex than people.

We checked out of our Avila apartment in the dark and drove east for about an hour to reach Segovia. The free parking lots were all full but we located a fee parking garage and then walked the old town centre. It was our first sniff of mass tourism. There were a number of bus tour groups touring the city.  They all seemed to have specific itineraries, because they all disappeared and the centre of Segovia was quiet before long.  After we had our fill of ancient buildings, we drove to the NW of town for a walk that offered views of the castle followed by a short drive to the 13th-century Vera Cruz church with a unique 12-sided exterior built by the Knights Templar. 

We had a three hour drive ahead of us, so we left Segovia around 1:00pm. We drove back through Avila and it wasn't long after before we hit the expected rain. 

We made El Torno our base for two nights and we stayed at the "Chaparrina del Jerte" apartment hotel. The owner was super friendly. We were the only people staying there at that time (off-season).

We had a full day to drive narrow, twisting roads on the southern flanks of the Gredos Mountains. We had a mixture of fog, rain, drizzle and sunshine through the day. We visited Garganta la Olla, Cuacos de Yuste, and Villanueva de la Vera but our highlight was the Monastery of Yuste.  There were just a handful of other visitors and we enjoyed the ambience of the monastery. Charles V, the last emperor of Europe, retired there. We visited his bedroom but weren't sure if it was the actually bed that he died in. 

El Torno itself didn't hold much of our interest, but we drove past and stopped at the Mirador de la Memoria a few times. The statues are dedicated to the forgotten victims of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship. It left us with an uneasy feeling.

We had to return our rental car before noon, so we got off to an early start. We had time to stop and walk around Plasencia, which like most Spanish cities, was pretty quiet on a Saturday morning. We dropped the car off with my buddy in Cáceres, next tot he bus station. We had planned to eat out for lunch but most restaurants don't serve lunch till 2:00pm, so we ended up buying some goodies at Panadería Desavío and then we headed for the train station to catch the Seville bound train. 

The train passed through  Mérida and we disembarked at Zafra. There was plenty of active weather going on, but we walked to  our accommodation of Las Palmeras Hotel  without rain. We had the late afternoon to have a look around the town and couldn't wait till 8 or 9:00pm for dinner, so we ended up eating in a kebab house. The atmospheric Las Palmeras was the only hotel that we stayed at in our entire Spain trip. Apartments and self-catering suited us better.

We had a few hours on the train from Zafra to Santa Justa, Seville. We had a half hour walk to the San Andres apartments. We spotted a restaurant that was actually serving food at noon, so we ate a mediocre Indian lunch. Of course, we soon found out that many restaurants have earlier opening times in tourist areas such as Seville.

We quite enjoyed Seville. We covered a lot of ground in our one and half days.  The volume of people and tourists was a novelty compared to the back waters of Extremadura, except for when we had to wait in long queues to enter the Cathedral and Alcázar the following day. When we were visiting the cathedral interior, we followed the flow and went through a side door and a narrow staircase that lead us to the roof. It seemed odd that they had visitors going up and down such a narrow spiral staircase, but it turned out that someone must have left a locked door open and none of us was supposed to be up on the roof at all.

We caught the airport bus for our Vueling flight, VY3160, to Lanzarote on October 31. I don't think Vueling made money on our 25 Euro (including seat selection) fares for the 2 hour flight.